Rajkumar Chellaraj

Raj Chellaraj is the CFO and Senior Associate Dean for Finance and Administration, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. Concurrently, he was also the Chief Operating Officer at the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (Stanford Seed) with primary focus in Africa and India from 2015 to 2017. He is the former Assistant Secretary of State for Administration at the United States Department of State from 2006 to 2009 under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Currently, he serves on the Board of Wellbore Integrity Solutions, a global oilfield services provider, a portfolio company of private equity firm Rhône Group. In addition, he is an advisor and consultant to United Nations (UNICEF) leadership in operations and management. Previously, he served on the board of GardaWorld from 2017–19, a company that provides protective services around the world, aviation services in Canada, and cash in transit and vaults in North America. From 2015 to 2018, he also served as Chairman of the Board of RhythmOne, a publicly-traded digital advertising company.

Background

Early in his career, Chellaraj worked at Strategic Analysis Incorporated, a consulting firm based in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. He later worked at Exxon Corporation where he was Fuels Manager for industrial fuels in Singapore and marketed jet fuel in Asia and Australia. When Exxon Corporation re-entered India, he served as general manager.

During the George H. W. Bush administration, Chellaraj joined the United States Environmental Protection Agency as Program Advisor and then served at the United States Agency for International Development as counselor to the Assistant Administrator for Asia. In 2001, Chellaraj joined the United States Mint as senior executive officer; at the US Mint, he served as the chief information officer and was also responsible for supply chain, logistics and manufacturing operations at the West Point Mint, the Philadelphia Mint, the Denver Mint, and the San Francisco Mint. He returned to the private industry when Blackstone Group acquired Celanese Corporation and became director of corporate planning in 2005.

President of the United States George W. Bush nominated Chellaraj as Assistant Secretary of State for Administration on 24 January 2006, succeeding William A. Eaton. He was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on 26 May 2006, and served in this position till 20 January 2009. After leaving the US Government, he worked as vice president of planning for Hostess Brands, a turnaround consumer food products company, responsible for supply-chain finance, forecasting and planning.

He received a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, formerly Madras University where he graduated first in his class and also received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2013. He then immigrated to the United States and studied at Clarkson University, receiving a master's degree in chemical engineering. He later attended New York University receiving an M.B.A. and then the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, receiving an M.P.A. He attended the London Business School, International Management Exchange Program and studied French at the Sorbonne in Paris.