Age, Biography, and Wiki
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born on October 13, 1989, which makes her 35 years old as of 2024. She is a U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district and has been a significant voice in progressive politics. Born in the Bronx, New York, Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman to serve in Congress when she took office in 2019.
| Occupation | Civil Rights Activists |
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| Date of Birth | 13 October 1989 |
| Age | 35 Years |
| Birth Place | New York City, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Libra |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
While specific details about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's height and weight are not widely documented, she is often noted for her vibrant presence and energetic public appearances.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is married to Riley Roberts, a web developer. The couple has been together since before her election to Congress and got married in 2022.
She has a younger brother named Gabriel. The family lived in an apartment in the Bronx neighborhood of Parkchester until Ocasio-Cortez was five, when they moved to a house in suburban Yorktown Heights. She said her family raised enough money to buy a small home there so she could go to school, and that her mother worked as a house cleaner in the town.
Her father died of lung cancer in 2008 during her second year of college, and Ocasio-Cortez became involved in a lengthy probate dispute to settle his estate. She has said that the experience helped her learn "first-hand how attorneys appointed by the court to administer an estate can enrich themselves at the expense of the families struggling to make sense of the bureaucracy". During college, Ocasio-Cortez was an intern for U.S. senator Ted Kennedy in his section on foreign affairs and immigration issues. In interviews, she said she was the only Spanish speaker in the office and the sole person responsible for assisting Spanish-speaking constituents. Ocasio-Cortez graduated cum laude from Boston University in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in international relations and economics.
After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx and took a job as a bartender and waitress to help her mother—a house cleaner and school bus driver—fight foreclosure of their home. She later launched Brook Avenue Press, a now-defunct publishing firm for books that portrayed the Bronx in a positive light. Ocasio-Cortez also worked for the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute.
In an attempt to embarrass Ocasio-Cortez just before she took office, Twitter user "AnonymousQ" shared a video dating to Ocasio-Cortez's college years: a Boston University student-produced dance video in which she briefly appeared. Many social media users came to her defense, inspiring memes and a Twitter account syncing the footage to songs like "Mambo No. 5" and "Gangnam Style". Ocasio-Cortez responded by posting a video of herself dancing to Edwin Starr's "War" outside her congressional office.
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's estimated net worth is approximately $24,500, according to Quiver Quantitative's estimates based on her financial disclosures. Her annual salary as a member of Congress is $174,000. She owns up to $46,000 in assets and has at least $15,000 in student loan debt. Notably, she has been subject to misinformation claiming she has a much higher net worth, which has been debunked by reputable sources .
During the 2016 primary, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. After the general election, she traveled across America by car, visiting places such as Flint, Michigan and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, and speaking to people affected by the Flint water crisis and the Dakota Access Pipeline. In an interview she recalled her December 2016 visit to Standing Rock as a tipping point, saying that before that, she had believed that the only way to run for office effectively was to have access to wealth, social influence, and power. But her visit to North Dakota, where she saw others "putting their whole lives and everything that they had on the line for the protection of their community", inspired her to begin to work for her own community. One day after she visited North Dakota, she got a phone call from Brand New Congress, which was recruiting progressive candidates (her brother had nominated her soon after Election Day 2016). Ocasio-Cortez said she was first exposed to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) when a friend brought her to a local meeting in Upper Manhattan. She has credited Jabari Brisport's unsuccessful City Council campaign with restoring her belief in electoral politics, in running as a socialist candidate, and in the DSA as an organization.
Career, Business, and Investments
Ocasio-Cortez's career in politics began when she won her congressional seat in 2018. She has been a key figure in progressive legislation, advocating for climate action and social justice. In terms of business and investments, there is no public record of her holding significant investments in publicly traded assets . Her focus remains on her political career and advocacy.
Elizabeth Warren wrote the entry on Ocasio-Cortez for 2019's Time 100. The documentary Knock Down the House, directed by Rachel Lears, which focuses on four female Democrats in the 2018 United States elections who were not career politicians—Ocasio-Cortez, Amy Vilela, Cori Bush and Paula Jean Swearengin—premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Ocasio-Cortez was the only one of the women featured in the film to win. It was released by Netflix on May 1, 2019. Ocasio-Cortez also appeared in Lears's 2022 film To the End, which focuses on the effects of climate change. The film debuted at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and was presented at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022.
Social Network
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is highly active on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. She uses these platforms to engage with her constituents, share her views on current issues, and promote her political initiatives.
Ocasio-Cortez was endorsed by progressive and civil rights organizations such as MoveOn and Democracy for America. Then-Governor Andrew Cuomo endorsed Crowley, as did both of New York's U.S. senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, multiple U.S. representatives, various local elected officials and trade unions, and groups such as the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the Working Families Party, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, among others. California representative Ro Khanna, a Justice Democrat like Ocasio-Cortez, initially endorsed Crowley but later endorsed Ocasio-Cortez in an unusual dual endorsement.
Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky congratulated her. Several commentators noted the similarities between Ocasio-Cortez's victory over Crowley and Dave Brat's Tea Party movement-supported 2014 victory over House majority leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary for Virginia's 7th congressional district. Like Crowley, Cantor was a high-ranking member in his party's caucus. After her primary win, Ocasio-Cortez endorsed several progressive primary challengers to Democratic incumbents nationwide, capitalizing on her fame and spending her political capital in a manner unusual even for unexpected primary winners.
Crowley remained on the ballot as the nominee of the Working Families Party (WFP) and the Women's Equality Party (WEP). Neither he nor the WFP party actively campaigned, both having endorsed Ocasio-Cortez after the Democratic primary. Ocasio-Cortez called the WEP, which Governor Cuomo created ahead of the 2014 New York gubernatorial election, a cynical, centrist group that endorsed male incumbents over female challengers like her and Cynthia Nixon. Former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, who won reelection in 2006 on a third-party line after losing the Democratic primary in 2006, penned a July 17 column in the Wall Street Journal expressing hope that Crowley would actively campaign on the WFP ballot line. WFP executive director Dan Cantor wrote an endorsement of, and apology to, Ocasio-Cortez for the New York Daily News; he asked voters not to vote for Crowley if his name remained on the general election ballot.
The first media network to give Ocasio-Cortez a platform and extensively cover her campaign and policies was The Young Turks, a left-wing online news program. After her primary win, she quickly garnered nationwide media attention, including numerous articles and TV talk-show appearances. She also drew a great amount of media attention when she and Sanders campaigned for James Thompson in Kansas in July 2018. A rally in Wichita had to be moved from a theater with a capacity of 1,500 when far more people said they would attend. The event drew 4,000 people, with some seated on the floor. In The New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote that while Sanders remained "the de-facto leader of an increasingly popular left, [he is unable to] do things that do not come naturally to him, like supply hope." Wallace-Wells suggested that Ocasio-Cortez had made Sanders's task easier, as he could point to her success to show that ideas "once considered to be radical are now part of the mainstream".
Until she defeated incumbent Joe Crowley in the 2018 Democratic primary, Ocasio-Cortez received little coverage on most traditional news media outlets. Jimmy Dore interviewed her when she first announced her candidacy in June 2017. After her primary win, Brian Stelter wrote that progressive-media outlets, such as The Young Turks and The Intercept, "saw the Ocasio-Cortez upset coming" in advance. Margaret Sullivan wrote in The Washington Post that traditional metrics of measuring a campaign's viability, like total fundraising, were contributing to a "media failure" and that "they need to get closer to what voters are thinking and feeling: their anger and resentment, their disenfranchisement from the centers of power, their pocketbook concerns."
When the 116th Congress convened on January 3, 2019, Ocasio-Cortez entered with no seniority but with a large social media presence. Axios credited her with "as much social media clout as her fellow freshman Democrats combined". Since June 2024, she has 13.1 million X (formerly Twitter) followers, up from 1.4 million in November 2018. As of January 2025, she has 8.4 million followers on Instagram and 1.8 million on Facebook. Ocasio-Cortez is also the most followed user on Bluesky, with 2 million followers as of March 2025. Her colleagues appointed her to teach them social media lessons upon her arrival in Congress. In July 2019, two lawsuits were filed against her for blocking Joey Salads and Dov Hikind on Twitter in light of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that it was a violation of the First Amendment for President Trump to block people on Twitter. On November 4, 2019, it was announced that the lawsuit had been settled; Ocasio-Cortez issued an apology.
In a 2019 interview, Ocasio-Cortez said she had stopped using her private Facebook account and was minimizing her usage of all social media accounts and platforms, calling them a "public health risk".
When Ocasio-Cortez made her first speech on the floor of Congress in January 2019, C-SPAN tweeted the video. Within 12 hours, the video of her speech set the record as C-SPAN's most-watched Twitter video of a member of the House of Representatives.
In February 2019, speaking at a congressional hearing with a panel of representatives from campaign finance watchdog groups, Ocasio-Cortez questioned the panel about ethics regulations as they apply to both the president and members of Congress. She asserted that no regulations prevent lawmakers "from being bought off by wealthy corporations". With more than 37.5 million views, the clip became the most-watched political video posted on Twitter.
Education
Ocasio-Cortez graduated from Yorktown High School in Yorktown Heights, New York, and then attended Boston University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations and economics in 2011. During her time at Boston University, she was involved in various internships, including one at the office of Senator Ted Kennedy.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's career and personal life have garnered significant attention, but her net worth remains modest compared to many other public figures. Her focus on political advocacy and public service continues to drive her popularity and influence in U.S. politics.
She attended Boston University, where she double-majored in international relations and economics, graduating with honors. She moved back to the Bronx, becoming an activist and working as a waitress and bartender.
Taking office at age 29, Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She was also, alongside Rashida Tlaib, one of the first two female members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) elected to Congress. She advocates a progressive platform that includes support for worker cooperatives, Medicare for All, tuition-free public colleges, a jobs guarantee, a Green New Deal, and abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She is a prominent leader of the left-wing faction of the Democratic Party, and a member of the "Squad", a progressive congressional bloc.
Ocasio-Cortez attended Yorktown High School, graduating in 2007. In high school and college, Ocasio-Cortez went by the name of "Sandy Ocasio". She came in second in the microbiology category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in 2007 with a research project on the effect of antioxidants on the lifespan of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. In a show of appreciation for her efforts, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory named a small asteroid after her: 23238 Ocasio-Cortez. In high school, she took part in the National Hispanic Institute's Lorenzo de Zavala (LDZ) Youth Legislative Session. After graduating, she became the LDZ secretary of state while attending Boston University. Ocasio-Cortez had a John F. Lopez Fellowship.
Ocasio-Cortez faced Republican nominee Anthony Pappas in the November 6 general election. Pappas, an economics professor, did not actively campaign. The 14th district has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+29, making it New York City's sixth-most Democratic district, with registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans almost six to one.
Ocasio-Cortez again easily won the general election against Forte. Some voters in her district split their tickets, voting for Ocasio-Cortez and for Trump in the presidential election. Harris won 65% of the district's vote and Trump 33%, an increase from 2020. A political analyst said this was because both Trump and Ocasio-Cortez "were leading with the message of working-class pocketbook issues". Ocasio-Cortez asked those who split their tickets why they did so; some said that they both cared about the working class and were "less establishment", while others cited the Gaza war and the economy.
