Sonali Patel

I've been in the human services field for over 25 years, and I've been in my current role for a little over 3 years now. As a young person, I had opportunities to volunteer at a children's advocacy center, which really gave me a feel for the impact you can have on people's lives. That led me to get my master's in social welfare at UCLA, and then I thought I'd get some national experience and come back home to do local work. But I ended up in DC for almost 11 years because there were so many opportunities there. I worked at the local level at a children's trust fund, at the national level representing all of the state human services commissioners on the Hill, and I had the opportunity to work for a governor setting up a new cabinet-level agency focused on early learning and brain science. I was really proud to be part of that executive team creating a public-private partnership that continues to live on to this day. Then I had the good fortune of being recruited into the Obama administration, where I worked as a Senior Policy Advisor both in a federal agency and at the White House itself. Since then, I've continued to keep that national focus but through the nonprofit sector. I worked at a research think tank, and now I'm at a tech-forward nonprofit that really tries to get to systems-level change for kids and families across the country by pushing the envelope on innovation. My current role is around partnerships, looking at opportunities particularly at the state and local level to partner with government, community-based organizations, and philanthropy to drive systems change while centering the lived experience of those who are directly impacted.