Nikita Kulkarni (she/her) is a City Planning student at MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning with a robust background in architecture and urban planning. Her interdisciplinary work spans various scales, deepening her understanding of climate action, environmental conservation, and justice. At the Resilient Communities Lab, Nikita explores the interactions between Community-Based Organizations and solar energy and contributes to the red paper for indigenous initiatives at MIT. Previously, she mentored at MIT's D-Lab, co-designing bamboo technologies for climate resilience in rural India. Currently, she is a Freedom Summer Fellow at Brooklyn Communities Collaborative and an intern at the World Bank's City Climate Finance Gap Fund, focusing on equitable renewable energy transitions both in the U.S. and globally.