Dr. Anu Kumar

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President and CEO

Dr. 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 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 PhD in anthropology and a master’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Integral Role of Reproductive Justice in the Gender Equity Movement

Ipas partnered with Women’s Funding Network and I Be Black Girl for a webinar conversation on the integral place of reproductive justice in the gender justice movement. Ipas President and CEO, Anu Kumar, and I Be Black Girl Black Maternal Health Organizer, Christian Minter, shared about their work towards reproductive justice – both locally and internationally – from abortion and contraception access to maternal health.

Unpacking the Texas abortion ban: White supremacy in the anti-rights movement

A thought-provoking conversation between Ipas President and CEO Anu Kumar and award-winning author, advocate, professor and social commentator Michele Goodwin. Both have spoken and written about how white supremacy drives the anti-abortion, anti-rights movement. In this virtual event, they touch on various examples, such as U.S. foreign policies like the Helms Amendment, the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and the recent law in Texas that effectively bans abortion after six weeks and empowers “bounty hunters” to report anyone connected to abortion.

White supremacy is global

A virtual conversation about recognizing and dismantling the white supremacy and anti-rights opposition movement and its connections with reproductive justice. Following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in early January, there has been increased U.S. coverage and discussion of these connections, but they have been present globally for years.
Anu Kumar, Ipas President and CEO
Gillian Kane, Ipas Senior Policy Advisor
Loretta Ross, Activist and Academic
Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Health

Stand up for reproductive justice: the Helms Amendment must go

As we marked the beginning of 2021 and a new U.S. presidential administration, Congresswoman Alma S. Adams, PhD (D-NC), SisterSong Executive Director Monica Simpson, and Ipas President and CEO Anu Kumar sat down for a conversation about the Helms Amendment, an ideologically driven U.S. foreign policy that denies people—disproportionately Black and brown women—around the world access to reproductive health care.

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