Mira Patel ’05

Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Commerce

Mira Patel serves in the Biden Administration as a Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Commerce, and previously served in the Obama Administration advising two Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on foreign affairs and economic policy. Most recently, Mira led economic opportunity programs globally in the private sector and was a writer/researcher for Gene Sperling's "Economic Dignity" book. In the Obama Administration, Mira was appointed to Secretary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, developing policy, programming, and communications on international human rights, and also served as the Senior Advisor for the U.S. Small Business Administration. In these roles, Mira launched multimillion dollar public-private partnerships including the Global Equality Fund, a $30M fund that has directly supported LGBT advocacy organizations in over 40 countries and authored the first ever Presidential Memorandum on international LGBT rights. Mira previously worked in the U.S. Senate for Senator Clinton, the Center for American Progress, and Lehman Brothers. Mira is a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member, serving on the Term Member Advisory Board and co-author of the CFR National Security and Innovation Task Force report, an Out In National Security 2020 Leader, and previously was a Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative Fellow, a Point Foundation Scholar, and an Atlantic Council Millennium Fellow. Mira holds a BA from Wellesley College and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.