Not so long ago, on October 13th, 1989, Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez was born to Sergio Ocasio (father) and Blanca Ocasio-Cortez (mother).  

    The Ocasio-Cortez family then lived in an apartment located in the Bronx neighborhood of Parkchester up until she was five years old.    

    Both of her parents were Puerto Rican. Her father, Sergio, was born in the Bronx, while her mother, Blanca, was born in Puerto Rico.

    The Ocasio-Cortez family moved to a house located in suburban Yorktown Heights where she went to school at Yorktown High School. This is where her microbiology project won second place in the microbiology category at Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in 2007. 

    AOC then went on to graduate at Yorktown High School in 2007 and then later attend college at Boston University. 

    To show their appreciation for all of her hard work, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory named a small asteroid after her. This is named 23238 Ocasio-Cortez.

    Her father, who had greatly influenced her life as well as her future choices, passed away of lung cancer in 2008, leaving her, as well as her family, heartbroken and grieving the loss. 

    After her father's death, AOC was involved in a very lengthy battle to settle his estate. As stated by AOC herself, this situation gave her a first hand experience at how attorneys appointed by the state to administer an estate make themselves richer off of the struggle that the families go through to try and make sense of the whole situation and how the system itself works.    

    At Boston University, she became the LDZ Secretary of State and even had a John F. Lopez Fellowship. This is an internship given to high achieving college students where they can serve as advocates for their sponsoring university.

During her college years, AOC also served as an intern for U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. She worked in his section on foreign affairs and immigration issues. 

    While working as an intern, Alexandria was the only Spanish-speaking person there to answer the calls. That being the case, at the age of 20, when a phone call came in of someone's family member being taken by ICE, she was the one that handled the call and helped the people navigate the system.

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez graduated from Boston University with Honors and a Bachelors of Arts degree in both international relations and economics in 2011.

    After graduation, Alexandria, who went by Sandy in college as well as high school, got a job as a waitress and bartender to help her mother who was fighting foreclosure on their home.

    AOC then founded Brook Avenue Press,  a publishing firm for books who portrayed the Bronx in a more positive light, in 2012 all while working for the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute.

    In 2016, during the primary, AOC worked as an organizer for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. 

    After the campaign, Ocasio- Cortez traveled the United States by car and visited places like Flint, Michigan and Indian Reservations in North Dakota. She talked to the people there about the Flint water crisis as well as the Dakota Access Pipeline.

    What did she learn from all these people though? What makes this trip so important?

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez learned that the most effective way to run for office wasn't necessarily dependent on having access to wealth, power, or social influence. Instead, she had seen first hand how the people in Flint and North Dakota fought for the things they believed in. This trip was what inspired her to make a change in her community.

    One day after Alexandria had visited North Dakota, she got a call from Brand New Congress which was recruiting progressive new candidates. 

        Her brother, Gabriel, had actually nominated her soon after the 2016 primary alongside of about 1,000 others who were also nominated. 

    AOC was then chosen to go on summits around the country with the Justice Democrats, a political action committee. 

After that, BOOM, her political career started.

    Although she worried about how much this campaign would cost her already struggling family, Alexandria still did her best to put together a scrappy team and push through in hopes of finally making a difference in her community. She pushed to make a difference in her home. A place where she grew up in and where she knew better than anyone how much it truly needed real change.

    In May of 2017, she finally kicked off her primary run against 10 term incumbent Joe Crowley.

    This was scary, to say the least. Crowley had been in that seat for 20 years and Alexandria, a 28 year old working class woman, had challenged his place. 

But did she give up and pull out? Of course she had doubts. Of course she was worried of a the high chance of loss. But this did not stop her from pursuing her goal to help her people.

    Instead of having to collect 1,250 signatures to get on the ballot, AOC needed 10,000 because she was challenging the boss. Any small discrepancy with the signature would be called invalid so she needed that many in order to be safe. 

    Alexandria even went out on her own to get people to sign.