Cheistha was born in Bareilly on 10 Aug 1990 into an Armyfamily. She did her early schooling in Army schools at Srinagar, Mhow andBhatinda. She also attended Emerald Heights Public school, Indore and Conventof Jesus and Mary, New Delhi. She then did her undergraduate in Economics (Hons)from Venketashwara College, New Delhi. During her school years she was anactive participant in debating, painting and writing including poetry writing.Many of her creations were published in relevant sections of the newspapers.She also cleared Inter exam of JJ School of Arts while in class 9.

Her critical thinking and socially relevant entrepreneurial skills started coming to the fore. She was the co-founder of feed India and interned with CCS (Centre for Civil Society) where she researched and wrote on "Vigilanting the Vigilance" amongst others. She presented a paper at a conference at Harvard during this period.

She then joined the founding team of Aadhar and was given the first Aadhar number of the country because of her work in writing the process document as the youngest member of the team.

Although selected for a master’s in public policy at LSE with full scholarship, she stayed on in India and joined McKinsey as an analyst for a year and then YIF (Young India Fellowship) as a fully paid for fellow. Her compassion and ready to help attitude is still remembered in YIF. Post her demise the YIF have compiled a booklet containing her quotes while at YIF. Ever since her graduation from YIF, she has been a regular speaker for new YIF batches. Profoundly, in one of her speeches she said that her life principle was to create something that lasts much beyond she did.

She earned a PG diploma from University of Pennsylvania during this period. After YIF she concurrently worked in Planning commission and Ministry of HRD as a Senior Advisor and had occasion to rub shoulders with the who’s who in Government and the academia.

Thereafter she joined University of Chicago Centre in Delhi and was fascinated with subjects like Organizational Behaviour and Leadership. She founded the Anubhav Leadership series in the centre – it became a raving hit. It has now been renamed as Cheistha Kochhar Anubhav Series.

While at the centre, she convinced the Govt and UChicago to conduct courses at Chicago for mid-career bureaucrats – she did send a batch under this initiative with DOPT.

Cheistha then joined Harris School of U Chicago as a full time resident student in the MAIDP program at Chicago. She again was awarded a full scholarship having been granted the Harris Fellow, Clinton Fellow and TATA Memorial scholarship. Her interest in Organizational Behaviour and especially Nudge Theory took further flight here and she interacted not only with the Harris faculty but also with Nobel Laureates on the campus, building lifelong professional relationships. She was a TA in adjoining Booth School of management.

As part of her interest, she learnt and applied AI in her work and writings and also travelled to many neighbouring countries.

Covid struck and she came back to India and joined NITI Aayog as part of an embedded team from BMGF (Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation)as a senior consultant working directly in the CEOs office. She set up BIU (Behaviour Insight Unit) in NITI Aayog - the first in global south. She was the founder of the first Nudge Unit in the country and was very passionate on its application in India. She made many interventions in and worked passionately for the PMs favourite LIFE project and was deeply involved in organizing the mega event at Kevaria, Gujarat as also conducting a global high-level conference chaired by the PM attended by Heads of States, IMF, World Bank and many Nobel laureates. She had occasion to make a few presentations on these subjects to the PM.

She got married in Dec 2022. In Sep 2023, she joined LSE for a fully funded PhD programme under the Organisational Behaviour Department, focussing on Nudge Theory implementation. Her focus, of course, remained on India. Her penchant to learn and to work, propelled her to be assigned a TAs work within three months of joining, to be nominated to co-present at an international conference at Copenhagen in July 2024. She was also concurrently appointed as a senior consultant at UChicago to set up a Nudge Unit there with focus on India. She was informally advising BIT also on the same subject. She had now been recognised as one of the few experts in implementing Nudge Theory. As a matter of interest, she was co-authoring two books, one with Dr. Lourdes Sosa at LSE and another with Ranjan Daniels of UChicago.