Vidya Vasu-Devan

Vidya received an MBA and a certificate in public management and social innovation from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She also holds a BA in astrophysics with concentrations in mathematics and economics from Columbia University. She lives in Seattle with her husband and her two young sons and enjoys reading, running, cooking and playing tennis.

Vidya leads the Gates Foundation’s $2.5bn Strategic Investment Fund (“SIF”) and chairs the SIF Investment Committee. Since 2012, Vidya has worked across sectors and geographies to source, structure, and manage venture capital, debt, and guarantee investments. SIF supports entrepreneurs and companies that have a critical role to play in achieving the foundation’s ambitious goals in global health and poverty alleviation and U.S. education and economic mobility. Vidya leads SIF’s investment efforts in the vaccines/biologics sector and has led and worked on investments in Achaogen (AKAO), AgBiome, Arsanis (ASNS), Biological E, BioNTech (BNTX), Charter School Growth Fund, Civic Builders, Curevac (CVAC), Just Biotherapeutics (acq. by Evotec), M-KOPA, Merck, and Sanofi.

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Prior to joining the foundation, Vidya was an investment professional in the public markets proprietary hedge fund of Goldman Sachs (GSPS) where she led the healthcare portfolio and also invested in financial institutions. Prior to that, Vidya worked in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, advising and executing on innovative structured finance transactions for financial institution clients.

Vidya is serving her fellowship at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under the mentorship of Andrew Farnum (CEO, Variant Bio). She is a member of Class 24.