Nisha G. Patel, MSW

Nisha G. Patel

Robin Hood

Managing Director, Narrative Change & National Initiatives

Nisha Patel is Managing Director of Narrative Change & National Initiatives at Robin Hood, a New York City-based foundation focused on fighting poverty. She has more than two decades of experience leading and implementing initiatives to increase economic opportunities for low-income families. She was most recently executive director of the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty at the Urban Institute. Patel served in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Family Assistance within the US Department of Health and Human Services, overseeing a $17 billion annual portfolio of federal grants that foster family economic security, including the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Patel is a summa cum laude graduate of Vanderbilt University, where she was a Chancellor’s Scholar. She holds an MSW with a concentration in social and economic development from Washington University in St. Louis, where she was a Bettie Schroth Johnson Scholar.