Cemil ‘Jim’ Alyanak
Vice-President Communications and Strategic Initiatives
Joined RSI in 2018
- 40+ years leading global public interest campaigns
- Recognized international convener, facilitator and mediator
- Indigenous and grassroots engagement experience on six continents
- Co-creator of RSI's CRAFT and Global Risk Census
- Active involvement in operational emergency response
- Broadcast documentary filmmaker and published professional photographer
- Non-fiction and fiction published author notably: 'The Critical Century'
Cemil ‘Jim’ Alyanak joined Risk Sciences International (RSI) in 2018 and serves as Vice-President, Communications and Strategic Initiatives. In this senior leadership role, he leads RSI’s risk communications practice, drives cross-cutting initiatives, advances strategic in-house projects, and expands the company’s international presence and partnerships.
As creator of CRAFT (the Collective Risk Action Framework and Toolkit) and the Global Risk Census, Alyanak has helped establish RSI as a global innovator in stakeholder- and constituency-centered risk engagement. His expertise in perception analysis and communications strategy enables RSI to address complex challenges across public health, regulatory affairs, environmental risk, and humanitarian crisis response. From pandemic-era messaging to multistakeholder workshops and regulator support, his work consistently focuses on aligning message, audience, and outcomes that can be measured.
Recognized for his ability to navigate cross-cultural contexts and indigenous knowledge systems, Alyanak has worked extensively on in-region projects with local and indigenous communities worldwide. This grassroots experience informs his current portfolio, which includes collaboration and consensus-building projects that unite stakeholders and constituencies in addressing both shared and similar risks. He also provides regional, federal, and international policy guidance to companies and governing bodies seeking to design risk-informed policies, instruments, and frameworks.
Drawing on extensive emergency preparedness and disaster response experience, Alyanak now leads RSI’s Disaster and Emergency-related projects, advancing practical, risk-based solutions to complex emergencies and strengthening resilience across sectors.
Pre-RSI
Cemil Alyanak — known to friends and colleagues as Jim — has spent more than four decades at the intersection of global communication, policy, and multilateral frameworks, with deep roots in development, humanitarian, and environmental fields. His career has been dedicated to advancing public interest causes through strategic storytelling, constituent and stakeholder engagement, and high-impact convening.
From conflict zones to refugee camps and urban slums in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, to disadvantaged regions within OECD countries, Jim has worked in some of the world’s most challenging environments. He has collaborated with presidents, parliaments, secretaries general, and senior institutional and corporate leaders, often in the context of urgent health, disaster, and humanitarian crises. At the same time, he has remained grounded in community engagement, leading projects in disadvantaged regions and using communication and reconciliation as means to restore dignity and agency.
Before joining RSI, Jim led an international public interest communications group that supported governments, UN agencies, and civil society organizations worldwide. His work encompassed institutional diagnostics, public-private partnership mediation, urban alliance building, and perception-based stakeholder mapping. Among the organizations he supported were the World Bank, WHO, UN-Habitat, and UNICEF. His leadership in launching the World Urban Campaign, backed by United Cities and Local Governments and other global partners, illustrates his ability to unify diverse stakeholders around a shared message. Jim also directed multiple global campaigns for WHO, ILO, IOM, UNHCR, The Global Fund, UNAIDS, the United Nations, World YWCA, and many others. He played a pivotal role in guiding the World AIDS Campaign’s transition from a multilateral initiative into a major civil society movement charged with upholding the principles of the 2001 UNGASS Declaration on HIV/AIDS.
A recognized authority on cultural and perception analysis, Jim authored the Overview of Communications and Perception Analysis (2nd edition, 2014), a practical manual for practitioners navigating the space between narrative and data. He credits Professor Malik, an early pioneer of communications analysis, as a formative influence in shaping his approach.
In parallel, Jim has been active as a documentary filmmaker and photographer, producing multimedia work to raise awareness of risks that are often invisible or misunderstood. His storytelling has spanned institutional reform in Tajikistan, disaster recovery in Haiti, indigenous food safety in Northern Canada, and stakeholder engagement at international airports.
Jim was born in Montréal and raised worldwide—from the Arctic to the Sahara—by a project-to-project engineer father and a language and philosophy-teaching mother.
Alyanak, moderating Nobel Peace Laureate Rajendra Pachauri and Jean-François Bach, Distinguished Secretary Emeritus of the French Academy of Science during a Cities and Climate Change session during a global conference of life sciences in Lyon, France.
Cemil ‘Jim’ Alyanak at work
Case studies associated with Cemil ‘Jim’ Alyanak
Publications associated with Cemil ‘Jim’ Alyanak
Diagnosis of manganism and manganese neurotoxicity: A workshop report.
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Expert editorials associated with Cemil ‘Jim’ Alyanak
Outside RSI
Beyond his formal roles, Cemil Alyanak is a lifelong communicator, explorer, educator, and storyteller. His pursuits reflect a deep belief in lived experience, visual narrative, and the power of communication to effect social change.
An accomplished documentary filmmaker and trained photographer, Cemil has documented humanitarian and environmental efforts across dozens of countries, capturing scenes from mountaintops, squatter settlements, and remote Arctic towns. Many of the photos featured across RSI’s platforms are from his own lens, including portraits of resilience and fieldwork in places like Peru, Zambia, and Albania.
He is also a published novelist, authoring The Tuk50 Protocol, which chronicles his solo motorcycle expedition to the Arctic Ocean. Cemil was the first individual to ride both the Dempster Highway and the Inuvik–Tuktoyaktuk Highway to completion, reaching Tuktoyaktuk on two wheels. His passion for adventure motorcycling continues to serve as a metaphor for the exploratory mindset he brings to his work.
Cemil is also a licensed amateur radio operator (K3MRI), actively involved in emergency and community communications. Formerly a martial artist, whitewater rafter, and climber, he has since shifted focus to civic education—offering lectures and workshops on strategic communication, perception, and public trust in risk settings.
Whether moderating high-level panels at the World Urban Forum or sitting by a campfire with students and peers, Cemil brings the same ethos: communication as service, clarity as responsibility, and storytelling as strategy.
On the Dempster Highway, returning from Tuktoyaktuk and the Arctic Ocean. At this point we are still north of the Arctic Circle.
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