Ricken Patel is co-founder and executive director of Avaaz.org, the largest global political web movement in history with over 41 million subscribers in all 193 countries. Avaaz has a simple democratic mission: to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people want. Ricken was voted “Ultimate Gamechanger in Politics” in 2009 by the Huffington Post and was named a Young Global Leader by the Davos World Economic Forum. Prior to Avaaz he lived in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and other countries in conflict, and worked for the International Crisis Group, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Center for Transitional Justice, and Res Publica. He holds a graduate degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard University, and graduated first in his university class from Balliol College, Oxford University.