Ricken Patel
| Ricken Patel | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 8, 1977 (age 40) Edmonton, Alberta, Canada |
| Occupation | Founding President and Executive Director of Avaaz |
| Alma mater | Oxford University, Harvard |
Ricken Patel (born January 8, 1977) is the Canadian/British founding President and Executive Director of Avaaz, a major global civic organization with the world’s largest online activist community, including over 43 million subscribers.
Patel was voted "Ultimate Gamechanger in Politics" by the Huffington Post, and listed in the world's top 100 thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. He was also named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, referred to as "the global leader of online protest" by The Guardian and listed as one of People Magazine's most eligible bachelors.
Patel was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to a Kenyan-born Gujarati father and an English mother with Jewish heritage.
As a boy, Patel studied on a First Nations reserve where he was bullied. He told The Times: “I’ve always felt solidarity with people suffering injustice. My theory is that my Mum gave me so much love I’ve always had extra to give.”
Patel studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Balliol College, Oxford, where he helped organize against the 1998 introduction of tuition fees. He graduated first in his university class, and held leadership roles in student government and student activism. He has a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where (mirroring his activism at Oxford) he helped lead the campus' highly publicized living wage campaign.
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