News · Board of advisers
Raman Venkatesh joins the Viridium AI board of advisers
Former Chief Sustainability Officer of Medtronic, Raman brings more than 25 years of leadership across materials technology, engineering standards and medical technology.
Biography
Raman Venkatesh joins the Viridium AI board of advisers after serving as Chief Sustainability Officer of Medtronic, a $36bn global medical technology company operating in over 100 countries. He brings more than 25 years of leadership across materials technology, engineering standards, medical technology and sustainable business growth, in North America, Europe and Asia.
At Medtronic he led the company’s enterprise-wide sustainability transformation, building it into core business strategy and product innovation. He led cross-functional teams across R&D, finance, legal, supply chain and regulatory, delivering a substantial reduction in carbon footprint alongside major savings from structural efficiencies. Under his leadership the company improved its standing in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, S&P Global and CDP rankings. He partnered with executive leadership and board committees to align sustainability goals with long-term shareholder value, and published thought leadership on balancing AI innovation and sustainability in healthcare.
Before Medtronic he was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of SAE International, the global engineering standards organisation for the mobility industry. He held full P&L responsibility for around 400 staff worldwide, many of them domain experts, and delivered double-digit revenue and margin growth through digital transformation and a deep innovation pipeline. He also chaired SAE Media Group, including Tech Briefs Media Group and SMi Group, and SAE Global LLC.
Raman began his career as a research engineer and spent 18 years in progressively senior roles across consumer products, materials technology and water and air purification. Along the way he secured complex regulatory approvals and led product and technology programmes.
Raman is a certified board director and was named a ‘Hero of Chemistry’ by the American Chemical Society. He was selected for developing the first cost-effective process to eliminate perchlorate and nitrate from drinking water and catalytically destroy them on-site. He is an advocate for responsible AI, judged by tangible return on investment and return on environment. Today he advises companies on strategy, growth and sustainable transformation, and mentors next-generation founders.
What he brings to Viridium AI customers
He has sat in your chair.
Raman has led sustainability for a $36bn manufacturer, working across R&D, regulatory, legal, finance and supply chain to deliver results the business could measure. Sustainability and compliance leaders will find a peer who knows the pressure of a new restriction, a disclosure deadline or an investor ranking. He will help Viridium AI customers turn material data into evidence those teams can act on and defend.
He knows regulatory-driven technology from the inside.
Few sectors feel a material change as sharply as medtech, where a substitution can reach well beyond engineering into regulated products and submissions. Raman’s years at Medtronic, and his earlier work securing complex regulatory approvals, give him a clear view of what medical device manufacturers need from material intelligence before they commit to a change.
Materials are where he started.
Raman began as a research engineer and spent years in materials technology, product development and regulatory approvals, recognised by the American Chemical Society as a ‘Hero of Chemistry’. That grounding keeps our roadmap anchored to the questions engineering and materials teams in medical device, industrial, automotive and aerospace manufacturing must answer about what their products are made of, and what they can use instead.