Babita Patel

Babita Patel is a Humanitarian Photographer working with nonprofits, NGOs and social enterprises to photograph their programs. She has documented the lack of access to clean water in the slums of Haiti, photographed men in maximum-security prisons who found redemption through education and followed a ballet dancer-turned-US Marine around for the day.

In 2012, Babita founded KIOO Project, an NGO that changes gender dynamics in economically-challenged communities by teaching photography to girls who, in turn, teach photography to boys. The gender-based curriculum helps girls gain self-confidence while building leadership and presentation skills. It also includes both genders in the fight for gender equality – a growing trend in the international development community. Thus far, Babita has run programs in Haiti, Kenya, India, Brooklyn and Ethiopia.

Babita’s work has been featured on ABC, Al Jazeera, Forbes, The Guardian and MSNBC, and exhibited in New York, Los Angeles and Lisbon. She published Sing Sing Talks, a book of her photographs taken during the first TEDx event inside a maximum-security prison in New York State. She is currently working on an untitled book about the cradle-to-prison pipeline – one of the causes of mass incarceration in the US.

Babita is an active public speaker about the need for non-sensationalized reporting by journalists, female leadership and social impact, and mentors teenage girls looking at future careers in the arts and entrepreneurship.

Sub-specialties: mass incarceration, storytelling.