This Q&A is part of America: 250 Years Bold, a CNBC multiplatform series highlighting the leaders, institutions, and ideas that have shaped the United States over the past 250 years.
Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, president of The Rockefeller Foundation, leads one of the nation’s most influential philanthropic institutions. Founded in 1913, the organization has invested more than $26 billion worldwide to advance public health, expand access to opportunity and tackle global challenges at scale. In this conversation, Shah reflects on the foundation’s legacy — from pioneering breakthroughs in science and medicine to shaping modern philanthropy — and discusses how its mission continues to evolve to address inequality, strengthen resilience and expand economic opportunity in the United States and around the world.
Dr. Rajiv J. Shah: John D. Rockefeller Sr. was a titan. He built America during the Industrial Revolution, and helped, together with others, create the modern country we have. He was one of the pioneers who shaped that economic transformation that gave us railways and automobiles and gasoline and the power to go about improving our quality of life. In doing so he, of course, went from being someone who came from modest resources to the world’s wealthiest individual, and decided he would use that wealth to give back to society and help shape a future that was hopeful and optimistic, not just for the winners of that age, but for everybody.
