Jackie Kazantzis is the Director, Finance and Operations, at Synergos. Her professional experience runs from global corporations to community-based organizations. Jackie began her career in the private sector spending several years in the advertising industry at DDB Needham Worldwide, working on the Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Olympus and Clairol accounts, among others. She moved to the non-profit sector to become Executive Director of Gruppo Ristoratori Italiani, a national culinary education trade association. Later, she ran the New York Citizens Committee on Health Care Decisions, a grass-roots healthcare/bio-ethics nonprofit.
Jackie works to further organizational health and strategic priorities though systems improvement, leveraging of operational opportunities, diversification of funding streams and creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems. She returned to the private sector briefly as the Director of Strategic Alliances in a boutique financial planning firm, with a focus to build their foundation and non-profit client base. Most recently she was Chief Operating Officer of a century-old nonprofit social justice organization.
Jackie holds a BA from Columbia University, has done post-graduate work in foundations and grantmaking at the NYU Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising, and served for many years on the Alumnae Board of The Hewitt School in New York City.