Krithika Santhanam

Krithika Santhanam joined the Irvine Foundation as a Program Officer in March 2025. She brings more than a decade of social justice advocacy experience spanning the nonprofit, legal, and consulting sectors to her work with the Foundation. Krithika’s work has centered on dismantling structural racism and mass incarceration through civil rights litigation, movement lawyering, political education, and grassroots power building.

Most recently, Krithika served as an attorney in private practice, advising clients on a range of labor and employment matters including California Labor Code violations, access to protected leave, discrimination and retaliation claims, and wage and hour laws. Prior to that, Krithika served as a policy consultant for Liberty Hill Foundation, the City of Los Angeles’ Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department, and ExpandLA, to advise on the implementation of large-scale equity-based initiatives.

Krithika also served as the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles, overseeing the organization’s public interest advocacy and mass legal defense on behalf of protestors, in the wake of the 2020 national Black Lives Matters protests. Prior to this role, Krithika was a staff attorney at the Advancement Project, working with grassroots organizations across the country on organizing and policy campaigns tackling racial justice and criminal legal system reform issues.

Krithika began her nonprofit career as the Director of Youth Development at Legacy LA, where she created the organization’s flagship youth leadership and organizing program aimed at equipping young people with the tools to build grassroots power and advocate for systemic change. Krithika holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Irvine and a J.D. magna cum laude from Loyola Law School.