Washington, D.C., March 18, 2018. The Board of Directors of the National Whistleblower Center, the nation’s leading nonprofit advocating for whistleblowers and against corruption, has selected John Kostyack to serve as its Executive Director effective immediately. Kostyack is taking over for Stephen M. Kohn, who will now serve as Chairman of the Board. Kostyack comes from the Wind Solar Alliance, where he served as Executive Director for 4-1/2 years, and prior to that, the National Wildlife Federation, where he served as Vice President and in various other leadership positions for 20 years.
Kohn stated, “John is the right individual to lead our organization at this key juncture in its history. Whistleblowers are playing a critical role in rooting out corruption, thanks to the work of the National Whistleblower Center and our partner organizations. But there is so much more that can be accomplished. With his track record of effective leadership of nonprofits and his policy and legal expertise, John has what we need to take the NWC’s important work to a much bigger stage.”
Kostyack stated, “I could not be more excited about the opportunity that the Board of Directors has given me to lead the National Whistleblower Center. I greatly look forward to working with the NWC staff, partners and volunteers, especially Steve Kohn, who is perhaps the most respected whistleblower attorney in the world and will continue providing legal and policy expertise in his role as Chairman of the NWC board.”
“The National Whistleblower Center is poised to ramp up activity in three critical areas: providing legal expertise to whistleblowers, increasing the public’s understanding of the benefits of whistleblowers, and strengthening whistleblower reward laws. We have an opportunity to make immediate progress in the current Congress by helping to enact H.R. 864, the bipartisan Wildlife Conservation & Anti-Trafficking Act. This bill would not only deploy whistleblowers to help stop the illegal trade in rhinos, elephants and other endangered wildlife, fisheries and forests. It also would provide restitution to the communities that suffer most from these crimes,” Kostyack added.
Founded in 1988, NWC has earned its reputation as the top whistleblower advocacy organization by building the legal framework that protects the anonymity of whistleblowers and allows them to be rewarded financially when their information results in civil or criminal penalties. In 2016, NWC was selected as a Grand Prize Winner in the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, an initiative of U.S. Agency for International Development in partnership with the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and TRAFFIC, for designing a transnational reporting system to fight corruption by incentivizing insiders to securely report wildlife crime. Since then, NWC has provided critical information and tools to whistleblowers and partner organizations working to rectify crimes related to endangered wildlife, ocean fisheries and tropical forests.
Meet the National Whistleblower Center’s New Executive Director
