Rakesh Patwari is a passionately curious digital product designer, currently a Lead Designer at Salesforce who also teaches design at UC Berkeley Ext. 

Born to teacher parents in a small town near Hyderabad, South India, Rakesh was on track to be an engineer. However, things changed when he was introduced to Photoshop. It was love at first sight, learning one tool led to the other and soon enough his relationship made him an autodidact designer and he metamorphosed from a ‘programmer with design chops’ to a ‘Designer who understands tech.’.

In his 18 years long career he worked at product companies, start-ups, and consulting organizations alike across diverse and challenging technical problem spaces where he designed and shipped flagship products. His experience, love for design, and passionate curiosity motivates him to tackle complex challenges and enables him to be effective both at strategic and tactical levels.