Faiz Shakir

Faiz Shakir (/fæz ʃəˈkɪər/; born 1979) is an American Democratic political advisor. Currently the campaign manager for Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, Shakir previously worked as an aide to Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, was an editor-in-chief of the ThinkProgress blog, and was the political director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Raised in Florida by Pakistani immigrants, Shakir is a progressive liberal and an advocate for Muslim American communities.

Shakir was born in 1979 to Pakistani immigrants to the United States and grew up in Florida.He is a Muslim. Shakir completed his B.A. in government at Harvard University. He played baseball for four years while studying at Harvard. Shakir graduated with a J.D. from Georgetown University.

After graduating, Shakir worked as a communications aide in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and as a legislative aide to Senator Bob Graham. He also worked on the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign as a junior staffer. In 2005, Shakir began working for the Center for American Progress (CAP) as a policy adviser. There he helped launch their ThinkProgress blog in 2005, of which he was the editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2012.

In 2012, Shakir became House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's director of new media. During that time he was involved in advocacy for Muslim American communities. After that he served as a senior adviser to Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.Reid's former deputy chief of staff commented, "Reid did not make a big decision without consulting Faiz. There's no one he trusted more on how the progressive community would react on something and no one whose advice he took more seriously on pushing him to the left." Shakir informally advised Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, which drew the ire of the Hillary Clinton campaign team. According to the Podesta emails, Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta chided Shakir for advising Sanders. "Gave him a very hard time," Podesta wrote to Neera Tanden about Shakir's involvement. "I have to say this does not go down easy with me."

Shakir joined the American Civil Liberties Union as its political director in January 2017. In March, he helped the ACLU launch the People Power website, which engages volunteers to mobilize in defence of civil liberties. Shakir had first pitched the idea for such a website to ACLU Director Anthony Romero in 2015; at that time Romero had dismissed the idea as too radical. The website attracted 225,000 volunteers in just 8 weeks, coordinating projects such as meetings with judges to film screenings to panels on law enforcement and immigration.

Upon joining Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign in February 2019, Shakir became the first Muslim and first Pakistani-American campaign manager for a major party U.S. presidential campaign.