Joan Cardellino just retired from a five-decade career engaging volunteers and community forces for good. Cardellino’s vision for modern, sociocratic volunteer engagement is what got the rest of us moving.
For more than 13 years, Cardellino managed a California Hospital Association statewide network of hospital volunteer programs reaching 100,000 volunteers. Her responsibilities included production of an annual conference and educational events; staffing the state's Committee on Volunteer Services; creating new products, seminars and/or publications; regular consultations with more than 400 member hospitals; and forming and maintaining strategic alliances, joint ventures and community partnerships at the local to international levels to advance volunteerism in hospitals. Prior to her work in California, Cardellino served for 15 years as the director of volunteer resources at Abington Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania; director of training and staff development, director of youth services, and regional branch administrator for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the American National Red Cross, and service as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia.
Cardellino holds a BA in sociology from Northeastern University; a graduate business certificate in health care administration and marketing from Temple University; a graduate business certificate in leadership development from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Anderson Executive Education Center, and a certificate in fundraising from the Association of Fundraising Professionals. She has a Certified Administrator of Volunteer Services (CAVS) credential from the Association for Healthcare Volunteer Resource Professionals (AHVRP), and is an active leader of many professional associations including AL!VE (Association of Leaders in Volunteer Engagement), DOVIA Sacramento (Directors of Volunteers in Agencies), National Volunteer Caregiving Network, and the National Alliance for Volunteer Engagement.
