Ramya Swaminathan

Ramya Swaminathan led the spin-out of Malta from X, Alphabet's Moonshot Factory (formerly Google X) in 2018 and has been the company’s CEO since its founding. She has led Malta through multiple rounds of corporate venture funding and has recruited a multi-disciplinary team focused on commercializing Malta’s thermal storage technology. She currently serves as a US Department of Energy Clean Energy Education and Empowerment (C3E) Ambassador and was appointed by the US Secretary of Commerce to the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Committee (REEAC) to advise the Commerce Department on US competitiveness in these sectors. She was also named a Business Insider’s 2020 list of 21 Rising Stars in clean energy.

Before founding Malta as an independent company, Ramya was the CEO of Rye Development, a hydropower development firm that she grew to be the leading developer of new hydropower projects in the United States. She was responsible for the expansion of Rye’s platform into energy storage, with the addition of two sizable pumped storage hydro development projects in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Prior to her work in the hydropower space, she was a public finance banker, most recently as a Director at UBS where she focused on public power clients and senior managed more than $10 billion in financings. She holds a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government and a BA in Anthropology from Amherst College.