Varun Sivaram

Dr. Varun Sivaram is Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Advisor to Aventurine Partners, rejoining Aventurine after serving 2 years in the Biden-Harris Administration as Managing Director for Clean Energy and Senior Advisor to Secretary John F. Kerry, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. Varun brings experience spanning the corporate, policy, and academic sectors, including as a C-suite executive at two publicly listed companies, as a senior U.S. diplomat, and as a physicist with expertise in clean energy technologies. He was formerly Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Ørsted, a Fortune Global 500 firm with the world’s largest offshore wind portfolio, and he served as Chief Technology Officer at ReNew Power, India’s largest producer of renewable energy. A widely published scientist and innovation scholar, Sivaram has served on the faculty of Columbia University and Georgetown University, and his books include “Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet,” “Energizing America: A Roadmap to Launch a National Energy Innovation Mission,” and “Digital Decarbonization: Promoting Digital Innovations to Advance Clean Energy Systems.” TIME Magazine named Sivaram to its TIME 100 Next list of the next hundred most influential people in the world, MIT Technology Review named him one of the top 35 innovators under 35, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader, and he serves on the board of the Atlantic Council. A Rhodes and Truman Scholar, he holds a PhD in condensed matter physics from Oxford University and undergraduate degrees from Stanford University. He lives in Washington, DC.