Devan N. Patel is the founder and president of Crux Advisory Group, a strategic firm operating at the intersection of Washington, Rome, and Silicon Valley. He was one of ten Americans in the room at the Vatican for the public issuance of Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas—an invitation that followed the summit he convened there, where he brought together more than forty faith leaders, national security officials, and policy experts and served as lead author of the resulting international joint declaration on AI ethics.

He serves as the Joseph Rainey Center's visiting fellow for tech ethics and democracy, and previously as counsel and managing director of public policy at Allegiance Strategies and founding senior advisor of public policy and ethics at the American Security Fund and Foundation. In Washington he co-drafted core provisions of the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 adopted into federal law, secured the broadest statutory protections for religious liberty in nearly thirty years, and led the conservative coalition on the Kids Online Safety Act.

Devan teaches as an adjunct at Notre Dame Law School and is a founding member of the Federalist Society’s AI & Law Initiative and a fellow at Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. He grew up in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, the grandson of Indian immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island with $17, their faith, and a belief in the American Dream. The first in his family to graduate from college, he earned his BA in philosophy and political science from George Washington University and his JD from Notre Dame Law School. His mentors at ND Law later became his godparents when he converted to Catholicism. Read more about Devan and his publications here.