Kristina Costa joins the University of Chicago Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth from Washington, DC, where she spent the last 15 years working on energy and climate policy both inside and outside the federal government. Most recently, she 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. Prior to her White House role, Costa served as senior advisor to Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 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 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.
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 joined in her move to Chicago by her partner, Patrick Taylor Smith (a Chicagoland native) and their extremely photogenic orange cat, Roosevelt.