Neerajha Krishna Kumar

Neerajha Krishna Kumar

Country Manager, Laterite

Neerajha Krishna Kumar is an energy systems and social impact professional with over 11 years of experience working across development research, evaluation, and strategy in Africa, India, and the United Kingdom. She currently serves as Country Manager for Laterite Ethiopia, leading one of the largest offices of the firm and guiding its Energy Practice across countries. Trained as an Electrical and Electronics Engineer, she later pursued graduate studies in Development Management and completed an MSc in Social Policy and Social Research at the University College London as a Commonwealth Scholar. Her work integrates technical energy expertise with socio-economic analysis, impact evaluation, and strategy consultations to inform policy and programme decisions in emerging markets. She is particularly interested in developing approaches that assign financial value to social and livelihood outcomes in energy planning to strengthen investment and policy decisions. Her experience spans energy access and productive use financing, agricultural markets, digital inclusion, gender, livelihoods, public health, and education. Across these sectors, she combines systems thinking, stakeholder engagement, and analytical rigor to strengthen how technical systems are planned, financed, implemented, and evaluated.