In June 2021, the Charles F. Kettering Foundation established a small team drawn from the large international network of alumni that has grown around our work over the years. The team was charged with starting a conversation to reflect on the opportunities and challenges concerning the network. In a July 2022 meeting, the foundation’s new president and CEO, Sharon L. Davies, was able to join the conversation as members of the network began a brainstorming process to reimagine how those in the network might work with the foundation. This working session explored ways to grow, deepen, and strengthen the network as well as to begin to chart a course for how it might best respond to the challenges that democracy faces around the world.

In the latter half of 2022, a team representing Kettering, which included Davies along with Maxine Thomas, the foundation’s vice president and director of international programs, and Paloma Dallas, senior program officer for international programs, traveled to Brazil, Argentina, and Japan to meet with members of the network and take further stock of their work and the global state of democracy. This was an opportunity to raise the foundation’s visibility in the democracy space, gain new perspectives from different vantage points, and further explore the untapped potential of the international network.

This report encapsulates, in words and photographs, the foundation’s efforts in 2022 and how it endeavored to learn from and alongside the international network. It also captures how Kettering has begun to reimagine the possibilities for international work in advance of a foundation-wide strategic planning process that is taking place in 2023.