[3] Patel was a member of President Barack Obama's inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.

After graduating from college, he taught at an alternative education program for high school dropouts in Chicago and, inspired partly by Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker movement, founded a cooperative living community for activists and artists in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood.

[6]: 61–69  As an activist, Patel felt that diversity, service, and faith were important parts of civic life but found no community organization that touched on all three, specifically one that worked with young people.

[6]: 74  In response, he developed the idea for the Interfaith Youth Core,[8] formulated through his relationship with Brother Wayne Teasdale and blessed by the Dalai Lama, that would bring young people of different faiths together around service and dialogue.

[6]: 74 While a student at Oxford, Patel ran numerous interfaith youth projects in India, Sri Lanka, and South Africa.