MORE ABOUT ME
Scroll down for the more CV type blurb from wikipedia. But in terms of who I really am, I'm nowhere near as narcissistic as this website feels to me, and most of my waking life I spend doing my best to be a good person and a good father and husband. It's the search to understand what it means to be a good person in our times, and what I've discovered so far on that search, that makes me think I have something to offer in terms of writing, particularly on the topics of protecting liberal democracy and the planet and building a stronger, wiser human culture. I live in a very small town in British Columbia, Canada, with my three beautiful kiddies and my wonderful wife.
From Wikipedia:
Ricken Patel (born January 8, 1977) is a Canadian–British activist and the founding President and CEO of Avaaz from 2006 until 2021. The Guardian called Avaaz "the globe's largest and most powerful online activist network" and called Patel "the global leader of online protest."
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, and listed as one of People Magazine's most eligible bachelors.
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 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.
After leaving Harvard, Patel lived in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan and Afghanistan, working on conflict resolution, civilian protection, and good governance for organizations including the International Crisis Group.
Patel has appeared frequently on dozens of major media outlets including CNN, BBC, CBC, MSNBC, GLOBO and Al Jazeera, and his writing has been published in dozens of major outlets including the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, CNN, AllAfrica.com, the Associated Press, Globo, Times of India, Euronews, and many more.