Jitinder Kohli

Senior Fellow

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Jitinder Kohli joined the Center for American Progress in November 2009 as a Senior Fellow. His work at the Center focuses on government efficiency, regulatory reform, and economic issues.

Prior to joining CAP, Kohli spent 15 years in the British government. Most recently, he served as the director general of strategy and communications for the British Department for Business, Innovation and Skills where he worked on the merger of two government departments to build a new agency. Between 2005 and 2009, he was the first chief executive of the Better Regulation Executive where he was responsible for regulatory reform for the United Kingdom and building a new organization charged with regulatory oversight. He also led a major program to reduce the administrative burden of regulation by 25 percent over five years, and to change the culture of regulators so that they focused efforts on the areas of greatest risk. Under his leadership the Better Regulation Executive came to be seen as one of the strongest regulatory reform organizations globally.

Previously, Kohli was head of productivity and structural reform in Her Majesty’s Treasury, where he lead major reforms of the United Kingdom’s microeconomic framework to improve underlying productivity performance. His areas of focus there included skills, housing, regulatory policy, small firm finance, competition law, and immigration. And he has worked on social policy, leading the British Government Directorate responsible for the relationship with the nonprofit sector and setting up a new unit responsible for improving community cohesion after major disturbances in three Northern English towns in 2001. He has also worked in the British Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and the Cabinet Secretariat.

Kohli has played an active role in the nonprofit sector. Prior to moving to Washington, he was chair of the EPIC Trust, a leading provider of social care services across Southern England, and on the Board of Circle Anglia Housing Group, one of the largest subsidized housing providers in the United Kingdom. He also served as a trustee of the Adventure Capital Fund which administers loan and grant financing to nonprofit organizations.

Jitinder has degrees from Oxford University and Southampton University. He recently graduated from the Advanced Management Program at the Wharton School.