Rajiv Vinnakota, co-founder and managing director of the SEED Foundation, which opened the nation’s first urban boarding school for disadvantaged students, has been named chair of Princeton University’s Annual Giving Committee. Annual Giving provides unrestricted funds that are used to meet the University’s most important and pressing needs, including financial aid, faculty support, and library and computing resources.

“I am delighted that Raj Vinnakota will be leading our Annual Giving effort, said President Shirley M. Tilghman. “His energy and enthusiasm will serve to inspire our alumni volunteers, parents, and friends to continue their loyal and generous support.”

Vinnakota, a member of Princeton’s Class of 1993 and a former University Trustee, was named a Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian magazine and has received the Oprah Winfrey Show’s Use Your Life Award, among other honors. SEED opened its first school in Washington, D.C., in 1998 with a class of 40 seventh graders; the school now enrolls 320 students from grades seven through twelve. A second SEED School is set to open in Baltimore in 2008.

Prior to founding SEED, Vinnakota was an associate at Mercer Management Consulting, where he worked on strategic and financial projects in a variety of industries.

Vinnakota has been a dedicated Annual Giving volunteer, serving on his class’s 5th Reunion committee, as a leader of his class’s Annual Giving senior year campaign, and as a member of the Annual Giving Committee and the Woodrow Wilson School’s 75th Anniversary Committee. He succeeds Frederick G. Strobel ’74, who ended his three-year term as chair with a record-breaking campaign that raised $49 million for Princeton.

“I am looking forward to working with the volunteers and staff who make Annual Giving the envy of all other institutions. Frederick Strobel has been a wonderful chair, and I hope to be a worthy successor,” said Vinnakota.