Rajeev Venkayya serves as President of the Global Vaccine Business Unit, Takeda. He joined Takeda in 2012 to launch the global vaccine business, building upon a longstanding business in Japan. Since then, he has formed a global organization and established a high-impact vaccine pipeline that includes promising late-stage candidates for dengue and norovirus, gained through the acquisitions of LigoCyte and Inviragen.

Prior to Takeda, Rajeev served as Director of Vaccine Delivery in the Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he was responsible for the Foundation’s efforts in polio eradication and new vaccine introduction, and a grant portfolio of $500M/year. While at the foundation, he served on the Board of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).

Rajeev was previously the Special Assistant to the President for Biodefense at the White House. In this capacity, he oversaw U.S. preparedness for bioterrorism and biological threats, and was responsible for the development and implementation of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. He first came to Washington though the non-partisan White House Fellowship program in 2002.

Rajeev was trained in pulmonary and critical care medicine and served as an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He also served as co-director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit and Director of the High-Risk Asthma Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital.

Rajeev was a resident and Chief Medical Resident in internal medicine at the University of Michigan. He completed his undergraduate and medical school education in the BS/MD program at the Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine, where he was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha honorary medical society.