Director, U.S. Emergency Response
As Americares director of U.S. emergency response, Mariel Fonteyn leads responses to hurricanes, wildfires, floods and other sudden-onset disasters in the United States. She is responsible for coordinating large-scale deliveries of medicines and supplies, deploying and managing emergency response field teams and restoring health services for disaster-affected communities.
During her tenure with Americares, Fonteyn has been on the frontlines of dozens of emergencies including Hurricane Ian in Florida in 2022, flooding in Kentucky in 2022, hurricanes Florence and Michael in 2018 and Hurricane Laura in 2020. Fonteyn has also supported Americares global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fonteyn began her work with Americares in 2018, when she joined as an emergency preparedness specialist. In this role, she was responsible for developing and implementing disaster preparedness programs that provided health centers around the world with the tools to better prepare for future emergencies and continue to operate despite power outages, facility damages and other post-disaster obstacles. She was then promoted to associate director of emergency preparedness, where she worked on the launch of the Climate Resilience for Frontline Clinics project—a groundbreaking, multi-year effort to help community health centers and free clinics protect low-income and uninsured patients from the health threats posed by heatwaves, wildfires and hurricanes.
Prior to joining Americares, Fonteyn served as a project coordinator for the nonprofit organization All Hands and Hearts in Texas, where she provided technical assistance on Hurricane Harvey cleanup sites. She also served as a team leader for All Hands and Hearts’ response to the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, where she supervised relief teams tasked with rebuilding schools destroyed in the disaster.
Prior to that, Fonteyn worked as an emergency planner for the State of Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services, where she was responsible for developing emergency response plans and preparedness trainings for community leadership as well as establishing and maintaining partnerships with other local, state and federal response agencies. Fonteyn also served as an emergency management specialist for the State of Alaska’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, where she worked as a program manager for Alaska’s Intrastate Mutual Aid System.
She earned a master’s degree in international development from the Brussels School of International Studies and holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Alaska, Anchorage.