From Pre-Med to Hollywood, The Road to Acceptance Births ConnectEffect: Meet Riaz Patel, Award-Winning Producer, Committed Connector and Global Healer

What is your personal/professional story?

Over the past twenty years I have developed or produced projects that have been nominated for all major awards: Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Golden Globe, NAACP Image Award.?I have filmed in twenty-one countries and had my projects distributed by media companies such as AMC Networks , 亚马逊 , A+E Networks , Discovery Inc , Hulu , NBCUniversal , MTV, TLC and many others.?But my original life plan was actually not a career in entertainment at all.???

I went to 美国宾夕法尼亚大学 and was Pre-Med, with a plan to be a doctor like so many generations of my family.?I studied and did research with some of the greatest minds in psychology: Dr. Martin Seligman, Drs. Henry & Lila Gleitman and others. But in my sophomore year I was really struggling to accept myself as a gay man.?This was the 1990’s and a very different time. And with the AIDS epidemic running rampant I thought this thing that already I hated about myself was going to kill me. It was in the midst of this overwhelming self-loathing that I happened to be home, procrastinating studying for finals and a movie came on the TV: It was called “Maurice” and it was an art-house film about a gay love story set in Edwardian England in the early 1900’s.?Until I watched that film it had NEVER occurred to me that “gay love” could be as beautiful as any other love story.?Not once in my life had that thought crossed my mind. And in those two-and-a-half hours, my entire perspective on myself and my identity shifted.?I realized that entertainment could be an incredibly powerful and transformative medium. And so after graduation I got in my old Volvo and drove across the country to Hollywood.??

Years ago, when “reality TV” emerged I realized there was a way to apply my psychology training and to create authentically transformative experiences for real people.?For years that has been my focus.?Whether it was a show about a families in crisis, women with severe body dysmorphia, or people struggling with self-esteem, my shows would create personalized, immersive, and transformative experiences that would shift the way they felt or thought about themselves - and the cameras would document that journey.?It’s been tremendously fulfilling to watch people change the course of their lives in such a short period of time.??

It was back in 2016 when people started “unfriending” one another and stopped talking to each other that I started to work on an immersive, in-person entertainment experience that could quickly and effortlessly connect a group of strangers in a deeply-meaningful way.?It took seven years of development and testing but the result is ConnectEffect - a 60-minute immersive and transformative experience that is an intervention for the epidemic of loneliness, isolation and polarization.?Colleges, conferences, community health organizations and private companies have brought us in to revitalize a sense of community - through an enjoyable and effortless experience.??

We recently worked with Essentia Health , the largest health system in Minnesota and they ran data on our effectiveness and were shocked by how quickly we were able to create real change.?In only 60-minutes, 97% of participants felt more hopeful, 93% more able to connect, 96% more able to bridge divides and 99% would recommend ConnectEffect to others.??

What key moments in your life led you to where you are today?

The circumstances of my entire life led me to where I am: I have never walked into a room where I was in the “majority.” I was born in one hemisphere (Pakistan), but raised in the other (USA).?For many years I would wake up in a Muslim house, in a Christian world, where I was sent to Jewish school, where everyone thought I was Hindu because of my last name.?I am a guy - but being a gay male, I was never “one of the guys.”?I’m often with women - but I am not a woman.?There was literally no place ever in my life where I was the majority.?As a result, I would often have to humanize myself to others who did not know - or even did not like - who I was. Or rather: who they THOUGHT I was.?“I’m not who you think I am” was something that I said so often.?So it really was a lifetime of looking to connect with people who saw me as an “other” that led me down the path of trying to create deep meaningful connections between people who THINK they are different.??

Where does your passion to serve come from?

My father was a surgeon - and when he started his private practice soon after we emigrated from Pakistan, he set up a small office in our home.?Every evening patients would ring the doorbell to our garage and I would greet them and usher them into our makeshift ‘waiting room.’ Sometimes they were moaning in pain.?Sometimes bleeding profusely. I remember once someone carrying a small part of their finger that had been cut off.?From an early age, my job was to make them feel as comfortable as possible. And that instinct to help people feel better has been with me my whole life.

How can GlobalMindED help you reach your goals?

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I have spent over 20 years in Hollywood and it’s a community I know very well.?As my work with ConnectEffect has developed I have found myself in different communities: for example, higher education or community health.?As we try to bring our intervention out to as many people as possible, we are always looking to meet new people and hear their internal struggles with connection and conversation.?We are delighted to be a part of the GlobalMindED community and the incredibly important work you do.?

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