Guiding Purposeful Growth 

Helping leaders and organizations navigate complexity, advance equity, and drive meaningful impact with clarity and purpose. 

ABOUT US

Chitra Kumar Advisory partners with leaders and organizations to solve complex challenges, center equity, and create lasting impact. With experience across strategy, policy, and cross-sector collaboration, Chitra brings a thoughtful, inclusive, and practical approach to every engagement. 

Chitra Kumar's Full Biography

Chitra Kumar is a nationally recognized leader with more than 25 years of experience turning the values of equity and justice into environmental policy and action. Across government and nonprofit sectors, she has advanced climate, energy, and community revitalization solutions that center the people most affected. She also coaches mission-driven professionals as they build purposeful careers in the environmental, climate, and energy fields. In mid-2026, she launched CK Advisory, where she now supports the Environmental Protection Network as Civil Service and Science Advisor alongside a growing roster of coaching clients. She advises Arlington County's Climate Action Plan 2026 update, is a non-resident fellow with the Brookings Metro and is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Economic and Environmental Analysis.

Grounded in the belief that joy sustains people through the hard work of change, she is also a certified Laughter Yoga™ leader and mindfulness facilitator who leads drop-in sessions and develops mindfulness and resilience programs for organizations.

From 2023 to 2026, Ms. Kumar served as Director of the Climate & Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). She led strategy and oversight for teams working to transform the U.S. energy system into one that is equitable and powered by renewable electricity. She also championed efforts to ensure that polluters pay their fair share of climate costs—and that communities have the tools and resources to thrive, adapt, and build a resilient future.

Before joining UCS, Ms. Kumar spent 21 years as a federal civil servant, primarily at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Her career was rooted in a simple but powerful commitment: communities closest to environmental challenges should help shape the solutions. She directed community-based programs across the agency and became the first-ever Director of the Office of Policy, Partnerships, and Program Development within EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR). In that historic role, she advised senior Biden administration officials and career EPA leaders on environmental justice and climate policy—including Justice40 and Thriving Communities Technical Assistance—and helped embed environmental justice into complex EPA programs. She also led the Federal and State Division in the Office of Community Revitalization, supporting hundreds of communities as they advanced thriving, resilient neighborhoods, main streets, and natural environments.

Ms. Kumar also served at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) as Deputy Associate Director for Water. There, she contributed to major national initiatives in clean water implementation, water infrastructure financing, green infrastructure, and the climate resilience of freshwater systems. These experiences deepened her conviction that durable progress depends on collaboration across sectors, institutions, and communities.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, she is raising a family in Northern Virginia. Her commitment to change is both national and deeply local: she has advocated for just land use, housing, and sustainability policies through several community initiatives, including housing, climate action and hyperscale data centers.

Her nonprofit experience includes serving as a Senior Fellow with the Aspen Institute’s Community Strategies Group and contributing to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Thrive Rural initiative, where she focused on the connections among rural community and economic development, health, and opportunity.

Ms. Kumar served on the Board of Directors of the Environmental Protection Network until spring 2026. She serves on the Advisory Board of Learning Spaces International, a rural school in Gujarat, India, and is a member of the Green Leadership Trust and the American Geophysical Union.

Ms. Kumar holds a master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BA in international policy for environment and negotiation from Boston University.

See additional details on LinkedIn. 

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