Anu Kumar

Dr. Kumar joined Ipas in 2002 as Executive Vice President. In that role, she had oversight of Ipas’s fundraising and communications efforts, started a new technical area working with communities, and pioneered work on abortion stigma. In 2016, she became Ipas’s first Chief Strategy and Development Officer and lead the organizational strategic planning process, along with fundraising, partnership development, and technical innovation. In her tenure at Ipas, she has overseen technical and operational aspects of the organization from finance to medical abortion. Dr. Kumar has been involved in the creation of several new country programs for Ipas including in Indonesia, Myanmar, and Mozambique. Dr. Kumar has published in blogs, including Huffington Post and Ms. Magazine, and in peer-reviewed journals.

Prior to joining Ipas, Dr. Kumar served for seven years as a senior program officer in the Population and Reproductive Health program of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In that capacity, she was responsible for grants to organizations working in India and to international organizations, and for grants in the field of population and the environment. Prior to her work with the MacArthur Foundation, Dr. Kumar worked as a social scientist at the World Health Organization’s Reproductive Health Research Division. Dr. Kumar has a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in anthropology and a master’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.