At Living Stones Foundation, we firmly believe in the power of global talent applied to local causes. Through our Data Visionaries Program, we work to empower nonprofit organizations with technological, strategic, and human-centered solutions. This initiative connects high-impact social projects in Latin America with investment opportunities, government programs, and international support—strengthening the ecosystem of social innovation and sustainable development.
Today, we want to recognize the valuable contribution of Mihir Patil, a professional whose international experience and commitment to collective well-being are making a significant impact both within our team and in the communities we serve.
In the intersection of technological innovation and humanitarian service
In the intersection of technological innovation and humanitarian service lies a space where data becomes more than numbers — it becomes a catalyst for transformative change. At Living Stones Foundation, we have seen firsthand how the right analytical mind can turn information into impact, statistics into stories of hope, and datasets into pathways for development. Today, we shine a spotlight on Mihir Patil, a remarkable Project Manager and Big Data Analyst whose journey from Mumbai to our global operations exemplifies the power of purposeful expertise.
A Cross-Continental Journey Driven by Purpose
When Mihir first joined our team in February 2025, fresh from completing his master’s in information technology and management at the University of Texas at Dallas, he brought with him not just impressive technical credentials, but a quiet determination to apply his skills toward meaningful social change.
“I’ve always believed that data shouldn’t just live in reports,” Mihir shared during his orientation. “It should live in the real world, driving decisions that improve people’s lives.”
This philosophy, shaped during his education spanning two continents and refined through diverse professional experiences, has become the cornerstone of his approach at Living Stones Foundation. Born and educated initially in Mumbai, India, where he earned his bachelor’s in computer engineering, Mihir’s perspective bridges Eastern and Western approaches to problem-solving — a valuable lens when working with the global communities we serve.
From Corporate Efficiency to Humanitarian Effectiveness
Before finding his home at Living Stones Foundation, Mihir honed his analytical skills in environments where efficiency and accuracy directly affected business outcomes. At Nitya Chemicals in Mumbai, he analyzed over 100,000 supply chain records, achieving a 5% reduction in inventory waste — a significant achievement with both financial and environmental benefits.
His time at UnicGate in Houston further refined his talents, where he led cross-functional teams on a Scalable AI project that improved forecasting accuracy by 25% and spearheaded automation initiatives that boosted system efficiency by 15%.
These experiences might seem distant from humanitarian work, but Mihir sees clear parallels. “The technical challenges are often similar,” he explains, “but the stakes are higher, the constraints more challenging, and the impact more profound. Reducing inefficiency in a corporate setting saves money — in humanitarian work, it might save lives.”
Building Teams That Bridge Data and Reality
One of Mihir’s most significant contributions to Living Stones Foundation has been his leadership of our data collection team. Overseeing five dedicated analysts, he has transformed how we gather, confirm, and utilize information from the field. Under his guidance, the team collects and verifies over 500 data points per project cycle — each representing a critical insight into community needs, resource allocation, or program effectiveness.
“Data collection isn’t just a technical exercise,” Mihir often reminds his team. “Each number represents a real person, a real family, a real community. We owe it to them to get it right.”
This human-centered approach to data collection has revolutionized our field operations. Where once we struggled with incomplete information and delayed reporting, we now have near real-time visibility into program impacts.
Technology Alone Is Not Enough
Technology alone — it required Mihir’s unique ability to train team members in both technical skills and contextual understanding.
“Mihir has this remarkable ability to help people see the story behind the numbers,” shares one of his team members. “He’ll take a seemingly dry dataset about water access points and help us visualize the women who now spend two fewer hours carrying water each day, the children who can attend school regularly because they’re not sick from waterborne illnesses, the gardens that can flourish with reliable irrigation.”
Building Infrastructure for Lasting Impact
Beyond team leadership, Mihir’s technical contributions have created infrastructure that will help our programs for years to come. His implementation of automated ETL workflows has cut manual data processing time by 40%, freeing valuable staff time for more impactful activities.
One particularly transformative project involved developing a customized data pipeline that integrates information from disparate sources — field reports, donor management systems, program evaluations, and local government data — into a unified dashboard. This system, built using his expertise in SQL, AWS Cloud, and visualization tools like Tableau and Power BI, has become the backbone of our decision-making process.
“Before Mihir’s system, we were making educated guesses based on fragmented information,” explains our operations director. “Now we have a comprehensive view of our entire ecosystem. We can see patterns and connections that were previously invisible.”
Most impressively, Mihir’s implementation of real-time data streaming solutions maintains an exceptional 99.9% uptime for data availability — a remarkable achievement given the challenging connectivity environments where many of our programs operate. This reliability ensures that critical information is consistently accessible when needed most, often in time-sensitive contexts where data-driven decisions can have immediate impact on communities served.
From Insights to Impact: Data-Driven Decision Making
What truly sets Mihir apart is not just his ability to gather and process data, but his talent for transforming that information into actionable insights that directly improve our programs.
A powerful example came just three months into his tenure when his analysis of program participation data across multiple sites revealed an unexpected pattern of decreased female engagement during specific seasons. Rather than simply reporting the numbers, Mihir collaborated with field teams to investigate the underlying causes, discovering that seasonal agricultural responsibilities were creating barriers to participation.
“Data showed us the ‘what’ but not the ‘why,'” Mihir recalls. “We needed to combine quantitative analysis with qualitative understanding.”
This insight led to a redesign of our program scheduling in affected regions, resulting in a 40% increase in female participation — a change that wouldn’t have happened without Mihir’s comprehensive approach to data analysis.
In another instance, his preprocessing and cleaning of large CSV datasets reduced errors by 30% and increased model accuracy, enabling us to better predict which communities were at highest risk for specific challenges. This improved targeting has allowed us to deploy resources more effectively, reaching vulnerable populations before crises escalate.
Innovation Born from Constraint
What colleagues find most remarkable about Mihir is his ability to innovate within constraints — a critical skill in humanitarian contexts where resources are limited and challenges are complex.
Drawing on his experience building a Smart Stick for the visually impaired (a Raspberry Pi–based tool that reduced navigation errors by 80%), Mihir has championed accessible, low-cost technology solutions that can function reliably in challenging environments.
Innovation in Challenging Environments
“In the tech world, innovation often means using the latest cutting-edge tools,” Mihir observes. “In humanitarian work, innovation often means finding ingenious ways to make simple technology work reliably where infrastructure is limited.”
This mindset led him to develop a modified dashboard system that can function offline and synchronize when connectivity returns — a seemingly simple adaptation that has dramatically improved our ability to maintain data-driven operations in remote locations.
His project management ability, honed through formal training in both Agile and Waterfall methodologies, has proven equally valuable. Managing the delicate balance between structured planning and adaptive response is particularly challenging in humanitarian contexts, where conditions can change rapidly and unexpectedly.
“Mihir approaches project management as both science and art,” notes a colleague who has worked closely with him. “He brings rigorous methodology but remains flexible enough to adapt when reality doesn’t match the plan — which, in our work, is quite often.”
Creating Cycles of Learning and Improvement
Beyond his immediate technical contributions, Mihir has instituted systematic approaches to organizational learning that have elevated our entire team’s capabilities. His implementation of regular data review sessions has fostered a culture of evidence-based decision-making across departments.
“What impresses me most about Mihir is how he’s democratized data,” shares our Communications Director. “He doesn’t just provide reports — he builds understanding and ownership across teams. Now everyone from field coordinators to executive leadership speaks the same language when discussing program performance and impact.”
This approach is best exemplified in his development of a customized KPI framework that balances quantitative metrics with qualitative assessments. Unlike traditional performance tracking systems that focus exclusively on numbers, Mihir’s framework incorporates narrative reports, beneficiary feedback, and contextual factors that might influence outcomes.
“Numbers tell part of the story, but never the whole story,” he explains. “Especially in humanitarian work, where human experience is at the center of everything we do.”
Technical Brilliance with a Human Touch
Those who work closely with Mihir quickly discover that behind his impressive technical credentials lies a deeply compassionate individual committed to understanding the human dimensions of every challenge.
This combination of technical skill and genuine empathy was clear in his work with our education programs, where he applied sophisticated analysis techniques to student attendance and performance data. Rather than simply identifying correlations, he insisted on spending time in classrooms and meeting with families to understand the lived experiences behind the statistics.
“The most sophisticated algorithm can’t replace human understanding,” he insists. “Data should inform our compassion, not replace it.”
This philosophy guides his approach to technology implementation across our programs. When developing new systems, he prioritizes usability for field teams, many of whom have limited technical training. His dashboards and reports are designed not just for technical accuracy but for intuitive understanding — empowering staff at all levels to engage meaningfully with program data.
Building Bridges Between Worlds
Mihir’s most valuable contribution to Living Stones Foundation has been his ability to bridge multiple worlds—connecting technical and non-technical stakeholders, linking data collection with practical application, and translating between the languages of analysis and action.
His background, spanning India and the United States, gives him natural cross-cultural fluency that proves invaluable in our global operations. He navigates diverse contexts with ease, adapting his communication style and technical approaches to match local needs and constraints.
“I think growing up in Mumbai and then studying in the US gave me a natural awareness of how different perspectives shape our understanding,” Mihir reflects. “Data isn’t culturally neutral—how we collect it, interpret it, and apply it is always influenced by our worldviews and assumptions.”
This awareness has shaped his approach to building data systems that respect local knowledge and cultural contexts while maintaining rigorous standards of accuracy and utility.
A Future Built on Evidence and Compassion
As Mihir continues his journey with Living Stones Foundation, his vision for data-informed humanitarian work grows increasingly ambitious. He is currently developing predictive models that could help identify communities at risk before crises occur—potentially transforming how we allocate resources from reactive to preventative approaches.
“The most valuable insights aren’t about what happened yesterday, but what might happen tomorrow,” he explains. “If we can shift even a portion of our efforts from response to prevention, the impact would be transformative.”
His work exemplifies the power of purposeful ability—technical brilliance applied with clarity of mission and depth of compassion. In a field often divided between technical specialists and humanitarian practitioners, Mihir represents a new generation of professionals who seamlessly integrate both identities.
Join the Movement
Mihir’s journey with Living Stones Foundation proves how specialized expertise becomes truly powerful when directed toward meaningful change. His story reminds us that behind every dashboard, algorithm, and data pipeline lies an opportunity to transform lives and communities.
If his approach resonates with you—if you believe your technical skills could be channeled toward humanitarian impact—we invite you to explore opportunities with our team. Whether your expertise lies in data science, project management, or technical implementation, there’s a place for purposeful professionals in our global community.
In Mihir’s words:
“Data without compassion is just numbers. Compassion without data is just intention. But when we bring them together—when we analyze with purpose and implement with precision—we create something powerful: evidence-based hope and measurable transformation.”
Through the contributions of dedicated individuals like Mihir Patil, we continue our mission of lighting up nations, one data point, one insight, and one transformed community at a time.
Want to Be Part of the Change?
If, like Mihir, you want to put your talent toward something bigger, join the Data Visionaries program. Here, every volunteer does not just collaborate… they build the future.
Ready to take the first step? Apply here and start your journey.
