Ricken Patel

Ricken is the founding President and Executive Director of Avaaz, a global civic movement for social change which has rapidly grown since 2007 into the largest online activist community in the world, with over 44 million members in all 194 countries. Ricken was voted “Ultimate Gamechanger in Politics” by the Huffington Post, and named a Young Global Leader by the Davos World Economic Forum. He was also among Foreign Policy’s 100 Top Global Thinkers in 2012. He has lived and worked in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Afghanistan and Sudan, working on conflict resolution for various organizations including the International Crisis Group and the International Center for Transitional Justice. Ricken holds a Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Bachelor’s in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford.