Rajiv J. Shah appointed President of Rockefeller Foundation

Ahmedabad: Rajiv J. Shah, a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation who until recently had been the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development on Thursday was appointed the president of Rockefeller Foundation, one of the country’s largest and most influential philanthropies, succeeding Judith Rodin, who has been president for 12 years.

Richard Parsons, the chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation board, said Mr. Shah was the unanimous choice of the search committee after a competitive process that considered hundreds of candidates.

Shah with advanced degrees in medicine and health finance from the University of Pennsylvania at 43 will be the youngest person and the first Indian-American to lead the Rockefeller Foundation which has capacity to spend $200 million a year. Shah worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for nearly a decade, rising to be director for agricultural development. From 2009 to 2015, he ran U.S.A.I.D., leading the response to disasters including the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. After leaving the agency, he founded Latitude Capital, a private equity firm focused on emerging markets.

Founded in 1913 by the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the foundation says it has given away the equivalent of more than $17 billion in today’s dollars. Its first grant was to the American Red Cross, and it went on to play pivotal roles in establishing the field of public health, creating vaccines for yellow fever and malaria, and bringing agricultural advances to the developing world.