Samara Andrade is ACE’s Development Director. She is a senior global health leader and long-term consultant to the United Nations with over 20 years of experience leading complex, multi-country initiatives across health systems, gender equity, and community development. As Co-Founder and Principal Strategist of Juniper Spark, she advises nonprofits, UN agencies, and social impact organizations on fundraising, strategy, Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL), partnerships, and organizational effectiveness to drive measurable impact.
Samara has held leadership roles with WomenLift Health, CureBlindness and SightLife International. At WomenLift Health, she led leadership development programs supporting mid- to senior-level women working in global health to expand their influence and impact. At CureBlindness, she oversaw programmatic strategy across Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa to strengthen health systems, with a focus on primary care, prevention, and policy and advocacy. She held a similar role with SightLife International, which merged with CureBlindness, where she also led partnerships with ESG funders, national Ministries of Health, and nonprofits to deliver integrated, people-centered services for rural communities.
Her earlier career with the United Nations spanned over a decade across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S., where she advanced global policy and programming in gender equity, women’s health, and mental health, and supported large-scale partnerships with governments, donors, and multilateral institutions.
Samara is a WomenLift Health Leadership Journey Fellow (2022) and Global Leadership Forum Fellow (GLF VII, 2018), and is deeply committed to advancing inclusive, equity-centered leadership. She is also Co-Founder of Feet on the Ground, a nonprofit supporting trauma-exposed populations through mental health and somatic practices. She
She holds a Master of International Policy Studies from the Middlebury Institute for International Studies and a Bachelor of International Business from San Diego State University, with a Minor in Spanish, Portuguese and Marketing, as well as a Certificate in Environmental, Social and Governance Strategy from University of Colorado Leeds School of Business.