When the first class of 22 graduates received their diplomas at Georgetown University’s first international branch campus in Doha, Qatar, in the spring, one of the proudest people cheering them on was from halfway around the world: James W. Patti, the director of strategic planning and analysis at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School.
The Qatar school is close to Patti’s heart because he founded it, working for four years in collaboration with Georgetown professor James Reardon-Anderson, and served as its first chief financial officer.
The creation of the Qatar campus “is my greatest professional accomplishment,” Patti wrote in his 40 Under Forty application. “We are proud to have built a world-class school in the heart of the Middle East, where students from a variety of nations and religions come together to study international affairs in the great Georgetown tradition.”
It is a tradition with which Patti is well-acquainted, having received his MBA from Georgetown in 1998. Patti earned his bachelor’s at Seton Hall University and after graduating entered the corporate world.
He spent seven years in the private sector – including two at America Online, during the dot-com boom and the subsequent bust – but eventually moved to a job at Georgetown. There, in addition to his work in founding the Qatar campus, Patti also served as associate director of development for the School of Foreign Service.
In 2006, he arrived at Brown’s medical school, where he oversees a $130 million annual operating budget. He is also among those preparing the way for construction of the new medical education facility Brown is planning for Providence’s Jewelry District.
Outside of work, Patti is active in Republican politics. He is a member of the East Greenwich Republican Party. •
