Let’s Reboot the Future

Real Solidarity: Mary Ann Clements

Reboot the Future

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Mary Ann Clements, Co-CEO of ADD International, has spent her whole life refusing to accept that "this is just the way the world is." As a child in a small Oxfordshire village, she felt every injustice keenly and couldn't fathom why the grown-ups had all given up.

That refusal became her work. At ADD, a participatory grant maker for disability justice across Africa and Asia, she led a full-scale rethink: ending the old programmes, handing the decisions to the disabled movements ADD exists to serve, and swapping "we know best" for genuine solidarity. Plenty called it naïve. She is honest about what was hard, and what helped get her through. 

Mary Ann believes we need to be brave and hopeful. She has a photo on her desk of herself, aged four, dancing in the garden, a reminder to bring that free spirit into the messy, serious business of changing the world.

Read our blog about this episode 'Turning the Ship' here.

More about Mary Ann:

Mary Ann Clements is a writer, facilitator and coach with over 25 years' international experience in social justice and organisational change. Most recently Co-CEO of ADD International, she helped transform it from a traditional NGO into a participatory grant-maker advancing disability justice, and was Co-Director of Healing Solidarity, which engaged over 3,500 people in reimagining global development through equity, care and collective action. 

She shares reflections on leadership, power and change through her Substack, How We Transform , and at maryannclements.com, and co-authored Red Tents: Unravelling Our Past and Weaving a Shared Future (2021). 

She is currently working on her first novel.


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