Raj Gupta was born in a small village in Uttar Pradesh, India. As a 22-year-old in Spring 1968, he came to the United States with only $8 in his pocket to do graduate studies in Operations Research/Computer Science at Cornell. He built a 39-year career at the global Fortune 500 specialty materials company Rohm and Haas, where he retired as Chairman and CEO in April 2009.
Over his career, he has served as a director at 15 public companies across a wide range of industries, including Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Arconic/Howmet, Delphi/Aptiv, Airgas, Tyco, and Avantor. He also held long-term Board Chair positions at Delphi/Aptiv (7 years) and Avantor (12 years), both Fortune 500 companies. In addition, he has served on the boards of six private companies, including Vanguard Group, IRI, StrozFriedberg, and Aceto. Raj received a BTech(Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from IITBombay in 1967, followed by an MS in Operations Research/Computer Science from Cornell in 1969 and an MBA in Finance in 1971 from Drexel University.
After retiring from Rohm and Haas Company, Raj and his wife Kamla established their family’s Ujala Foundation (which means “light” in Hindi), focusing on education and healthcare, equally directed to India and the U.S. Since its inception, the Ujala Foundation has contributed towards an endowed professorship at Hopkins, initial funding for the Drexel University Gupta Governance Institute, fellowships at Drexel’s Business School and Cornell University’s School of Biomedical Engineering, and other causes, including Raj’s alma mater IITBombay, and several civic and cultural organizations in India, such as Pratham and AIF, and the United States, such as the Philadelphia Zoo, Philadelphia Art Museum, and the Franklin Institute.
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