Speaker
Juanita Rilling
Senior Humanitarian Advisor
Former Director, Center for International Disaster Information, U.S. Agency for International Development
Juanita Rilling is a senior humanitarian advisor and is the former director of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Center for International Disaster Information (USAID CIDI). Her career includes more than 36 years on professional staffs in the U.S. Senate and in USAID's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA).
During her career in the Senate, Ms. Rilling served for 13 years on the Appropriations Committee, where she co-authored Foreign Operations Subcommittee bills and reports and assisted in shepherding them into law. Ms. Rilling left the Senate to serve USAID/OFDA as a disaster operations specialist where she earned awards for her work on two Gujarat Earthquakes, the Kosovo war, the Southern Africa Floods, the El Nino Working Group and the 2013 Ebola Virus Disease epidemic. While director of USAID CIDI, Ms. Rilling and her staff, in collaboration with the Ad Council, created "Donate Responsibly" toolkits which were retooled and adopted by the 21 member countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization. CIDI also promoted public service announcements about responsible donating which have been broadcast to more than a billion people and educated thousands of people in person and electronically about how "smart compassion" is the best way to help survivors of disaster events.
Ms. Rilling graduated from the University of Maryland with a bachelor's degree in English literature.