Ms Lata Patil brings a varied and rich experience working on behalf of women that span various non-profits and ethnic organizations for over 20 years in the San Francisco Bay area providing direct services, developing programs, organizing community groups and strategizing long-range plans.
Currently, she serves as the Chair of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at Indians for Collective Action (icaonline.org) partnering with NGOs in India to provide leadership training to women.
Previously, she was the Founder and President of the Cardea Center for Women in San Jose, CA, which provided an extensive community resource catalogue and integrated innovative programming in political participation and training to run for elected offices for low-income and immigrant women.
She was elected as the Chair of the Santa Clara County Commission on the Status of Women where she also guided the Task Force on the UN Women’s Bill of rights – CEDAW.
Before that, she coordinated the Women’s Action Network – an online collaborative of women’s organizations on the Peninsula for advocacy and as a tool for monitoring legislative action affecting women and girls, which she initiated in 2001.
Her earlier efforts include founding the Indo-American Community Service Center in Santa Clara in 1994 and overseeing its participation in United Way’s incubator program. As its President, she led a drive to establish and coordinate family support services for the South-Asian community in the Bay Area, which later merged its activities with the India Community Center. Previously, she had initiated a domestic violence hotline service and a women’s business and professional networking group for South-Asians (IBPW).
Lata has displayed her passion for promoting a dialogue about justice and equity for women through leadership positions on a variety of non-profit community organizations. Her deep local involvement with women’s rights activism across the Silicon Valley region with its diverse demographics, in particular, has been critical to both appreciating and assessing the complex issues of women and their rights everywhere.
