At the Association of Rice Alumni’s 2022 Laureates Awards ceremony May 7, the group honored Sunit Patel with the Distinguished Alumni Award.
He graduated with a double major in chemical engineering and economics from Rice University in 1985.
Patel, a skilled financial leader in the telecommunications industry who’s worked with multiple Fortune 500 companies, has successfully completed several hundred billion dollars worth of mergers, acquisitions and financings throughout his career.
Patel was a member of Wiess College, the Marching Owl Band and Indian Students at Rice. He later became a Chartered Financial Analyst.
Patel’s executive leadership experience includes his time as treasurer of MCI WorldCom (later acquired by Verizon), and as treasurer and financial officer of MFS Communications. As chief financial officer at Level 3 Communications, Patel helped the company outperform rivals and guided the company’s mergers with Genuity, Wiltel, Broadwing, Global Crossing, Time Warner Telecom and CenturyLink. Recently, Patel served as executive vice president of merger and integration at T-Mobile, leading the company’s efforts to integrate Sprint into the business. He joined consumer technology company Ibotta as chief financial officer in 2021 and now leads the company’s finance, account and investor relations efforts. Patel continues to serve Rice as chairman of the Engineering Advisory Board, and is also on the board of the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy and Research.
Watch the video presentation from the alumni celebration: