Reflecting on 24 Years of Crisis Care at Direct Relief

Reflecting on 24 Years of
Crisis Care at Direct Relief

Thomas Tighe Leaving Santa Barbara–Based,
Globally Impactful Nonprofit Aid Agency

By Matt Kettmann | December 19, 2024

Origin stories don’t get any more pure of intention than that of Direct Relief, which was started in 1948 by an Estonian immigrant named William Zimdin. After escaping Hitler’s clutches during World War II, he settled in Santa Barbara and started sending Eastern Europeans food, clothing, and medicine from his own pantry so they could rebuild their lives.

When he died three years later, his friend, the Hungarian immigrant Dezso “Dennis” Karczag — also a survivor of the Nazi regime whom Zimdin rescued from a refugee camp — carried the mission forward, expanding efforts to help disaster and war zone survivors across the planet. By the time Karczag died at age 96 in the year 2000, Direct Relief was the nonprofit darling of nonprofit-saturated Santa Barbara, a globally significant organization molded by hometown grassroots. 

Today, a quarter-century later, Direct Relief — which opened its new headquarters by the airport five years ago — remains a Santa Barbara darling. But it’s risen up the reputation ranks considerably, and is now considered one of the nonprofit stars of the world.

It’s the fifth largest charity in the United States, responsible so far for distributing more than $16 billion in medicines and supplies and $350 million in grants. That’s gone to 136 countries to date and now all 50 American states, following the domestic initiatives that Hurricane Katrina triggered in 2005. (That’s when they dropped “International” from the name.) 

Direct Relief is often one of the first responders to increasingly worse natural disasters and dangerous war zones, including the ongoing war in Ukraine, where the organization’s support is quickly rising past $1.5 billion. And it is never reliant on taxpayer funds, doing more good work than most governments can fathom supported solely by private donations.

The past two decades of achievements are largely thanks to Thomas Tighe, who went from running the Peace Corps to becoming the head of Direct Relief in October 2000. After 24 years of fostering the nonprofit’s staggering growth, strategic modernization, and groundbreaking expansion across our own country, he’s stepping down at the end of this year.

I met Thomas soon after he arrived in Santa Barbara, and we quickly realized that we’d attended the same high school in San Jose (Bellarmine College Preparatory, which he left after two years to graduate closer to his home at Palo Alto High). Our all-boys Jesuit school’s motto was “Men for Others,” and we were implored to try to give back as much as we could. 

While I’ve tried to pull that off here and there, Tighe turned that motto into his entire life and career. Such dedication to doing well is admirable and inspirational, and all the more critical in a time when the world doesn’t seem to be going so well. 

I thought a chat with this globe-jumping visionary might work well for this week’s annual Peace on Earth issue. I was not disappointed, and I emerged from an hour-long video call with Tighe feeling much better about the world. I hope reading this interview — which has been condensed and streamlined for clarity — will do the same for all of you. 

What brought your family to Palo Alto?  I was an Army brat. My dad was a West Point grad. He was killed in Vietnam when I was 6, and that’s where we were living when he shipped out. My mom took the $10,000 VA benefit and bought a little house in Palo Alto. It was not like Palo Alto today. It was a small, sleepy college town. 

You volunteered for the Peace Corps after graduating from law school and passing the bar. Who let you do that?  It would be hard to do now. I didn’t come out of school with a big debt load. Public schools were much more affordable at the time. I knew that by going to a law firm, there was a pretty well-established path that you grind for seven years straight. 

But I hadn’t really done anything before that, so the Peace Corps seemed like, if not then, then never. That took me on a much different path.

What drew you to Direct Relief?  It was the work, which was a combination of things that I had a background in. The Peace Corps was in 90 countries with about 7,000 people serving, so there was a sense of dynamism, of evolving internationally. That dovetailed with what Direct Relief did, and they also had a focus on health, which is a big part of what I did on the Veterans Affairs Committee [his pre-Peace Corps job]. 

There’s no one lower on an organizational chart in Washington, D.C., than a Peace Corps volunteer, but it’s a great job. It’s different from being a tourist. It’s different from being there to do business. It’s really there to work alongside people, and that was very enriching and rewarding.

I saw many of the same dimensions in Direct Relief. But it had the flexibility of being a private organization. You could move faster. You could make quicker decisions. 

How has the relief work changed since you were hired?  The increase in frequency and intensity and duration of these emergencies has been consistent throughout the last 24 years. They’re just statistically bigger, last longer, and are more devastating. Being able to play a productive role in all of those events allowed us to think bigger and do more, but never lose that sense of being from a small town that’s prone to its own emergencies. You’re never too big for your own britches, and knowing that has been consistently helpful for Direct Relief. 

Santa Barbara has certainly seen our share of tragedy since you arrived. Your family even survived the Montecito mudslide. What perspective does that provide?  We think there’s a Santa Barbara bubble, and that’s true, but it’s also a microcosm of what’s happening in the world. 

We’ve had one of the largest fires in history since I’ve lived here. We’ve had large loss of life in Santa Barbara from the mudslide right before the tragic loss on the dive boat [the Conception]. We’ve had mass shootings. There was a mass shooting at the Goleta post office. There was a mass shooting in Isla Vista. There was a mass casualty event when someone plowed into a bunch of students within two miles of where I sit.

Those are great reminders that these big events that you hear about in the world are just like the ones that happen locally. Even though we’ve been able to do more at Direct Relief, I don’t think we’ve lost that basic mindset that was here long before I arrived. 

How has your role changed?  It’s just dealing with bigger things, and the way to do more was unavoidably through a systematic approach. We were early adopters of technology for programmatic purposes, and we made a big investment in trying to have a software platform that was compatible with industry. 

We recognized that early in 2009 we should have the same basic technology platform as the largest healthcare companies in the world. That allowed us to become accredited in each of the 50 U.S. states to distribute prescription medications, which no nonprofit had ever done before. 

Counterintuitively, the more we did in the U.S. allowed us to do much more internationally. If you can’t do it in your own country, you have no business doing it in someone else’s country. 

Can you do it in Santa Barbara, where you live? If the answer is no, it’s an early gut check. The more we did here with the Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics and Doctors Without Walls gave great insights. 

Has the hyper-politicization of everything affected operations?  You have to have a sharper antenna. Anything can [be] and is politicized, but we’re apolitical, and having a record before the hyper-political environment we’re in now was helpful. The fact that we’re not relying on government funding was also helpful. We exist because people want it to exist.

Everybody needs help at some point, and we try to do it respectfully and thoughtfully and consistently. I think that has kind of carried the day, even in the Middle East, where we’ve been able to do a lot, even in Gaza, comparatively. But it’s only because we’ve been doing it with the permission of the Israelis for the past decade, and they knew us. They knew there was no agenda. 

We have to navigate the realities of the world and the laws and the sanctions and all that comes up in the political realm. We’ve gotten good at that too, whether it’s Syria or Ukraine or Cuba or anyplace else. 

Even in the U.S. Each state has its own particular rules and requirements, so we have to navigate that every day as well.

You have a great deal of resources, but I can’t imagine that you can help everyone. That must be some heartbreaking calculus.  There’s a viability reality. There are places, like Sudan, where the pressing need is enormous, but our ability to navigate through it hasn’t been viable. In certain times, we just have to recognize that, as much as we want to help, as much as there are good people trapped in these circumstances, it’s beyond our control to ensure the security of the supply chain. 

We’ve become good because we work with local people. It would be like if someone from Germany flew in here and wanted to help after the mudslide, they’d be asked to leave. Coming in to support a group that’s already in existence, whether it’s the Bucket Brigade or something like that, that’s our approach. 

Do you have a project that you’re most proud of?  Well, most of my job is to not worry about the successes, but focus on the problems to fix. But there have been so many examples, whether it was in Haiti or Indonesia after the tsunami in 2004, where it became clear that Direct Relief was in a position to provide something that was really needed, and provide it fast and reliably in a low-key way. 

That’s been true in every major emergency, but there are other efforts, like bringing pediatric cancer drugs to Africa. They had an 80-plus-percent fatality rate for childhood cancers, where it’s an 80-plus-percent survival rate in the U.S. These are not new drugs. It’s not fancy therapy. It’s just diagnosis and treatment. It fundamentally works. 

Those are really rewarding and a reminder that the marketplace is great for innovation. It fosters competition. It also has a very hard edge, so a lot of things that are good human decisions aren’t great for businesses. But working with businesses to encourage them to participate in places just because it’s the right thing to do has allowed us to do things like the pediatric cancers program in eight countries in Africa. It’s always inspiring to know that we can do better. 

What will be Thomas Tighe’s legacy at Direct Relief?  I hope more positive than negative! The approach, for me, has always been important. The point is to help people in a thoughtful, respectful way.

That counts more than just cranking up the statistics, which has brought recognition to Direct Relief and supports our programmatic activity. But that’s really not why I came to work here, and I don’t think it’s why anyone else came to work here. 

If it ever ceases to be about the human element, we would have lost something significant despite having had much bigger numbers. There’s kind of a soulfulness and good old-fashioned Santa Barbara vibe to Direct Relief’s approach that I have always appreciated.

So, Santa Barbara brings soul, but does it still make sense to be headquartered in such an expensive place?  For some practical reasons, not really. You wouldn’t set up a major distribution hub in Santa Barbara, of all places, if you were looking for cost and access to ports and everything.

But on balance, it’s been a great place, in part because of the university, in part because of the interesting mix of people with different experiences who live in Santa Barbara. It’s a small town in many ways, but it’s a melting pot of people with a lot of other experiences.

You’ve raised four kids here and built a life in Santa Barbara. What do you do for fun when you’re not working?  The perfect day for me is if I can go to the beach, walk the dogs, go surfing when there’s a rare swell that’s not too crowded, and just kind of hang out. It takes an hour or two for me in Santa Barbara to feel like I’ve been on vacation. The quality of life, natural beauty, and the people have been a tremendous source of energy for me and the organization for years.

Maybe it’s getting a little shinier than it was when I got here, but that’s okay. What makes Santa Barbara the special place it is, that’s pretty well ingrained, and I don’t think that’s likely to change. It’s been a special place.

Why leave Direct Relief now?  There would have never been a great time to leave, because I love the job. It’s very rewarding and enriching. But everyone transitions at some point, so now is as good a time as ever, because there’s good momentum, there’s a good team in place, and there’s strong financial stability. 

It’s bittersweet, for sure, but I still have a lot of gas in the tank. I still have an interest in service. I just don’t know what exactly that’s going to look like. 

Who will replace you?  The board is conducting a national search and trying to find someone who fits all the requirements. I’m sure it will be someone better — younger, taller, funnier, cooler, better-looking, more well-spoken, and I will applaud that. But I don’t know who it is. I’m hopeful for someone who really appreciates all of those things that have been so meaningful to me. 

It sounds like you’re not retiring, so what do you hope to do next?  I don’t know what the next year is going to be. I’ll take a little time, but not too much. I’m just hopeful there is something out there for me that is rewarding and meaningful where I can feel like I’m contributing at a time when there’s a lot of need in the world and a lot of divisiveness.

My experience has been that people are great. I only meet people who are trying to do something good every day. It’s given me this weirdly positive distorted view of humanity. We’re not just the divisive political environment that’s been reported at length. That’s true to some degree, but I don’t see it in my day-to-day life. 

It’s refreshing to hear your optimism because, over the last quarter-century, it doesn’t feel like things have gotten better.  I’m going to Ukraine for my 12th time later this week. Being there in the winter, trying to hearken back to what it was like 75 years ago, in the midst of World War II, when the whole world was at war? 

We had a whole generation of people who, after high school, went off and spent four years fighting. We damn nearly blew up the world with nuclear weapons. There was pervasive racism and segregation. If you look at that and you ask, “Have we made progress?” We have. 

There’s still hunger, but there’s less. There’s still inadequate opportunities for a lot of people, but there are more opportunities for more people. The overall length of life has been extended. 

We forget sometimes to ask, “Is there progress overall?” And I think the answer is unquestionably, “Yes.” 

What will you be doing in Ukraine?  We’ve got a bunch of stuff in Kyiv and Lviv as well. It’s like a history book. The soldiers who were injured on the eastern front get on the medical train and come to the west, where they can receive more care without the constant fear of attack. It’s something that should be relegated to the black-and-white pictures in a history book, so it’s jarring to see it unfolding. 

This is sort of like California trying to take on the Russian army. It’s David versus Goliath, but there’s no quit in the Ukrainians. It’s been extraordinary to see the mobilization effort and the love of country. It’s not something you see growing up in Palo Alto. You’re not forced to make those types of choices, but people there are making them every day.

Will you miss international work if it’s not part of your next job?  I’ll miss it a little bit, but there’s plenty here in the States — issues and causes that are really important that we’ve learned a lot about here at Direct Relief. 

Our headquarters was one of the first permitted microgrids [an independent power system] in the continental United States. The effort to make sure that other nonprofits doing important work have that same stability, that’s been very rewarding. 

There’s a huge opportunity philanthropically that’s different from government subsidies. We’ve had the opportunity to learn from examples all around the country and the world, so I’m hopeful to put some of that to decent use, even if it’s just here in Santa Barbara.

For more information, see directrelief.org.