Ricken Patel (born January 8, 1977) is a Canadian–British activist. He was from 2005 to 2021 the Founding CEO of Avaaz, an online activist network.
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.
Life
Patel was born in Edmonton, Alberta, to a Kenyan-born Indian father of Gujarati origin and an English mother with Jewish heritage.
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 Master's in Public Policy from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where (mirroring his activism at Oxford) he helped lead the campus's highly publicized living wage campaign.
