[1] She is a media contributor for national and international news outlets, a MacArthur Fellow, a TED speaker, and a Presidential Leadership Scholar.

After meeting fellow lawyer Tahir Amin at a protest about HIV drug prices in Bangalore, Krishtel and Amin co-founded the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge to use their legal background to expose inequities in the patent system to increase access to affordable, life-saving medications for people around the world.

[1][3] In 2018, Krishtel stated that public enthusiasm for intellectual property rights reform is at an all-time high due to concerns around the rising costs of prescription drugs.

[9] Responding to criticism of the technology transfer argument in which it was said that local manufacturing of vaccines increased safety risks, she told CBS News that such defenses of the status quo were patronizing and racist assumptions grounded in the false perspective that low-income countries lacked manufacturing capacity and a safety regulatory framework.

"[11] In 2021, Krishtel joined the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives at a press conference and noted the importance of addressing patent and other anti-competitive abuses as part of the response to lowering healthcare costs during a legislative effort on drug pricing.