Rina Patel

In early 2021, Rina founded SHE, a brand democratizing access to support, brands, and services through a social community for female identifying GenZ. Through its media component, SHE is normalizing conversations around mental health, reproductive health, sex, and building healthy relationships (to name a few). Their core belief is information and support starts at the earliest stages of one’s life.

The core theme of Rina’s work is based on two core principles:

• The systems of our world, including our economies, will be decentralized and community based (like they had been for centuries in village systems and currently are in many indigenous communities)
• We must look to the past to know the future.

Her work is influenced by the past 13 years of research and stories collected on the 1,000 years of history of her family’s ancestral villages in Gujarat, India. At 17 years old, Rina also founded Aahana, a non-profit organization working in India to provide health, education, and skills training to youth in rural regions.

On the side, Rina writes about migration, community, decentralizing systems, identity, love, and all the things that come with being a first generation Indian American woman. Her newsletters and blog posts are based on the themes present throughout Liminal Spaces, her manuscript and the final product of the years of research and writing about her family’s history.