Ileana Marin serves as program officer for Democracy around the Globe, taking the lead in identifying and nurturing a yearly cohort of the CFK Global Fellows for Advancing Inclusive Democracy. In this role, she helps fellows unlock their leadership potential and connects them with Kettering’s worldwide network of partners. An integral part of the Democracy around the Globe team, Marin helps shape the foundation’s new modes of international work by developing initiatives that raise awareness about emergent democratic trends and threats and amplifying efforts to respond to these challenges.

Since joining the Kettering Foundation in 1997, she has coordinated fellowship programs and facilitated community-engaged scholarship initiatives – work that has had national and international reach. Marin also delved into new avenues of research and explored topics like environmental studies and notions of leadership. And she collaborated on research with Cuba’s Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation for Nature and Humanity and with the Arab Network for the Study of Democracy.

In 2003, Marin was also program manager and director for Romanian-American Sustainable Partnerships, a Romania-based program developed by US World Learning for International Development. In 2004 and 2005, she served as program officer for another World Learning for International Development program, ChildNet, a child welfare reform project in Romania.

Marin holds an MA in Romanian and Hungarian linguistics and literatures from the University of Bucharest, Romania, and Janus Pannonius University, Pécs, Hungary; an MA in ethnic and minority studies from the ELTE Institute of Sociology, Budapest, Hungary; and an MA in human and organizational systems from Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, CA, where she is an ABD in human and organizational development. She has published articles and books in Romanian, English, and Spanish.