Kshama Sawant

Kshama Sawant is an American politician who sits on the Seattle City Council. A former software engineer, Sawant became a socialist activist and parttime economics instructor in Seattle after immigrating to the United States. Sawant ran unsuccessfully for the Washington State House of Representatives before winning her seat on the Seattle City Council. Sawant was the first socialist to win a citywide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the School Board in 1916.

Sawant was born to Vasundhara and H. T. Ramanujam in Pune, India, in a Hindu middleclass family. Her mother is a retired principal and her father, a civil engineer, was killed by a drunk driver when Sawant was 13. Sawants observations of poverty in her native country and her unhappiness with the Indian caste system helped shape her political views before her adoption of socialism. Sawant grew up in Mumbai where she later studied computer science and graduated with a B.Sc from the University of Mumbai in 1994. She married her husband Vivek, an engineer at Microsoft, and moved to the United States. They have since become estranged.

Source: Wikipedia