Sands’ In Focus Leadership Series Features Americares President and CEO Christine Squires

As part of National Preparedness Month 2025 in September, Sands welcomed Christine Squires, president and CEO of the global health and disaster relief organization Americares, as a guest speaker for the company’s In Focus Conversation Series.

In Focus provides corporate Team Members with perspectives from leaders in a variety of sectors and on topics that can inform and inspire.

Sands has worked with Americares through Sands Cares since 2020 and is a member of the organization’s Rapid Impact and Support for Emergencies (RISE) program, which provides the organization with a reliable stream of flexible funding to maintain a constant state of readiness and launch robust responses to natural disasters and humanitarian crises.

During the Sept. 23 session, Squires outlined a variety of topics including how Americares is responding to a surge in complex humanitarian crises, leadership insights she has cultivated in more than 25 years of championing humanitarian causes, and advice and anecdotes from her career.

“I started out in the retail industry and by my late 20s, I was in management – but it wasn’t fulfilling to me,” Squires said. “I was fortunate to have a mentor who told me, ‘Go find your passion and I’ll support your journey.’”

Eventually, Squires joined the United States Fund for UNICEF, beginning the journey that would bring her to the helm of one of the world’s top humanitarian organizations.

“The career advice I would give to young people is understand who you are but also be willing to take a chance and make mistakes, because that will lead you to better things,” Squires told attendees. “We need to encourage people to be vulnerable and try new things.”

After 10 years with UNICEF, Squires worked at other humanitarian organizations before joining Americares in 2016 as chief development officer. She was promoted to executive vice president before she was named Americares president and CEO five years ago.

Her first day as CEO was on March 13, 2020, the day most U.S. organizations closed their doors and sent workers home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I had to very quickly pivot from everything I knew, adapt to a new working environment and figure out how to respond to growing needs around the world,” she said. “We also had to learn how to work together at Americares in a completely different way – so many people were catapulted into a working environment where their job and their home life were completely intertwined.”

One of the key lessons Squires learned from those initial days of leading in difficult times was the importance of authenticity.

“Early on, I sent out an email to our staff sharing the things I was finding challenging, and I received so many positive messages back,” she said. “I realized that it was important to lead from and create a space for transparency. It felt as if we were living in the middle of a hurricane, trying to figure out how to respond to the hurricane and help people, while also trying to take care of ourselves and our families. It taught me that it’s okay to be vulnerable and show our authentic selves.”

In more recent years, Squires and the Americares team have had to demonstrate adaptability and nimbleness because the volume of natural disasters and humanitarian crises around the world has increased, as have pressures on resources to serve people in crisis.

“There are a number of reasons why disasters are more frequent, more severe, more complex and in more places,” she explained. “One of those factors is climate change, which is exacerbating disasters and harming often already vulnerable people even more. This makes our disaster preparation initiatives even more important. We estimate that every dollar spent on preparation saves $7-$13 in response.

“On the humanitarian side, ongoing wars and conflicts in places such as Ukraine, Gaza and the Democratic Republic of Congo are creating long-term humanitarian crises, and civilians who are caught in them need medical attention and care,” she continued. “Another factor challenging the increasing number of crisis events is the potential funding shortfalls nongovernmental organizations are facing. If funding goes away, we will need to work together to fill gaps.”

She pointed to Americares strength in partnerships as an asset the organization can bring to each of these fronts.

“We’ve learned how critical coordination is during and following a disaster,” Squires said.  “We never want to be duplicating the efforts of another organization – you want all responding entities to be working together effectively, making sure you’re providing your unique value add so we can fill those gaps globally.”

“This is a time when we really need to lean on one another, whether you’re a company or an individual or an NGO,” she added. “At Americares, we believe we are ‘better together,’ and partnership is at the heart of everything we do. We have to find space to listen to each other and really understand where others are coming from – that is how we will make a difference.”

The In Focus Conversation Series for Sands corporate Team Members is one of the company’s initiatives to maintain a culture of advancement, leadership and service. For more information on the company’s workforce development initiatives, read the latest ESG report: https://www.sands.com/resources/reports/.