Kat Murti

Background

About Kat Murti

Kat Murti is a libertarian, feminist, and activist, dedicated to making the world a better, freer place, one day at a time. She joined Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), the largest national network of young people working to end the War on Drugs, at the University of California at Berkeley in 2009. After serving in several different roles, including eleven years as an appointed director on SSDP's youth-led Board of Directors, she became executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy in 2023. 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. She is also one of the founding members of the Ladies of Liberty Alliance (LOLA), an international network of libertarian women, and served as the D.C. chapter leader for over a decade. Kat first became involved with drug policy in 2007 when she joined the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of NORML. She served as Field Director of the Proposition 19 campaign to legalize adult use cannabis in California in 2010 (she appears extensively in the award-winning film American Pot Story: Oaksterdam), and has worked at the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, and, briefly, in cannabis business law. Kat is a former journalist—one highlight includes a special project working in conjunction with Wikileaks at The Hindu, India's largest English-language newspaper at the time—who went on to manage digital communications strategy at the Mercatus Center and the Cato Institute. Kat has earned many awards over the course of her career, including being recognized as one of the Red Alert Politics 30 Under 30 in 2018 and one of the 40 under 40 Outstanding BIPOC Leaders in Drug Policy in 2021. She received SSDP's Randy Hencken Saving Our Asses Award in 2018, and has been named an SSDP All-­Star Alum in December 2010, SSDP Spotlighted Alum in January 2012, an A. Kathryn Parker Outstanding Alumnus in Service to SSDP in March 2016, and LOLA of the Month in May 2016 and August 2020. She is an alumni of the Koch Internship Program, Koch Associate Program, and the Koch Summer Fellowship Program. 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.