Parag Patel

Parag Patel,  BS ‘89, graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, and a minor in History.  He later obtained an MBA from the Harvard Business School.  His lifelong experiences have combined a career in Silicon Valley with public service.  As an undergraduate, he worked through the Haas Center on volunteer activities such as the Ravenswood Tutoring Program, then in its infancy.  He also served as an United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, West Africa, organizing farm cooperatives to enable subsistence farmers to expand their production and develop sources of income (Parag attributes his joining the Peace Corps to the ethos of the Haas Center).  Parag has served as a senior executive at several high technology companies, most notably 15 years at VMware which was founded by a Stanford professor and grew to become a Fortune 500 company.  Most recently, he has been Senior Vice-President of Global Sales at Forcepoint, a billion-dollar cybersecurity company.  Presently, he is Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of Environmental Volunteers, a non-profit dedicated to Nature & climate education in elementary schools.  He also sits on the Advisory Board of the Harvard Business School Global Research Center.  Parag is a past Term Member of the US Council on Foreign Relations and Asia21 Fellow of the Asia Society.