Ann E. Christiano
Senior Communications Officer
Ann Christiano, M.P.A.P., develops the overarching communication strategy for the Foundation’s Vulnerable Populations Portfolio. In this role, she identifies the communications resources grantees need and disseminates information about new initiatives that take a fresh approach to long-standing health and health care problems. These projects include Playworks (formerly known as Sports4Kids), Community Partnerships for Older Adults, the Corporation for Supportive Housing, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Local Funding Partnerships program, and Children’s Futures. As Christiano notes: “We look at how all the programs in the Vulnerable Populations Portfolio relate to the whole. The initiatives we support explore the social context in which people live and how that context—such as housing, education or poverty—affects their health.”
Having joined RWJF in 1995, Christiano believes that the Foundation’s programs have the potential to make a lasting, fundamental difference in health nationwide. She envisions a communication strategy that “encourages policy-makers and the media to think differently about health and help us make a difference for the most vulnerable in society.” Before assuming her role as senior communications officer for the Vulnerable Populations Team, she directed the Foundation’s Connect project, an effort that successfully builds relationships between RWJF grantees and their members of Congress through visits to Capitol Hill, briefings by RWJF grantees, and Congressional site visits.
Previously, Christiano worked for the Washington Business Group on Health, the Institute for Business Technology, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is a graduate of the 2002 class of Leadership New Jersey, and sits on the board of the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers, and is an active volunteer with La Compagnia de’ Columbari. She earned a master’s in public affairs and politics from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University and a bachelor of arts in journalism from the University of Maryland at College Park, College of Journalism.
Raised in Bucks County, Penn., she now lives in Cadwalader Heights in Trenton, N.J., with her husband, Anthony, an attorney. They have two children. Actively engaged in the Cadwalader Heights community, she has helped organize the Cadwalader Heights Centennial House Tour, which benefits Trenton’s Habitat for Humanity program, and has been involved in a project to restore a historically significant park. Christiano adds: “Living in the city I see every day—sometimes literally at my doorstep—the importance of the programs the Foundation funds.”