Venture Capitalist Ramanan Raghavendran Will Lead University of Pennsylvania’s Board of Trustees

A venture capitalist has been tapped to lead University of Pennsylvania‘s board of trustees.

Last Thursday, the university said that Ramanan Raghavendran, who had been a member of the board since 2014, would take over as chair. His appointment comes during a challenging period for the university, which has been caught up in national debates over the war in Gaza and free speech on campus.

The previous board chair, Scott Bok, stepped down in December, at the same time university president M. Elizabeth Magill resigned her position. Magill came under fire for Congressional testimony in which critics say she failed to sufficiently condemn antisemitism on campus.

The departures come at a time when hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and other business leaders have become increasingly critical of the leadership of elite universities and policies that promote diversity and inclusion. Ackman was one of the most vocal critics of former Harvard president Claudine Gay, who stepped down this month amid criticism of her testimony in Congress and accusations of plagiarism in her academic work. Ackman has suggested that more business leaders should hold leadership positions at top American universities.

In 2012, Ragahavendran co-founded Amasia, a San Francisco- and Singapore-based venture capital firm focused on sustainability. Its investments include 2021 and 2022 Best in Business honoree Dialpad and the sports news website The Athletic, which was later sold to The New York Times.

“I believe great American universities, like the University of Pennsylvania, are the most important repositories of all that defines, and is good and laudable about, our modern civilization,” Raghavendran said in a statement on the university’s website.

Ragahavendran holds three degrees from Penn, including a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wharton, the university’s business school.

Penn counts many well-known entrepreneurs among its graduates, including designer Tory Burch, former president Donald Trump, SpaceX founder Elon Musk, and Zynga founder Mark Pincus. The founders of eyeglasses startup Warby Parker met at Wharton, and by the late 2010s the school had become known for incubating direct-to-consumer brands such as Hims and Lola.