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My guests today are Juanita Adames & Michelle Sucameli (Adames Global)
Juanita M. Adames, Chief Strategy Officer at Adames Global, writes and works on one question: what does it actually take to make change stick?
Over 15+ years, she’s led humanitarian and development programs across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia - directing multi-country portfolios exceeding $75M, building public-private partnerships from the ground up, and operating in some of the world’s most unforgiving environments. Post-conflict Uganda and DRC. Fragile states like El Salvador, Kenya, and Myanmar. Places where the systems are broken and the stakes are real.
She’s held senior roles at IREX, Trickle Up, World Learning, and Counterpart International, and worked directly with USAID, the US State Department, the World Bank, UN agencies and philanthropic institutions. Along the way, she’s partnered with multinational institutions, philanthropic organizations, economic development actors, and public sector leaders on everything from democratic governance and economic mobility to crisis response and systems reform. She knows how institutional machinery works, and exactly where it doesn’t.
That’s the expertise she brings: organizational leadership, stakeholder engagement, and the hard-won ability to scale impact across fragmented systems, competing priorities, and the kind of bureaucratic friction that derails most efforts before they start.
Now, as CSO at Adames Global, Juanita works at the intersection of systems change, inclusive governance, and organizational transformation. Her work is for practitioners including INGOs, CSOs social enterprises, corporate leaders navigating ESG and global citizenship; who are done with theory and ready to build something that actually lasts.
Michelle Adames-Sucameli, Chief Executive Officer of Adames Global, leads the firm’s work at the intersection of strategy, systems transformation, and global impact, helping individuals and organizations navigate complexity, scale responsibly, and build institutions designed to endure.
With more than 15 years of experience across international development, strategic partnerships, communications, and operations, Michelle has led high-impact initiatives spanning government, nonprofit, and private sector environments across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Her work has focused on translating ambitious ideas into executable strategy for media and business partners, building cross-sector coalitions, and strengthening organizations operating in politically, socially, and operationally complex environments.
Over the course of her career, Michelle has worked alongside multinational institutions, philanthropic organizations, media actors, and public sector leaders to advance programs tied to democratic governance, economic mobility, civic engagement, crisis response, and systems reform. She brings deep expertise in organizational leadership, stakeholder engagement, and navigating the realities of scaling impact across fragmented systems and competing priorities.
As CEO of Adames Global, Michelle focuses on helping organizations move beyond performative strategy into durable execution. Aligning their partners communications, operations, partnerships, and leadership around long-term institutional resilience. Michelle’s work explores how organizations can remain adaptive in moments of disruption while still delivering measurable, community-centered impact.
Whether advising mission-driven organizations, supporting executive leadership teams, thought leaders, or helping companies navigate growth and global complexity, Michelle brings a practitioner’s perspective grounded in operational reality, cross-cultural experience, and a belief that resilient institutions are intentionally built — not accidentally sustained.
I had the good fortune of discovering the work of Adames Global on Instagram, where they are providing key geopolitical analysis on visible current events. They take a true systems approach to their work, and in particular I appreciate how they are helping the public make sense of how US foreign policy is upending the old world order and ushering in something new. We get into all that and so much more in this episode, so strap in and enjoy!
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Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Sarah Wilson about living “fully and beautifully” in collapse:
