Johanna Chao Kreilick

Johanna Chao Kreilick is an executive officer at the Open Society Foundations where she supervises six thematic and operational teams, and directs the Foundations’ Strategy Unit. As the Strategy Unit director, Kreilick leads the Open Society’s planning, research, and assessment practice and oversees the team that supports over 50 global programs, national foundations, and advocacy offices in these areas. Kreilick also leads the development of collaborative strategies at Open Society, including directing the Foundation’s major new Climate Action Initiative.

Prior to joining the Open Society Foundations, Kreilick built and ran a justice and human rights program at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University strengthening civil society’s role in advancing international criminal justice and domestic justice institutions. Prior to that, she used her experience as an organizer in the Asia Pacific immigrant community to launch and lead a new economic justice grant-making program at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee supporting informal workers’ movements globally.

Kreilick is a trained mediator and facilitator, and serves on numerous nonprofit boards. She earned a BA with distinction in anthropology from Stanford University and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where she was named a Lucius N. Littauer Fellow.