Cole Giannone
Cole Giannone (they/them) is the Director of Cole Giannone Consulting LLC providing capacity building, stakeholder engagement, system planning, project management and training to organizations and communities across the country. Cole recently worked at Amazon as the Student Programs Senior Program Manager for LGBTQ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Prior to this, they acted as Senior Advisor for Youth Homelessness at the NYC Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services. In partnership with many stakeholders, Cole secured NYC a $15M Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program award from HUD. They co-led the planning and implementation process resulting in NYC’s first ever plan to prevent and end youth homelessness: Opportunity Starts with a Home. At the start of their tenure in the Mayor’s Office, Cole coordinated the Mayor’s Youth Homelessness Taskforce, a cross-sector stakeholder community of 82 people representing government agencies, nonprofit providers, advocates and youth with lived experience aiming to prevent and end youth homelessness in NYC. Cole was responsible for overseeing the development, implementation and expansion of interagency initiatives focused on addressing youth homelessness.
Prior to this, they spent seven years at the Ali Forney Center, a runaway homeless youth provider in NYC serving LGBTQ youth. There they started work as a frontline staff and left as the Director of Program Evaluation, Training and Advocacy helping to manage $8M in public funding.
Cole has a B.S. in Communications from NYU and a M.S. in Nonprofit Management from the New School.