Dr. Rajiv J. Shah serves as president of The Rockefeller Foundation, a philanthropy whose mission is to promote the well-being of people around the world.
Prior to joining the foundation, Dr. Shah was founder and managing partner of Latitude Capital, a private equity firm focused on infrastructure and energy projects in Africa and Asia. From 2009 to 2015, Dr. Shah served as head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In that role, he served on the National Security Council, led the U.S. responses to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2014 West Africa Ebola pandemic, and secured bipartisan support for the Global Food Security Act and the Electrify Africa Act. Before joining USAID, Dr. Shah served as chief scientist and undersecretary for research, education, and economics at the United States Department of Agriculture, where he created the National Institute for Food and Agriculture. Earlier in his career, Dr. Shah was a director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he created the International Financing Facility for Immunization.
In October 2023, Dr. Shah published “Big Bets: How Large-Scale Change Really Happens,” a book about a new model for realizing transformative change, inspired by his own work and that of The Rockefeller Foundation.
Dr. Shah is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and the Wharton School of Business. He served as a distinguished fellow in residence at Georgetown University and has received the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award and the U.S. Global Leadership Award.
