Pati Navalta is a longtime San Francisco Bay Area journalist and media and communications strategist, previously serving as editor-in-chief of San Francisco magazine and editorial writer and columnist for San Francisco Chronicle, where she was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for an editorial series on the need for foster care reform in California. The series led to landmark changes in foster care in the state, improving the lives of millions of foster youth.

Pati was later named media advocacy director for the American Cancer Society, where she was based in Sacramento and created media and communication strategies to further legislation supported by the organization.

She later worked as Asia regional director for Global Footprint Network, an international organization that works with national governments and intergovernmental agencies on shaping sustainability policies. In this role, she worked directly with national governments and UN agencies on policies and projects, with a focus on meeting economic goals within environmental limits.

She founded Navalta Media, an impact-driven strategic communications agency with clients from New York to California, working with impact-driven clients across sectors and industries, and is the founder and president of the Robby Poblete Foundation, a nonprofit she created to address gun violence and provide career pathways for second-chancers.

Pati is the author of The Oracles: My Filipino Grandparents in America, which has been included as required reading in Asian American Literature and English classes in colleges and high schools across the country, and ​ A Better Place: A Memoir of Peace in the Face of Tragedy. She is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, and holds a Cornell University certificate in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.