Anita Kumar serves as senior managing editor of POLITICO, helping direct and edit overall coverage each day and oversee key reporting teams, including the White House, Congress, politics, defense, national security and legal.

She also has served as POLITICO’s first-ever standards editor since 2021, working across the newsroom to produce ambitious journalism from inception to publication with a focus on accuracy, fairness, clarity and nonpartisanship.

In addition, she guides journalists through ethical dilemmas, develops policies about standards and style, runs newsroom training and oversees the production and copyediting and diversity and culture teams.

A longtime reporter, Kumar covered the White House for nine years, reporting on Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Barack Obama at POLITICO and, before that, for McClatchy’s chain of newspapers.

She joined POLITICO as White House correspondent and associate editor in 2019, helping organize and guide coverage for the White House team and serving as an in-house expert on the institution of the presidency. She reported on Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020, Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016 and Obama's reelection campaign in 2012.

Prior to that, she worked at The Washington Post, writing about Virginia politics, and The Tampa Bay Times, writing about local, state and federal government both in Florida and Washington. She started her career at The News & Advance in Lynchburg, Va., and worked briefly at The News & Record in Greensboro, N.C.

Kumar serves on the Poynter Institute’s National Advisory Board and the National Press Club Journalism Institute Board. She has served on the boards of the White House Correspondents' Association, the Regional Reporters Association and the Virginia Capitol Correspondents Association.

A native Virginian, Kumar grew up in Charlottesville and attended the University of Virginia, where she was managing editor of the Cavalier Daily.