Reyhana Patel

Reyhana Patel is currently the Director of Communications and Government Relations at the international NGO Islamic Relief Canada. Reyhana is a former BBC News journalist and lifelong advocate and champion for change in civil society and minority communities on issues around gender-based violence, racism, and women’s rights. She leads the gender-based violence portfolio at Islamic Relief where she specializes in developing policy, research and advocacy campaigns on tackling religious and cultural norms used to carry out acts of gender-based violence. Reyhana writes regularly for mainstream media outlets and her work has been featured on the BBC, CBC, Huffington Post and Toronto Star.

Reyhana was born in Barbados where she lived for most of her life before moving to the United Kingdom and then later on to Canada.