Former Tech Worker a Leading Candidate to Replace Pelosi

Before entering politics, Saikat Chakrabarti was a Harvard-educated computer scientist and an early engineer at the payments company Stripe. After co-founding a web design startup called Mockingbird, he joined Stripe, where he accumulated equity worth at least $50 million. His transition into the political sphere began in 2015 when he joined Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign as the Director of Organizing Technology. In that role, he helped create tools to scale grassroots organizing, including an open-source messaging tool called Spoke. Following the 2016 election, Chakrabarti co-founded the political action committee Justice Democrats alongside Cenk Uygur and others. The group's mission was to recruit and support progressive candidates to challenge incumbent "corporate Democrats" in primary elections. It was through Justice Democrats that he recruited and then managed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's successful 2018 primary campaign, a major upset against 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley. Chakrabarti subsequently served as AOC's first chief of staff in Congress. During his time as chief of staff, Chakrabarti led the development of the Green New Deal resolution, a plan to address climate change and economic inequality simultaneously. After leaving Capitol Hill, he founded the think tank New Consensus to further develop large-scale economic and environmental policy proposals. His congressional platform includes Medicare for All, a national plan to build millions of affordable homes, tuition-free public college, and a ban on stock trading by members of Congress. He is running a campaign that does not accept money from corporate PACs.