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Vivek Ramaswamy
Ramaswamy speaks at AmericaFest 2022
Born	(1985-08-09) August 9, 1985 (age 39) Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
Education	Harvard University (BA) Yale University (JD)
Occupations	Businessman author
Title	Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Strive Asset Management
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Apoorva Tewari
Children	2
Website	vivek2024.com

Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy (/vɪˈvɛk rɑːmɑːˈswɑːmiː/; born August 9, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, author, and and candidate in the 2024 United States presidential election. He is the author of Woke, Inc. (2021) and Nation of Victims (2022).

After working as an investment partner, Ramaswamy founded the biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences in 2014. Since 2020, he has written and spoken out against stakeholder capitalism, alleged Big Tech censorship, and critical race theory. After leaving Roivant in 2021, Ramaswamy co-founded Strive Asset Management, an investment firm opposed to the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) framework, for which he serves as executive chairman. On February 21, 2023, he announced his candidacy in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

Early life and education

Ramaswamy was born in 1985 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised there. His parents emigrated from Vadakkencherry, Palakkad, Kerala, India. His father graduated from the regional engineering college in Kerala and worked for General Electric as an engineer and patent attorney, while his mother graduated from Mysore Medical College and worked as a geriatric psychiatrist.

Ramaswamy graduated in 2003 from St. Xavier High School, a Jesuit high school in Cincinnati. He was his class valedictorian and a nationally ranked junior tennis player.

In 2007, Ramaswamy graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude with an A.B. in biology and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He wrote his senior thesis on the ethical questions raised by creating human-animal chimeras. A precis of his thesis was published in The New York Times and The Boston Globe in 2007. In 2011, Ramaswamy was awarded a post-graduate fellowship by the The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. In 2013, he received a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Business career

In 2007, Ramaswamy and Travis May co-founded Campus Venture Network, a technology company that provided software and networking resources to university entrepreneurs. The company was acquired in 2009 by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. From 2007 to 2014, Ramaswamy worked at QVT Financial, where he was a partner and co-managed the firm's biotech portfolio while simultaneously attending Yale Law School from 2010 to 2013.

Roivant Sciences

In 2014, Ramaswamy founded the pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences, which focuses on applying technology to drug development, serving as CEO until 2021. He appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine in 2015 for his work in drug development. The story was about Ramaswamy raising $360 million for the Roivant subsidiary Axovant Sciences in an attempt to save an Alzheimer's drug that had failed at GlaxoSmith Kline. In 2017, the drug also failed at Axovant, and as of June 2018, Axovant had a market value of $276 million

In 2020, Ramaswamy co-founded Chapter Medicare, a Medicare navigation platform.

In early 2021, Ramaswamy stepped down as CEO of Roivant Sciences.

Strive Asset Management

Ramaswamy is the co-founder and executive chairman of Strive Asset Management, an Ohio-based asset management firm that was backed financially by Peter Thiel and J. D. Vance, among others. Strive was established to offer an alternative to larger asset managers like BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, which Ramaswamy has criticized for engaging in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activities, and mixing business with politics to the alleged detriment of shareholders.

Strive's total assets under management surpassed $500 million on November 11, 2022, three months after its first fund launched. In January 2023, Strive launched a proxy advisory service to compete with such mainstream firms as Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services. Axios and Bloomberg have called Ramaswamy "the leading anti-ESG crusader."

Political involvement

Ramaswamy has proposed repealing a law that forces presidents to spend all the money Congress appropriates. He rejects the diversity, equity, and inclusion and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movements. Ramaswamy, whose family are members of the Brahmin caste, has argued that American-style capitalism provides an antidote to India's caste system by offering lower-caste citizens more economic opportunities. In 2022, he considered a candidacy in the 2022 United States Senate election in Ohio.

2024 United States presidential election

On February 21, 2023, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for president of the United States in the 2024 election on Tucker Carlson Tonight. According to Politico, he was inspired by Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to run "with an entrepreneurial spirit, unorthodox ideas, and few expectations, and end up developing a major following that will carry him to the presidency".

Published works

• — (August 17, 2021). Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam. New York, NY: Center Street. ISBN 978-1-5460-9078-6. OCLC 1237631944.

Woke, Inc. debuted at No. 2 in the 'Hardcover Nonfiction' section of the New York Times Best Sellers list on September 5, 2021. Ramaswamy calls environmental, social, and corporate governance investing the most serious threat to American democracy.

Reviewers cited Ramaswamy's "spot-on analyses of corrosive corporate duplicity" while also criticizing his conclusions, saying they "arrive filtered through a Fox News funhouse mirror". They further said that he made "important points about the misguided nature of ESG investing the folly of attempting to inject politics into business," while highlighting that Ramaswamy's discussion of what he considers woke-motivated firings fails to "make a case that these are representative of widespread employment trends". Russell Greene, writing on Real Clear Markets, applauded the book's timeliness and wrote, "the problems Ramaswamy describes are real and likely to get worse", while also arguing that Ramaswamy did "not permit his ample experience to inform his theory", leading him to present "a vision for business that overlooks how corporations, and corporate law, actually work." Joe Berkowitz, in Fast Company, observed that Ramaswamy "often seems more concerned with so-called wokeness itself than with woke corporations." The book significantly raised Ramaswamy's profile, leading to frequent talk show appearances, especially on Fox News.

• — (September 13, 2022). Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence. New York, NY: Center Street. ISBN 978-1-5460-0296-3. OCLC 1546002960.

In Nation of Victims, Ramaswamy critiques what he sees as the victimhood culture at the heart of America's decline. Using examples from history and incorporating themes from Western philosophy and Eastern theology, he suggests that the disappearance of excellence and exceptionalism, which he identifies as at the heart of American identity, has left a deep moral and cultural vacuum in the nation. In his review for The Wall Street Journal, Tunku Varadarajan wrote that Nation of Victims makes a "passionate, persuasive case" for "closing off victimhood as a path to success." Comparing it to the work of Shelby Steele and John McWhorter’s Woke Racism, Varadarajan wrote:

Nation of Victims—always vigorous, in places uncompromising—offers a surprisingly wistful, even docile, solution to America’s problem of victimhood. We’re locked in a "grievance-fueled race to the bottom," where the very language we use—including basic words like "woman" and "equality"—have paralyzed dialogue across partisan lines. How do we emerge from this civic hell of mutual incomprehension? Mr. Ramaswamy's answer is that we must "find a way to forgive each other instead of trying to win at the game of playing the victim." That sounds like a very fine idea.

Personal life

Ramaswamy met his wife, Apoorva, an assistant professor and clinician at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, when they lived near each other at Yale University, where they were studying law and medicine, respectively. They have two sons. Ramaswamy is a Hindu.

In 2016, Forbes estimated Ramaswamy's net worth at $600 million, and listed his residence as New York City.

References

1. ^ Kolhatkar, Sheelah (December 12, 2022). "The C.E.O. of Anti-Woke, Inc". The New Yorker. Retrieved February 21, 2023.
2. "A Look At the Race for Portmans Senate Seat". Cincinnati Business Courier. American City Business Journals. Retrieved October 28, 2021.
3. Satish, A (February 24, 2023). "Palakkad roots that helped shape a US presidential hopeful". The New Indian Express. Retrieved March 2, 2023.
4. Phandis, Shilpa (August 11, 2017). "Indian-origin biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswarmy raises $1.1 billion". The Times of India. Retrieved March 25, 2023.
5. Schulte, Becky (July 25, 2015). "July 2015". St. Xavier High School E-news (Mailing list). St. Xavier High School. Retrieved July 26, 2015.
6. "Vivek Ramaswamy, 'Woke, Inc.' author, St. Xavier grad, enters Republican presidential race". The Cincinnati Enquirer. Associated Press. February 22, 2023. Retrieved March 25, 2023. Ramaswamy is a native of Butler County and a graduate of St. Xavier High School in Finneytown.
7. "Vivek Ramaswamy, 2011". The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
8. ^ Vardi, Nathan (September 27, 2015). "The 30-Year-Old CEO Conjuring Drug Companies From Thin Air". Forbes. Retrieved March 25, 2023.
9. Lynch, Brendan (March 20, 2008). "Harvard Student Alum Launch Social Biz Site". Boston Business Journal. American City Business Journals. Retrieved November 18, 2021.
10. "Campus Venture Nework Overview". PitchBook. Retrieved February 8, 2023.
11. Vardi, Nathan (June 11, 2015). "The 29 Year Old Behind The Giant Biotech IPO That Rose By 90% Speaks". Forbes. Retrieved March 25, 2023.
12. ^ "Roivant Sciences founder to step down as CEO". Reuters. January 25, 2021. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
13. ^ Herper, Matthew; Vardi, Nathan (September 28, 2015). "Boy in the Bubble". Forbes. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
14. Herper, Matthew (July 9, 2018). "Vivek Ramaswamy's Enzyvant Asks FDA To Approve Treatment For Dying Babies". Forbes. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
15. "Chapter Announces $17 Million Series A Round, led by Narya Capital and Peter Thiel with participation from existing investors". bloomberg.com. Bloomberg L.P. Retrieved August 17, 2022.
16. O'Donnell, Kathie (May 12, 2022). "Manager backed by Thiel, Ackman to launch ETFs emphasizing excellence over politics". Pensions & Investments. Retrieved July 25, 2022.
17. ^ Wolman, Jordan (February 1, 2023). "The asset manager fighting ESG orthodoxy". Politico. Retrieved February 9, 2023.
18. Chandler, Beverly (November 16, 2022). "The US's Strive Asset Management raises half a billion in AUM in three months". ETF Express. Retrieved February 3, 2023.
19. Holzman, Jael; Freedman, Andrew (February 3, 2023). "The right's anti-ESG crusader". Axios. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
20. Brush, Silla, Kishan, Saijel (September 1, 2022). "The Anti-ESG Crusader Who Wants to Pick a Fight With BlackRock". Bloomberg News. Retrieved February 10, 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
21. IBJ, Curt Smith / Special to. "Curt Smith: Vivek Ramaswamy is a rising conservative star". Indianapolis Business Journal. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
22. Ramaswamy, Vivek (August 5, 2020). "Antitrust Can't Bust a Monopoly of Ideas". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 17, 2023.
23. Creitz, Charles (July 13, 2021). "Ramaswamy: 'Secular religion' of critical race theory now taught in schools violates Civil Rights Act of 64". Fox News. Retrieved July 16, 2021.
24. ^ Lippman, Daniel (February 13, 2023). "The 'CEO of Anti-Woke Inc.' Has His Eye on the Presidency". Politico. Retrieved February 21, 2023.
25. "A Wealthy 'Anti-Woke' Activist Joins the 2024 Presidential Field". New York Times. February 22, 2023. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
26. "Hardcover Nonfiction". New York Times. September 5, 2021. Retrieved February 3, 2023.
27. "This former tech CEO takes down woke capitalism but misses the point on wokeness". fastcompany.com. August 25, 2021. Retrieved February 4, 2023.
28. "Review of Vivek Ramaswamy's Woke, Inc". cei.org. Retrieved February 4, 2023.
29. Greene, Russell (September 21, 2021). "Vivek Ramaswamy's Disappointing 'Woke, Inc.'". RealClearMarkets. Retrieved February 9, 2023.
30. Berkowitz, Joe (August 25, 2021). "This former tech CEO takes down woke capitalism but misses the point on wokeness". fastcompany.com. Retrieved February 4, 2023.
31. Sewell, Dan (January 17, 2023). "Anti-woke crusader mulls political future". cincinnati.com. Retrieved February 9, 2023.
32. Varadarajan, Tunku (September 23, 2022). "'Nation of Victims' Review: The Blame Game". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 13, 2023.
33. "Apoorva T Ramaswamy, MD". cancer.osu.edu. Ohio State University. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
34. Zito, Salena (February 21, 2023). "Vivek Ramaswamy runs for president: 'Unapologetic pursuit of excellence in this country'". Washington Examiner. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
35. Ramaswamy, Vivek (March 23, 2021). "The Pluralism Within". Fort Bend Independent. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
36. "Profile - Vivek Ramaswamy". Forbes. December 12, 2016. Retrieved February 23, 2023.

External links

• Official website
• Appearances on C-SPAN

• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• "The chimera question" a precise of Ramaswamy's Harvard University senior thesis

• 1985 births
• Living people
• Businesspeople from Cincinnati
• Harvard University alumni
• Yale Law School alumni
• American company founders
• Chief executives in the pharmaceutical industry
• St. Xavier High School (Ohio) alumni
• 21st-century American businesspeople
• American people of Malayali descent
• American male writers of Indian descent
• Asian conservatism in the United States
• American Hindus
• New York (state) Republicans
• Candidates in the 2024 United States presidential election