Island Innovation Awards

Alexander J. Diaz leads Crisis Response and Humanitarian Aid at Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm. Through this role, Alex manages Google’s philanthropic efforts in response to global crises, such as natural disasters and public health emergencies, providing innovative nonprofits on the frontlines with funding and volunteers. As part of his role, Alex helped lead Google.org’s $100 million and 50K+ pro bono hours commitment to COVID-19 response globally across health and science, distance learning, and economic relief and recovery. More recently, Alex is managing the company’s philanthropic effort to advance COVID-19 vaccine equity and anticipatory action. Previously, Alex was Chief of Staff to the global head of public policy and government relations at YouTube, and was a core member of Google’s global policy strategy team.
Alex is the winner of both the Marshall and the Rhodes Scholarship awards. As a Rhodes Scholar, Alex received a Master’s of Public Policy and a Master’s of Financial Economics at the University of Oxford. Alex graduated from Harvard College Phi Beta Kappa and with highest honors in psychology where he focused his studies and research on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie unconscious race, ethnic, and gender bias, and the effects of these biases on courtroom procedures. Alex has been named to Forbes’ List of 30 Under 30 for Law & Policy. The son of Dominican and Cuban immigrants, Alex was raised in Union City, NJ.

A Rhodes scholar who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard, Diaz manages Google’s philanthropic efforts in response to global crises, providing funding and volunteers to innovative nonprofits on the frontlines.

Founder of Ecologic Institute, is currently Senior Fellow at Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS Potsdam) and the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Canada, non-executive Director of the Fundação Oceano Azul, Portugal, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science and Adjunct Professor of German Studies at Duke University. In 2015, he was Visiting Scholar at the MIT. His research focuses on the theory and practice of think tanks and how they function in different political systems, the interactions among policy domains and international relations, and global governance on environment, resources, climate and energy.

Anote Tong was President of the Republic of Kiribati having served the maximum three term limit between 2003 to 2016. During his terms in office he was responsible for drawing international focus of attention tothe human dimension of climate change by highlighting the existential threat faced by his people and those of other vulnerable countries on the frontline of the impacts of climate change, many of which are in the Pacific Region.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) projections ofsea level rise will render these island nations uninhabitable even submerged well within the century and President Tong has been campaigning for credible options for securing the future of thesecommunities. He was responsible for declaring what was then the largest marine protected area when he closed off more than 400 thousand sq. km of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) in 2008 from any extractiveindustries. PIPA has since been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. For his advocacy work on climate change and ocean conservation during his terms in office and since retiring from office, Anote Tong has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, was awarded the Sun HakPeace Prize in 2015, the Peter Benchley Award, the Edmund Hilary Award and a number of other acknowledgements of his work.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Canterbury, NZ, his Masters in Economic from the London School of Economics and an Honorary Doctorate in Engineering from The National Pukyong University, South Korea and an Honorary Doctorate in Law from the University of the South Pacific, Fiji.