Jono Anzalone
United States
Expertise:
Education
Executive Director
Jono Anzalone is the executive director of The Climate Initiative (TCI), a nonpartisan organization that aims to inspire, educate and empower 10 million youth around climate action by 2025. He joined TCI after a long tenure at the Red Cross, where he started as a youth volunteer in 1994 in Omaha, Nebraska.
Most recently, Anzalone served as the head of disaster and crisis preparedness, response, and recovery for the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) and Red Crescent Societies for the Americas and Caribbean region, based in Panama. He also served as the vice president of international services at the American Red Cross based out of Washington, D.C. Anzalone’s hundreds of national and international disaster assignments with the American Red Cross, IFRC and International Committee of the Red Cross have led him to serve in places such as Mexico, Belize, Suriname, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Liberia (for the Ebola crisis) and Haiti, to aid the United States Agency on International Development (USAID) after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and lead donation management activity. Anzalone served as the advocacy committee chair for the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (National VOAD) from 2012 to 2015 and is the vice chair of the Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+).
Anzalone graduated from Creighton University with a BA in political science; the University of Nebraska with an MS in economics and a doctorate in educational leadership and higher education; and completed the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative program at Harvard University. He has earned the International Association of Emergency Management Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) credential and, in 2017, was named the Meta-Leader of the Year by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Kennedy School of Government National Preparedness Leadership Initiative. Since 2003, Anzalone has held teaching appointments in economics, disaster management and leadership at colleges and universities across the country.