Vijaya Ramachandran is the Director for Energy and Development at the Breakthrough Institute. She writes about access to energy and energy finance in poor countries. She has three decades of experience in public policy and academia, serving on the faculty of Duke University and Georgetown University, as well as working at the World Bank, the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, and the Center for Global Development. Vijaya serves on the board of the Energy for Growth Hub and Precision Development and is a member of the expert advisory panel for The Earthshot Prize. Her work is published in Foreign Policy, Nature, and World Development, and is cited by over fifty media outlets including The Economist, The Financial Times, and The New York Times. Vijaya holds a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University.