Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born October 13, 1989), also known by her initials AOC, is an American politician and activist who has served since 2019 as the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district. She is a member of the Democratic Party.

Born in the Bronx and raised in Yorktown Heights, New York, Ocasio-Cortez graduated with honors from Boston University, where she double-majored in international relations and economics. After moving back to the Bronx, she became an activist and worked as a waitress and bartender. On June 26, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez drew national recognition when she defeated Democratic Caucus chair and 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic Party's primary election for New York's 14th congressional district, in what was widely seen as the biggest upset victory in the 2018 midterm election primaries. She easily won the November general election and was reelected in 2020, 2022, and 2024.

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 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She is a leader of the left-wing faction of the Democratic Party and a member of the "Squad", an informal progressive congressional bloc.

Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx, a borough of New York City, on October 13, 1989, the daughter of Sergio Ocasio-Roman and Blanca Ocasio-Cortez (née Cortez). She has a younger brother named Gabriel. Her father was born in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican family and became an architect; her mother was born in Puerto Rico. The family lived in an apartment in Parkchester until Ocasio-Cortez was five, when they moved to a house in suburban Yorktown Heights. She said that her family raised enough money to buy a small home there so that she could go to school, and that her mother worked as a house cleaner in the town.

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.

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 that 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.

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 until then 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 Washington Heights. 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.