Jonah Wittkamper

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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, Saint Ann's School (Brooklyn) and Camp Rising Sun.

Before co-founding NEXUS, Wittkamper served in various roles that 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] Soon, GYAN 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.

Jonah Wittkamper is the grandson of Will Wittkamper, a former steward of Koinonia Farm. This is 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.