Rupal Patel is the founder and CEO of VocaliD. She founded the company in 2014 to provide voice prostheses for people that cannot speak in their own voices. The company continues with that work today and has expanded into customized voices for brands looking for a distinctive sound in their efforts around voice assistants.

VocaliD was a Mass Challenge finalist in 2014 where it participated in the accelerator program. Patel has also been a professor at Northeastern University for the past 16 years with joint appointments in the departments of health science and computer science. She also holds an affiliate faculty position at Harvard and MIT for the Division of Health Science and Technology but focuses her attention today on VocaliD. Early in her career while studying for her doctorate, Rupal also spent time as a speech pathologist. She earned a Ph.D. in Speech Language Pathology from the University of Toronto and an undergraduate degree in Neuropsychology from the University of Calgary. Patel completed her post-doc work at MIT.