A common impediment to qubit performance is imperfect state initialization. In the case of the diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center, the initialization fidelity is limited by fluctuations in the defects charge state during optical pumping. Here, we use real-time control to deterministically initialize the NV centers charge state at room temperature. We demonstrate a maximum charge initialization fidelity of 99.4$pm$0.1% and present a quantitative model of the initialization process that allows for systems-level optimization of the spin-readout signal-to-noise ratio. Even accounting for the overhead associated with the initialization sequence, increasing the charge initialization fidelity from the steady-state value of 75% near to unity allows for a factor-of-two speedup in experiments while maintaining the same signal-to-noise-ratio. In combination with high-fidelity readout based on spin-to-charge conversion, real-time initialization enables a factor-of-20 speedup over traditional methods, resulting in an ac magnetic sensitivity of 1.3 nT/Hz$^{1/2}$ for our single NV-center spin. The real-time control method is immediately beneficial for quantum sensing applications with NV centers as well as probing charge-dependent physics, and it will facilitate protocols for quantum feedback control over multi-qubit systems.
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