Poderoza Legacy Speaker | Suely Ramos Neves
Suely Ramos Neves was born in Cabo Verde on the island of Sal and migrated to Boston, MA in 1994 at the age of 12. While in the US, Suely worked closely with immigrant communities impacted by deportation. In 2008, she was selected as one of the New American Democracy Fellows and worked for the Student Immigrant Movement where she trained and organized prominently undocumented high school immigrant students. Suely holds a Master of Arts in Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management from the World Learning SIT Graduate Institute (class 2008) and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (class 2004).
While at UMass Amherst, she studied one semester abroad at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez. In 2004, Suely was a founding member of the Cape Verdean Alumni Network, Inc. and in 2008 she co-founded Deported Diaspora, which was dissolved in 2012.
In 2009, Suely moved back to Cabo Verde and currently resides in Praia, Santiago where she works for the US Embassy as the EducationUSA Adviser and Public Affairs Assistant since 2016. As a volunteer, she is the Executive Producer of the Cabo Verde International Film Festival hosted on the island of Sal since 2010, and she is also the Women & Girls Program Coordinator and the 3x3 Program Coordinator for Cabo Verde’s National Basketball Federation since 2017.
In 2019, Suely ventured into crowdsourced online dictionary and co-founded Criolish. She is fluent in English, Cabo Verdean Kriol, Portuguese, and advanced knowledge of Spanish. Suely is married to Edmar, with whom she shares a passion for all things basketball and creative arts. They have two kids - Maylah Maverick and Marz Mellow.