About New Consensus
New Consensus is an agile think tank focused on designing comprehensive, detailed plans for governments to achieve economic renewal and transformation.
Our Guiding Principle
It is possible to create a world where the people of every nation and community control the means to sustainably make a prosperous living.
Humanity has everything it needs to build that world in a single generation: billions of creative and hard working people, technology that would allow us to make a comfortable living sustainably if deployed, and virtually unlimited clean energy just waiting to be harnessed.
The obstacles to getting to that world are political, not technical.
The New Consensus
The reigning economic consensus, the "Washington Consensus," teaches the political classes in almost every nation to accept painfully slow and mixed advances in living standards, or gradual decline if that's what global markets offer.
The world is beginning to part ways with the Washington Consensus. A new consensus is rising that isn't afraid to think as big as the problems we face.
We aim to solve problems like climate change, economic stagnation, racial and rural wealth gaps, and more by proposing solutions modeled after mass economic mobilizations of the past.
Our Team
Saikat Chakrabarti
Co-founder & President
Saikat Chakrabarti is the co-founder and president of New Consensus. Previously, he was a founding engineer at Stripe and an organizer and developer on the 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, co-founded Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, and was the campaign manager and then Chief of Staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez where he led the effort to draft and release the Green New Deal.
Zack Exley
Co-founder & Executive Director
Zack Exley is a co-founder and the executive director of New Consensus. Previously, he was a co-founder of Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, and led the national distributed organizing team on Bernie Sander's 2016 presidential campaign. At New Consensus, Zack developed plans that helped to shape the 2018 U.S. Green New Deal and helped to spread the project to several other countries. Zack was an early pioneer in tech-powered political campaigning and online small-dollar fundraising at MoveOn.org and a string of presidential campaigns starting with Howard Dean and John Kerry in 2004. Reach zack at zack@newconsensus.com.
Bill O'Toole
Researcher
Bill O'Toole is a researcher at New Consensus with over a decade of experience spanning journalism, political advocacy, and public policy. After working as a reporter and editor in Burma and his native Pittsburgh, he transitioned into political communications, serving as a digital strategist on campaigns in Western Pennsylvania and North Carolina. At New Consensus, Bill is contributing to the development of The Mission for America.
Sean Atkins
Policy Analyst
Sean Atkins is a policy analyst at New Consensus working on the Playbook project. A recent graduate of Missouri State University, Sean was a national debate semi-finalist, co-founder of MSU's Sunrise Hub, and a field organizer for both the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign and the Minnesota Democratic party.