19 Facts About Saikat Chakrabarti

Saikat Chakrabarti was born on January 12,1986 and is an American political advisor, left-wing activist, and software engineer.

Saikat Chakrabarti was formerly chief of staff to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the US representative from New York's 14th congressional district representing portions of the Bronx and Queens in New York City.

Saikat Chakrabarti is currently running for Congress in California's 11th congressional district in the 2026 election, vying to unseat former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Saikat Chakrabarti attended Harvard University, graduating in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in computer science.

Saikat Chakrabarti co-founded a web design company called Mockingbird and served as a founding engineer at the payments processing company Stripe.

Saikat Chakrabarti is married to his college sweetheart Kamilka Malwatte, a lawyer, and was expecting a child as of 2019.

Saikat Chakrabarti has been seen wearing t-shirts displaying Subhas Chandra Bose, leader of the Nazi Indian Legion and modern symbol of Bengali leftism, commonly linked to communism and marxism.

In 2015, Saikat Chakrabarti joined the early stages of US Senator Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign.

Saikat Chakrabarti became the Sanders campaign's Director of Organizing Technology and was part of the effort that created technology for grassroots supporters to collaborate on organizing events.

Saikat Chakrabarti told Rachel Maddow in 2016, the goal was to have unified fundraising of small donors modeled on the Sanders campaign in hopes of politicians who work for their voters rather than spend their time seeking donations.

Saikat Chakrabarti was campaign manager for Ocasio-Cortez's unexpected primary victory over 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley, and afterwards became her campaign chair.

In 2019, Saikat Chakrabarti was named to the Politico Playbook power list to watch.

Saikat Chakrabarti led the Ocasio-Cortez staff and several progressive groups in writing the Green New Deal resolution that was submitted to the House of Representatives by Ocasio-Cortez and to the Senate by Ed Markey February 7,2019.

Saikat Chakrabarti expressed a vision of what Democrats should try to do while Republicans hold power in the Senate and Presidency:.

In February 2019, Saikat Chakrabarti appeared as a guest on Bloomberg News to clarify Ocasio-Cortez's role in Amazon's decision to pull its planned HQ2 from Long Island City, Queens, saying she objected to the process by which it had received its original deal, but had no specific animus toward the company.

Saikat Chakrabarti stated that AOC's goal had been to see the local community more involved in discussions, but once community members joined the discussion, Amazon made the decision to withdraw.

Saikat Chakrabarti elaborated further that Amazon would be welcome to return to the negotiating table under the condition that the company engage adequately with the local communities to be affected by the project.

Saikat Chakrabarti worked on the part of the Justice Democrats platform which included abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

On February 5,2025, Saikat Chakrabarti announced his candidacy for California's 11th congressional district in 2026, challenging former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.