Tom Garofalo

Consultant, New America Foundation

Tom Garofalo is a consultant to the New America Foundation's U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative, and a frequent contributor to The Havana Note. His work on the initiative in 2009 and 2010 follows a decade managing programs on three continents with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ overseas relief and development agency.

Garofalo represented CRS in Israel and the Palestinian Territories from 2005 to 2008. He directed a multi-million dollar program of emergency assistance, development support, and U.S. advocacy efforts on behalf of poor and vulnerable people in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. .

From 2001 to 2005, Garofalo served as CRS representative in the former Yugoslavia, managing programs fostering citizen participation in the design and delivery of social services across the Balkans.

Garofalo directed CRS’ Cuba program from 1998 to 2001, during which time he led a dramatic expansion in the CRS program delivering food and medicine to Caritas Cuba. During his tenure Caritas Cuba also established an historic private agricultural development program in Matanzas and helped facilitate a historic home and away series between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban national team.

With CRS, Garofalo also managed emergency response programs in post-conflict East Timor and Kosovo, and provided communications training and media relations support in complex emergencies such as Angola and Rwanda, and some twenty other countries.

He holds a joint Master’s degree in Latin American Studies and Communication from the University of Texas at Austin (1994), and a bachelor’s in Philosophy from Georgetown University (1987).