Ritesh Patel

Ritesh Patel is Viant’s Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary and oversees the company’s corporate, commercial, intellectual property and legal affairs. 

Ritesh began his legal career in private practice at national firms, advising on mergers and acquisitions, venture capital, and structured finance deals. He later transitioned in-house, supporting both public and private technology companies across industries including advertising technology, network monitoring and security, and digital storage. 

Most recently, Ritesh served as the Head of Legal for Apeel Sciences, where he led its legal team on global initiatives. Prior to that, Ritesh was Vice President, Assistant General Counsel at The Trade Desk, where he served as lead attorney on key revenue deals and public company reporting obligations, while also managing the legal operations team and scaling the legal department. Earlier in his career, he served in leadership roles at global organizations including Western Digital Corporation, where he led a team responsible for advising the go-to-market function of divisions that generated $10B in annual global revenue. Before practicing law, when he still had hair to comb, Ritesh worked as a financial and information systems auditor at PwC.

Ritesh earned his JD from the UCLA School of Law and holds a B.A. in Business Economics from UCLA, with a minor in Accounting and specialization in Computing. He lives in Thousand Oaks, California with his wife, three children, and dog. 

Ritesh is an avid sports fan and spends any free time not otherwise dedicated to shuttling his kids around watching the Bruins, Dodgers, and Lakers. He’s also a Raiders fan, but tries not to devote too much energy to them (negative ROI). He also enjoys running and golf.