Vivek Ramaswamy

Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy ( ; born August 9, 1985) is an American entrepreneur and politician.

Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy was born on August 9, 1985, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Indian Hindu immigrant parents.

His parents are Tamil-speaking Brahmins from Kerala.

His father, V. Ganapathy Ramaswamy, a graduate of the National Institute of Technology Calicut, worked as an engineer and patent attorney for General Electric, while his mother, Geetha Ramaswamy, a graduate of the Mysore Medical College & Research Institute, worked as a geriatric psychiatrist.

His parents immigrated from Palakkad district in Kerala, where the family had an ancestral home in a traditional agraharam in the town of Vadakkencherry.

Ramaswamy was raised in Ohio.

Growing up, Ramaswamy often attended the local Hindu temple in Dayton with his family.

His conservative Christian piano teacher, who gave him private lessons from elementary through high school, also influenced his social views.

He spent many summer vacations traveling to India with his parents.

In high school, Ramaswamy was a nationally ranked tennis player.

Ramaswamy attended public schools through eighth grade.

He then attended Cincinnati's St. Xavier High School, a Catholic school affiliated with the Jesuit order, graduating as valedictorian in 2003.

In 2007, Ramaswamy graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in biology, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

At Harvard, he gained a reputation as a brash and confident libertarian.

He was a member of the Harvard Political Union, becoming its president.

He told The Harvard Crimson that he considered himself a contrarian who loved to debate.

While in college, he performed Eminem covers and libertarian-themed rap music under the stage name and alter ego "Da Vek", and was an intern for the hedge fund Amaranth Advisors and the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

He wrote his senior thesis on the ethical questions raised by creating human-animal chimeras and earned a Bowdoin Prize.

In 2007, Ramaswamy and Travis May co-founded Campus Venture Network, which published a private social networking website for university students who aspired to launch a business.

Ramaswamy worked at the hedge fund QVT Financial from 2007 to 2014.

He was a partner and co-managed the firm's biotech portfolio.

QVT's biotech investments under Ramaswamy included stakes in Palatin Technologies, Concert Pharmaceuticals, Pharmasset, and Martin Shkreli's Retrophin.

In a 2023 speech and in his book Woke Inc., Ramaswamy called Shkreli, whose company had greatly increased the cost of a life-saving drug, both "brilliant" and a pathological liar.

He criticized the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecuting Shkreli, calling his fraud a victimless crime.

The company was sold to the nonprofit Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in 2009.

In 2011, Ramaswamy was awarded a post-graduate fellowship by the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which he used to attend Yale Law School.

Later, Ramaswamy said that by the time he attended Yale, he was already wealthy from his activities in the finance, pharmaceutical, and biotech industries; he said in 2023 that he had a net worth of around $15 million before graduating from law school.

At Yale he befriended fellow Ohio native and future U.S. Senator J. D. Vance.

He earned a Juris Doctor in 2013.

In a 2023 interview, Ramaswamy said that he was a member of the campus Jewish intellectual discussion society Shabtai while a law student.

He founded Roivant Sciences, a pharmaceutical company, in 2014.

In February 2023, Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 United States presidential election.

He suspended his campaign in January 2024, after finishing fourth in Iowa's caucuses.

Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati to Indian immigrant parents.

He graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in biology and later earned a law degree from Yale Law School.

Ramaswamy worked as an investment partner at a hedge fund before founding Roivant Sciences.

He also co-founded an investment firm, Strive Asset Management.

Ramaswamy claims the United States is in the middle of a national identity crisis precipitated by what he calls "new secular religions like COVID-ism, climate-ism, and gender ideology".

He is also a critic of environmental, social, and corporate governance initiatives (ESG).

In January 2024, Forbes estimated Ramaswamy's net worth at more than $960 million; his wealth comes from biotech and financial businesses.