Molly Schmidt joined the American Red Cross, Pacific Islands Region, as the Chief Operating Officer in 2024 and has recently stepped into the role as Interim Regional Chief Executive Officer.

She has 15 years of experience working with international NGOs and community-based nonprofits on organizational development. Molly served in leadership roles with the Girl Scouts of Hawai`i, Girl Scouts of Northern California, and where she has led operations overseeing multi-department fiscal management, volunteer recruitment and retention, team capacity training, monitoring and evaluations, risk mitigation and compliance, communications, IT and system support, and facility management.

Her passions for service to communities in need during disasters were forged when she was with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Southeast Asia Regional Delegation for 4 years post-tsunami. She worked alongside many Partner National Societies (PNS), including American Red Cross colleagues, focusing on health in disasters and capacity building of community-based first aid programs in RCRC national societies around the region. Disaster preparedness, response, and recovery were woven into the health emergencies work she led post SARS and during H1N1 Bird Flu that was rampant in Southeast Asia. At the IFRC, she coordinated an inter-agency collaboration communication network with all PNS, United Nations, WHO and other INGOs to share rapid developments.

Molly has had the pleasure of serving on two nonprofit boards where she helped them to scale and adopt nonprofit best practices and leadership training. Schmidt is active in the community as Secretary and President-Elect of the Windward Rotary Club of Oahu in Kailua and is a (soon to be) Cohort 9 graduate of the YWCA Patsy T. Mink Leadership Alliance. She is a Troop Leader for Girl Scouts of Hawaiʻi’s Troop 193, serves on the grant review committee for the Women’s Fund Hawaiʻi and is a member of Hawaiʻi’s Organization of Women Leaders. She is a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta, GA, a Hawaiʻi resident and lives with her partner of 21 years, 2 teenage kids, a black cat, and a golden retriever.