Allan J. "Alonzo" Wind is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), having worked off and on with the Agency primarily overseas on diplomatic assignments from 1990 to 2019 in the Peru, Nicaragua, Angola, Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan and South Africa and the Southern Africa Regional Missions. In these roles he provided oversight to U.S. government foreign aid development and humanitarian assistance, and supported U.S. Ambassadors as their senior development officer on multiple U.S. Embassy Country Teams.
He previously worked as the Global Programme Coordinator for the International Save the Children Alliance Secretariat and as a Country Director and Health Sector Coordinator for different nonprofit private voluntary organizations including CARE and PLAN International in a range of countries including Ecuador, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic and the United Kingdom.
Mr. Wind began his career as a Rural Public Health U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador from 1980-1982, where he was widely known as "Doctor Alonzo." The Alonzo nickname stuck throughout life in many countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
He graduated from the University of Chicago. He is originally a New Yorker, and as a high schooler he was a "subway rat" attending the famous Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. There he studied creative writing for two years with Frank McCourt. He has always been an avid science fiction fan and sometime writer, and notes that writing science fiction and creative writing under Frank was invaluable for future U.S. government work.
Mr. Wind took up the role of Mission Director in early 2022 for an international humanitarian assistance nongovernmental agency in the occupied Palestinian territory, based in East Jerusalem and with frequent travel to Gaza and the West Bank. As a result of the war in Gaza, he left Jerusalem in late December 2023, determined to be a force for advocacy and humanitarian assistance back in the United States.
He also serves on the Boards of Directors of different non-governmental organizations, including Hunger Relief International, supporting any way he can their efforts with the neediest in Guatemala and Haiti.