Keller Rinaudo Cliffton

Keller Rinaudo Cliffton is an American robotics and autonomous airplane entrepreneur and the CEO and a co-founder of Zipline.[1][2]

Keller Rinaudo Cliffton
Keller beside Zipline's fifth generation drone
Alma materHarvard University
Occupations
  • CEO/Entrepreneur
  • rock climber
Spouse(s)Stephanie Nevins Cliffton, PhD

Zipline began drone deliveries in Rwanda in late 2016, and primarily delivers blood to urgent medical situations.[3]

He was also the CEO and a co-founder of Romotive, a former company established in 2011 with Kickstarter funding that made inexpensive small robots that use mobile phones as their computing system, machine vision system, and wireless communication system.[2] Romotive essentially shut down in 2014 and morphed into Zipline.[4] Rinaudo Cliffton presented a TED Talk about Romotive in April 2013 and another in November 2017 about Zipline.[2]

Education

Early education

Rinaudo Cliffton attended North High School in Phoenix Arizona, receiving an IB diploma and being named a National Merit Scholar.[5]

College and internships

Rinaudo Cliffton is a graduate of Harvard University,[1][6] where he was the founder of the Harvard climbing wall. The wall was initially founded by Rinaudo Cliffton with help from Harvard Business School student Karl R. R. Kuryla as a relatively primitive construction in Lowell House in 2006, and was later upgraded and reopened in the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center in 2017.[7][8][1]

While a student, Rinaudo Cliffton built computers out of RNA and DNA that he said could operate in human cells as "molecular doctors". He published this research in Nature Biotechnology, becoming one of the youngest first authors in that publication's history.[9]

Rinaudo Cliffton graduated from Harvard magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a 3.9 GPA and was designated a Harvard College Scholar for superior academic achievement both freshman and second years and also won the Detur Book Prize (top 5% of the class).[10]

While in his undergrad at Harvard, Rinaudo Cliffton spent several summers (2006–2008) working at the management consulting firm, Boston Consulting Group (BCG). He signed a full-time offer at BCG following his junior year internship to return to the firm following graduation (for fall of 2009). During his time at BCG, Rinaudo Cliffton "Conducted in-depth financial analysis of 140 competitors in the engineering construction industry and co-wrote new international strategy for a US company with $8B in revenue."[10]

MBA

In his senior year at Harvard, Rinaudo Cliffton was also admitted into Harvard Business School (HBS) for the class of 2013 - through the 2+2 program. However, Rinaudo Cliffton ultimately chose not to attend HBS due to the success of Romotive.

Early career

Following his graduation from Harvard, Rinaudo Cliffton spent 2.5 months at BCG in their San Francisco office before quitting to live out of his van and become a professional rock climber.[5]

Rinaudo Cliffton grew up rock climbing and quickly found professional success in the sport. As a professional rock climber he was ranked in the top 10 in sport climbing.[2] He has scaled alpine cliffs in France, overhanging sandstone caves in Kentucky[2] and the limestone towers of Yangshuo, China.[2][11][12]

Romotive

In 2011, Rinaudo Cliffton founded Romotive, an iPhone-controlled toy robot.[13] Rinaudo Cliffton sold the first version through Kickstarter.[13] Romotive morphed into Zipline in 2014 when Rinaudo Cliffton realized that the competition was not other toys but Minecraft and phone apps.[14] "If we’d compared ourselves to true competition-- competition for a 12-year-old's time-- this is not a battle that robotics was going to win."[14]

Zipline

Rinaudo Cliffton is the CEO and Co-founder of Zipline, the world's largest autonomous logistics company headquartered in South San Francisco, California. Zipline designs, builds, and operates drone aircraft as part of its instant logistics and delivery system used by businesses, governments, and consumers. The company operates distribution centers in Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Cote D'Ivoire, Japan and the USA. The company began drone deliveries in Rwanda in 2016 primarily delivering blood and medical products. In addition to whole blood, the drones deliver platelets, frozen plasma and cryoprecipitate.[15] As of September 2023, about 75% of blood deliveries in Rwanda outside of the capital city Kigali use Zipline drones.[16]

In Ghana, the company began using drones in April 2019 to deliver vaccines, blood, and drugs.[17]

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the US Federal Aviation Administration approved Zipline for the delivery of medical supplies and personal protective equipment to hospitals in North Carolina. The company also plans to offer deliveries to people's homes.[18]

Personal life

Keller is the son of William (Bill) Phillips and Debra Rinaudo. He is married to Stephanie Nevins Cliffton, PhD, who got her PhD at Stanford in Genetics/Genomics. Nevins Cliffton is the founder and CEO of a stealth startup. Keller and Stephanie have two daughters together.[19]

References
  1. "Keller Rinaudo". www.bloomberg.com. Retrieved November 4, 2018.
  2. Rinaudo Cliffton, Keller. "Keller Rinaudo". TED. Retrieved November 4, 2018.
  3. Rosen, Jonathan W. (June 8, 2017). "Zipline's Ambitious Medical Drone Delivery in Africa". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
  4. simplebotics (February 8, 2016). "Why Romotive shut down". Simplebotics. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
  5. Podcast, Flux (August 19, 2018). "16: Keller Rinaudo – Building the Sky Ambulance". Medium. Retrieved December 1, 2019.
  6. "Keller Rinaudo: Co-founder, Zipline". Forbes. Retrieved December 7, 2018.
  7. Tran, Melissa (October 18, 2006). "Hard as a Rock Wall". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved December 7, 2018.
  8. Burnes, Henry W.; Shimozaki, Kenton K. (September 28, 2017). "Expanded Climbing Wall Reopens at QRAC". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved December 7, 2018.
  9. Rinaudo, Keller; Bleris, Leonidas; Maddamsetti, Rohan; Subramanian, Sairam; Weiss, Ron; Benenson, Yaakov (2007). "A universal RNAi-based logic evaluator that operates in mammalian cells" (PDF). Nature Biotechnology. 25 (7): 795–801. doi:10.1038/nbt1307. PMID 17515909. S2CID 280451.
  10. Department of Construction Management & Civil Engineering
  11. "Yangshuo (Moon Hill)". Climbing Away. Retrieved November 4, 2018.
  12. Keller Rinaudo – China Climb 5.14b. Vimeo. Retrieved December 7, 2018.
  13. "Live from the Engadget CES Stage: an interview with Romotive's Keller Rinaudo (update: video embedded)". engadget. Retrieved January 16, 2020.
  14. ""People were questioning my sanity": The improbable comeback of Rinaudo Cliffton Rinaudo". Pando. Retrieved January 16, 2020.
  15. "Zipline (drone delivery)", Wikipedia, November 27, 2019, retrieved December 2, 2019
  16. "How drones are revolutionizing medical supply delivery network". September 29, 2023.
  17. Kelland, Kate (April 24, 2019). "Drones to deliver vaccines, blood and drugs across Ghana". Reuters. Retrieved May 21, 2019.
  18. "Drones deliver medical supplies and PPE in US". BBC News. May 27, 2020. Retrieved May 28, 2020.
  19. "Ep 1. Father of Keller Rinaudo (Entrepreneur): William Phillips Rinaudo – Fathering Excellence".
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