Yotam Polizer

Yotam Polizer is the Global CEO of IsraAID – Israel’s biggest humanitarian NGO. Leading a team of 300+ currently active in 16 countries including a large-scale operation in Israel following the October 7th massacre.

IsraAID is currently supporting 16 communities across the country including Kibbutz Beeri, Nir Oz, the Nova survivors and the Bedouin villages with mental health support, education and relief.

Yotam Polizer is the 2023 Charles Bronfman award laureate.

Following the August 2021 Afghanistan crisis, Yotam and partners led an operation to evacuate 167 at risk Afghans from the hands of the Taliban. In September 2015 refugee crisis in Europe, he led IsraAID’s humanitarian mission in Lesbos, Greece, to support Syrian refugees on the island and also established IsraAID Germany, which provides long-term support for Yazidi and Syrian refugees in Germany.

During the last 15 years, Polizer has also built and led programs in Japan after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, and in South Korea to support the reintegration of North Korean defectors. He has also led missions in Nepal following the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake and in 2014 in Sierra Leone for Ebola survivors.

He has 15 years’ experience in education, humanitarian aid, and international development.

Prior to his work at IsraAID, Yotam worked in the Israeli Embassy in Nepal and was the program coordinator for Tevel Btzedek an Israeli NGO focused on long term development programs in the Himalayas.

Yotam serves on the board of directors of SID (society of international development) and the advisory board of Justserve an international service initiative.

Yotam is a Schusterman fellow, he graduated from Tel Aviv University & Israeli Open University where he studied African studies and international relations.