The Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth is honored to welcome Kristina Costa as its Managing Director of Policy and Strategic Engagement. Costa joins the Institute after 15 years in Washington, DC, working on energy and climate policy both inside and outside the federal government. In her role with the Institute, Costa will lead efforts to engage and build relationships with key external stakeholders, including policymakers, practitioners, and thought leaders globally.
“We are so excited to welcome Kristina to the Institute’s team,” says Institute Director Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics. “At the core of the Institute’s mission is to ensure that the academic ideas that we develop achieve escape velocity, so they allow the world to better balance its climate and growth goals. Kristina is the perfect person to help us do this more effectively.”
Most recently, Costa was Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation, where she managed implementation of the climate and energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. As director of a lean White House team and significant interagency policy processes, Costa oversaw the awarding of more than $100 billion in federal grants and the issuance of guidance documents governing 23 clean energy tax provisions, which spurred more than $400 billion in private-sector investment in just under two and a half years.
“Kristina Costa has been at the heart of the most consequential climate and clean-energy work in recent history — from shaping and implementing the Inflation Reduction Act in the White House to driving bold policy innovation,” says former Secretary of Energy and University of Chicago Institute of Politics fellow Jennifer Granholm. “I can’t think of a better, smarter, more savvy leader and strategist to help accelerate the clean-energy transition we so urgently need.”
“Kristina Costa’s distinguished White House service in the Obama and Biden Administrations, together with her tenure at the Department of State, give her a unique perspective on both the national and global efforts to tackle the climate crisis. Her leadership, effectiveness, grit and creativity are unparalleled,” says John Podesta, former White House Senior Advisor for International Climate Policy and advisor to Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden. “The University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth is fortunate to add her to their lineup.”
Prior to her White House role, Costa served as senior advisor to Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Costa also served in the White House Office of the Chief of Staff in the Obama Administration as policy advisor to John Podesta and Brian Deese, focusing on implementation of the President’s Climate Action Plan. She has also spent time working in the United States Senate, on presidential campaigns, at the Center for American Progress, and as a consultant on energy, climate, and political issues to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients.
“I am honored and excited to join the Institute in advancing its critically important and timely mission and to building bridges between the robust research underway and policy conversations happening around the world,” says Costa. “I look forward to sharing lessons learned from Washington and working with UChicago’s world-class researchers and faculty on advancing ambitious, practicable policy solutions that combat climate change and advance economic growth.”
Costa received her BA from Wellesley College, where she studied philosophy, and her master’s degree from the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, where she was a McCourt Scholar. She is also a nonresident fellow of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.