Juanita M. Adames became Trickle Up’s Technical Assistance Specialist for the Refugee Affairs team in 2021. Her work is to design technical assistance curriculums and implement trainings that builds institutions and organizations’ capacities to deliver the Graduation Approach for refugees and other people affected by displacement.

Juanita has ten years' experience as an international development practitioner, working primarily in and with at-conflict or post conflict communities in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. With a strong background in gender and social inclusion, she is passionate about ensuring human rights and context specific knowledge are infused into program design, implementation, and evaluation to maximize the social cohesion and success of initiatives. A peace builder and human rights advocate, she works to build diverse coalitions that provide sustainable and cost-effective solutions to humanitarian and displaced population support initiatives.

Before joining Trickle Up in 2021, Juanita managed international education projects in Myanmar and Afghanistan for the United States Embassies in Kabul and Yangon. She further assisted in building staff and beneficiary capacities in gender and social inclusion for conflict resolution and social cohesion.

Prior to that, Juanita supported various civic engagement and political participation projects at the global and national levels in the Middle East. She further supported business development and human rights training efforts across seven regions of the world, revamped a sub-grant implementation and monitoring system for a global tech for civil society project, provided macroeconomic and socio-political research on anti-human trafficking and modern slavery initiatives and oversaw research and humanitarian response projects during her three years of field work in Amman, Jordan.