Naina Patel OBE

Naina is the founder and executive director of PRIAE Policy Research Institute on Ageing & Ethnicity (pronounced ‘Preeya’), an independent international charitable Institute specialising in the ageing of migrants, minorities and refugees since 1998. Naina designed PRIAE and its projects to what it is today in employment, pensions, health, social care, housing, enterprise, organisational development and leadership, securing funding through applications from the Institute’s zero base finance in 1998 to over £6million to date.  Naina is a Professor of Ageing and Ethnicity, at ISCRI International School for Communities, Rights and Inclusion at the University of Central Lancashire, UK.

Naina was also the former UK Representative on the Interim Management Board of the Fundamental Rights Agency, Vienna (previously) the European Monitoring Centre on Racism, Xenophobia and Antisemitism (EUMC) and EUMC Observer on ECRI (Council of Europe); a Member on Leadership and Race Equality National Health Services Panel. For her work on ageing minorities, she was awarded the Queen’s honour in year 2001. Before PRIAE, Naina was the Head of Race Equality (UK) for ten years at the national development and validation body, Central Council for Education & Training in Social Work, where she designed and managed a national project using group work to produce the Council’s 7 best selling publications in minority ethnic care, and wrote her first book ‘Race Against Time? Social Services to Black Elders’ Runnymede Trust London 1990.