The 43-year-old, Indian-American, Rajiv Shah, who has headed the US government’s foreign aid operations, is appointed as the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, a multi-billion dollar private global charity with programs in India. The New York-based Foundation had said that its trustees had selected Shah, who is a medical doctor and was the administrator of USAID, to be its next president. He will take over from Judith Rodin in March.
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He will be the youngest person and the first Indian-American to lead the organisation, which has a huge $75 million project to bring electric power to Indian villages.
“I look forward to charting a course for The Rockefeller Foundation to engage with partners to promote the well-being of humanity and to take on the challenges of today and tomorrow both in the United States and around the world,” Shah said.
Shah’s appointment came after a day of another Indian American with the same surname and a similar first name, Raj Shah, has been appointed by the President-elect Donald Trump to be his deputy assistant and research director.
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While Announcing the appointment, the Foundation had said that Rajiv Shah “is best known for elevating international development in foreign policy, delivering results through public-private partnerships and the respect he earned working with counterpart governments from Afghanistan to Central America and with bipartisan leaders in the US Congress”.
Rajiv Shah was born in the US and had his education from US and Britain. Shah, as a medical student, had volunteered in a poor community in India. He has a medical degree and a masters in health economics from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. He was the chief of the USAID from 2010 to 2015.
By Premji
