Ryan Rakestraw is a director at Temasek, where he focuses on making venture capital investments in early-stage food and agriculture companies. Given the importance of innovation when it comes to feeding a growing global population, supporting better nutrition and increasing the sustainability of global agricultural production, Rakestraw seeks to back promising entrepreneurs and teams that can profitably address these needs with new technologies and business models.

Previously, Rakestraw was an early-stage investor with Monsanto Growth Ventures (MGV), Cultivation Capital, and the Yield Lab, the last of which he helped to found. Earlier in his career, Rakestraw was a systems engineer with Northrop Grumman, where he helped design and implement military platforms ranging from undersea to space applications.

Rakestraw received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins, and a master's degree in business administration from Washington University in St. Louis.