District 18 2023 Communication & Leadership Award Recipient

Rajan Patel, Co-founder, CEO

Rajan grew up with a mindset of “playing the game of school,” unquestioningly doing what it took to get ahead and eventually test-taking his way to Stanford for college. There, new experiences in making, design thinking, and entrepreneurship led him to the most powerful epiphany of his life — the world is not fixed, it is malleable, and he can actually shape and change it. He realized that “success” was not playing to the rules of the system, but instead being bold and confident enough to question the status quo and reimagine realities.

Rajan turned a class design project into his first entrepreneurial venture; upon graduation, he moved to India to build the Embrace baby warmer, an innovative and human-centered product that costs less than 1% of a traditional incubator, can work without electricity, and has since impacted and saved the lives of over 500,000 babies across 25+ developing countries. As he led his local team, Rajan realized his ability to activate the “I can make a dent” confidence for others. He returned to Stanford for his MBA, where he worked alongside past professors to learn how to teach creativity and innovation, and got his MPA from Harvard, with the intent to start Dent Education – a non-profit that promotes equity by empowering people to discover and develop their innate creative potential to shape the world around them.

Since 2017, Dent has engaged nearly 500 of the city’s creative high schoolers to develop as makers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Rajan also leads design and innovation workshops for professionals and leaders across the globe, tapping into individuals’ and teams’ creative capacity to put humans at the center, innovate, and tackle real challenges with new approaches.