Kat Murti is a libertarian, feminist, and activist, dedicated to making the world a better, freer place, one day at a time. She is Executive Director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

Kat began her journey with SSDP in January 2009, when she joined the UC Berkeley chapter (CalSSDP). Just a couple months later, she was unanimously voted chapter president, and shortly thereafter she began interning at what was then SSDP’s San Francisco-based headquarters. Over the years, Kat has worn many different SSDP hats, including co-coordinating SSDP’s AMPLIFY Project, which connected touring bands with the drug policy reform movement, helping conceive SSDP’s employment pipelines (and starting the SSDP Jobs and Opportunities Facebook group), and chairing SSDP’s committee dedicated to diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality for over 8 years.

Kat served as an appointed director on SSDP’s Board of Directors for over a decade, most recently as Treasurer of the Board. She previously served as a Trustee on the (now-defunct) Board of Trustees. Kat was named an Alumni All Star in December of 2010, a Spotlighted Alum in January of 2012, and the 2016 A. Kathryn Parker Outstanding Alumnus in Service to SSDP, in addition to receiving SSDP’s Randy Hencken Saving Our Asses Award in 2018.

Outside of SSDP, Kat is the co-founder and executive director of Feminists for Liberty, an anti-statist and anti-sexist organization that is uplifting libertarian feminist voices, promoting gender equality without abandoning classically liberal ideas, and changing the narrative about both feminism and libertarianism, as well as co-leader of the D.C. chapter of the Ladies of Liberty Alliance (LOLA) and a communications consultant for the international organization.

Kat serves on the board of PublicSquare.net, an independent, non-partisan webzine that aims to encourage stimulating debate on the political, legal, religious, and social issues of the day, as well as the advisory board of the White Coat Waste Project, a taxpayer watchdog group focused on ending government funding for animal experimentation. Kat first became involved with drug policy in 2007 when she joined the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of NORML.

She served as Bay Area Regional Director of the Proposition 19 campaign to legalize adult recreational cannabis (she appears extensively in the award-winning independent film American Pot Story: Oaksterdam), and has worked at the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, and, briefly, in cannabis business law.

Kat previously worked at the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She is an alumni of the Koch Internship Program, Koch Associate Program, and the Koch Summer Fellowship Program.

She was recognized as one of the Red Alert Politics 30 Under 30 in 2018, as well as one of the 40 under 40 Outstanding BIPOC Leaders in Drug Policy in 2021. She was named LOLA of the Month in May 2016 and August
2020.

Kat earned her B.A. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, and is a graduate of Oaksterdam University. She grew up between North Texas and South India, and now lives in the Washington, D.C. area with her husband and two children.