Jonah Wittkamper is a biologist,[1] technologist, startup founder[2] and social entrepreneur. He is the Co-Founder and President of the NEXUS, a movement to help wealthy families engage in charity and impact investing.[3] In 2020, he founded the Amazon Investor Coalition to advance forest friendly economic development and the rule of law.[4][5][6] In addition, in 2017, he created the Healthy Democracy Coalition, a network of philanthropists dedicated to bridging political divides.
Wittkamper works to unite young social and philanthropic leaders to influence the public sector, including the United Nations,[7][8][9][10] the White House[11][12] and the United States Congress.[13][14][15] Earlier in his career, he co-founded the Global Youth Action Network, a global association of youth organizations that merged with TakingITGlobal and grew to become one of the largest communities of young social change leaders on the internet.[16] In 2007, he joined Distributive Networks and helped to build the text messaging technology of the 2008 Obama campaign[17] and in 2015 he served as an advisor to the Council on Foundations' Evolution of Philanthropy Initiative.[18] He has worked as the United States Director of Search for Common Ground[19] and is the founder and owner of EZinTouch.com, a contact management platform. He is an alumnus of Williams College and Camp Rising Sun.
Prior to NEXUS
Before co-founding NEXUS, Wittkamper served in various roles focused on impacting and inspiring youth leaders across the world. Beginning in 2000, Wittkamper co-founded the Global Youth Action Network (GYAN).[20] Through the help of Wittkamper, GYAN reinforced the participation of youth in global decision-making. Wittkamper served as the Chief Technology Officer and opened the South American Regional Office, which he ran until 2006.[21] Due to exponential growth of GYAN, the network merged with TakingITGlobal, as mentioned previously. TakingITGlobal quickly became the largest Internet site dedicated to the empowerment of young leaders, receiving almost 2 million hits every day.
Family
Jonah Wittkamper is a grandson of Will Wittkamper, a former steward of Koinonia Farm, the inter-racial Christian intentional community in Americus, Georgia, that inspired the creation of Habitat for Humanity.[22] The Wittkamper family is profiled in the book Class of 65.[23] Wittkamper is also a grand-nephew of George S. Vest, former Director General of the US Foreign Service.
^Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anothy D. (2006). Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, p. 50. Penguin Books Ltd., London. ISBN1-59184-138-0.
