Kavita Wankhade works at the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS), a national education institution committed to the equitable, sustainable, and efficient transformation of Indian settlements. IIHS work spans across urban sectors including housing, land, water and sanitation, economic development and climate change.

She currently leads the water and sanitation portfolio at IIHS. The key programmes under this include the Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (TNUSSP) which is supporting the Government of Tamil Nadu to scale up FSM across the 664 urban local bodies of the state and City Wide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) programme at Trichy, focussing on FSM and inclusive sanitation service delivery for all.

With training in urban design and planning, she has worked in multiple cities in India, with a focus on service delivery. She is a strong advocate of inclusive planning with a focus on sanitation workers & women in sanitation. She has an overarching endeavour to be interdisciplinary, contextual, and systemic in her practice work, and in bridging practice-research divide.