By Henry Dubroff Friday, October 9th, 2026

After a bit over a year on the job, Amy Weaver of Direct Relief, our Business Times CEO of the Year, finds her organization at the center of a global crisis in humanitarian response.

When I sat down with her for our latest Civil Dialogues podcast episode, I was struck by how much the world needs her calm, problem-solving approach and her ability to balance the risks and rewards of AI and other new technologies.

Weaver arrived at Direct Relief, the nation’s fifth-largest charity, in 2025 from a senior executive post at Salesforce.

“What surprised me was the similarity between running a large global corporation and running a global nonprofit,” she said. “You are focused on operational excellence and trying to innovate.”

What is different, she said, is the passion of the 180 Direct Relief staff, who are all-in on getting medicines and other support to locations that are a world away and also close to home. 

Direct Relief makes headlines for its work in speedily delivering supplies to Nepal after its disastrous flooding, but what’s overlooked is that, day in and day out, Direct Relief is serving 94 countries and all 50 states, including medication for hypertension and insulin.

After a quiet first half of the year, a wave of natural disasters hit over the summer, including earthquakes in Venezuela and Colombia, flooding in Nepal and now the early effects of the Super El Niño with rare hurricanes hitting Hawaii. “Since June, it’s been nonstop,” she said, adding, “I’m very concerned about the next few months.”

Human-caused disasters also figure into the equation; Direct Relief has provided $2.5 billion in medical support and $70 million in financial support to Ukraine. Weaver met with Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, during the UN’s annual assembly in New York recently. 

During a visit to Lviv in western Ukraine, she got a firsthand look at the collateral damage from Russian attacks that have disrupted electricity. Families with no power turn to stoves or anything else to heat the home and the result is a spate of burn injuries among children. “It’s really the knock-on effects from these civil conflicts” that are so heartbreaking, she said.

Direct Relief was the brainchild of William Zimdin, a wealthy financier from Estonia and anti-fascist who fled the Third Reich and wound up in Montecito. In 1948, he created a foundation to send packages back to European families who were living on the edge after the devastation of World War II. 

After Zimdin’s death in 1951, his business partner, Dezso Karczag, carried on. The Junior League of Santa Barbara was instrumental in fundraising and local doctors began offering supplies and services. 

Weaver recounted that a group of women pilots, barred from commercial jobs, used small planes to pick up supplies as the warehousing operation grew.

“I really think that Direct Relief is Santa Barbara’s nonprofit and it belongs to Santa Barbara,” she said. Local partnerships include Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinic and Santa Barbara Search and Rescue, she said.

In terms of Direct Relief’s global role, “it is a new world order and rapidly changing order,” she said. “The world was turned upside down” by the Trump administration’s decision to terminate funding for USAID.

“We are in an interesting position. We have never taken government funding,” she said, while partner organizations rely on government funding for 85% of their budgets.

“Direct Relief has the opportunity, and I would say the obligation to step up,” Weaver said. “If you are in a position to do more, you have a moral obligation to do it,” she said.

Part of the stepping up process involves deploying new technology for faster response. When a disaster hits, “we are on the clock; every minute counts,” she said, adding “the opportunities are just immense.” 

She thinks that with proper guardrails, AI could also be a huge opportunity. “We already see corporations making quantum leaps,” she said. “But I don’t want to widen the gap between what giant corporations can do and what nonprofits can do.”

Direct Relief is starting to use AI to forecast where disasters might occur and it’s also looking to develop tools to help understand how relief efforts should continue after the disaster disappears from the headlines and the hard work of what she calls the “long tail” of recovery begins.

She has a message for her former colleagues in the corporate C-suite. 

“Business is an extraordinary driver of change, but there is such an opportunity to be involved. Can you spare someone? What are you doing for volunteering?”

She’s excited about a new, $40 million campaign to train thousands of midwives around the world, with vast potential for helping women and infants.

What it takes, she said, is “people who are committed and who don’t back down.”

• Henry Dubroff is the founder, owner and editor of the Pacific Coast Business Times. He can be reached at [email protected].