‘Family Karma’ Star Dillon Patel Selected for Wharton School Fellowship for Leadership in LGBTQIA+ Community

Dillon Patel, star of the acclaimed Bravo series “Family Karma,” has been selected as the second-ever recipient of the Prism Fellowship at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he will join the MBA Class of 2023 in the fall. The fellowship, which covers full tuition, is awarded to a student who demonstrates leadership in the LGBTQIA+ community. 

Patel, 27, originally from Miami, Florida, is a lifestyle brand owner and reality TV star. He recently moved back to Miami into his childhood home, the Patel Compound, to live with his large family, including his older brother Shaan. 

The second season of “Family Karma,” which premiered on June 2, chronicles the lives of Patel and his multigenerational Indian American family and friends as they balance modern life with their traditional upbringings

“I was shocked that a fellowship like this even existed and that the committee chose me considering how many impressive candidates apply each year,” Patel told Poets & Quants, a news website dedicated to the coverage of undergraduate business education. He told Poets&Quants that he decided to pursue an MBA “to sharpen both his hard and soft skills, especially in leadership and mergers and acquisitions.” 

He said the fellowship “really solidified” his decision to attend Wharton, “not just because it was offered to me but because of the fact that this program decided to invest so much money into the LGBTQIA+ community,” Patel has openly been a part of the LGBTQIA+ community for about eight years now. He told Poets&Quants that in his MBA, he wants to focus on his passion, technology, “because of the industry’s ability to globalize and scale” He is specifically interested in data analytics, M&A, and change management over the next few years.

Before appearing on “Family Karma,” Patel was living a fairly low-profile life working as Senior Manager of Global Operations at Zendesk, a customer support software company, in San Francisco. But he was no stranger to being an outspoken leader and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. Shortly after joining Zendesk he began to lead the company’s LGBTQ Employee Resource Group, Pride ERG and went on to institute several groundbreaking initiatives. 

“We can always push to be better,” Patel told Poets&Quants about his role in the company. The time for diversity, inclusivity and organizational change is now, he says, and it is happening all around us. “The shift toward acceptance of this community has been so fast,” he said. “People forget just how much public opinion has reversed in the past 20 years.”

Patel grew up in a very large tight-knit multigenerational Indian-Jamaican household. He decided to come out to his family and entire extended family at once through a written announcement that was published in the Duke Student Chronicle.

In his application to Wharton, Patel said he described his leadership role at Zendesks’ Pride Group as “one of two significant moments that demonstrated his passion for advocating for LQBTQIA+ community rights.” The other “key moment was the AIDS LifeCycle bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which “made me realize how strong and powerful this community is, and the importance of having allies in the mission to support the LGBTQIA+ community,” he said.

He will continue with his personal mission “to continue pushing for change and inclusivity in organizations. Post-grad he’s hoping to lead a strategy and operations team at a large enterprise technology company and explore the entrepreneurial route. He’s hoping to parallel and apply what he learns in his MBA to his own business, his apparel brand at dilpop.com.

Patel grew up in a very large tight-knit multigenerational Indian-Jamaican household. He decided to come out to his family and entire extended family at once through a written announcement that was published in the Duke Student Chronicle. In the letter titled “Dear Mom,” Patel writes about his struggles of coming out. “If I were out, I would have talked about how difficult it was to decide just what words to use every time that I came out at Duke,” he wrote. 

“I would have talked about how, as much as I hate the baggage and assumptions that come along with the word “gay,” I use it for others’ sake, not for mine. I use it because society demands certainty, so I give it to them. I give it to them because that’s all I have to give.” He continued: “Mom and Dad, I wanted to tell you first, but I couldn’t. Not because you don’t matter as much, because you matter so much more.”

Speaking about “Family Karma,” Patel told Poets&Quants: “It is so cool to have a representation of my culture in a way that is very genuine. I’m excited to be a queer Indian on TV, and also glad others have paved the way.” Some of his role models include stars such as Lilly Singh and Tan France. “While their stories are all different, together we show the beautiful fabric of what being queer and South Asian looks like,” he says. Although he didn’t have much air time on Season 1, Patel says, “I had several people tell me that seeing my story gave them the confidence to come out to their family, or it sparked conversations that were not otherwise happening.”