A Conversation with the Africa Center’s New Director of Engagement

As the cherry blossoms entered full bloom in Washington, D.C., the Community, Alumni, Partnerships, and Engagement (CAPE) team welcomed Dr. Cat Kelly as its new Director of Engagement. Dr. Kelly has been on the Africa Center for Strategic Studies faculty since 2019, most recently as the Associate Dean of the Academic Affairs team. Holding a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University and bringing experience from years of advising on Africa at the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative, Dr. Kelly has substantive African defense and security specialties, specifically in countering transnational organized crime in Africa, defense and security sector governance, and civil-military relations. Dr. Kelly has been a Faculty Lead, facilitator, or speaker for Africa Center programs covering a wide range of issues, from counterterrorism and countering transnational organized crime to national security strategy development and defense sector resource management and oversight. Her six years of work with the Africa Center alumni participating in a wide range of programs have introduced her to the dedicated work and the catalytic potential of multiple alumni communities and chapters.  During her first month as Director of Engagement, I sat with Dr. Kelly to discuss her vision for Africa Center engagement with alumni.

Namibia, 2023

Transitioning from Associate Dean to Director of Engagement

“I am proud of my contributions as Associate Dean and am pleased to make this transition,” Dr. Kelly exclaimed. “The promotion presents me with the chance to focus more fully on maximizing substantive, practical engagement with alumni of our past programs. In my Associate Dean role, I helped to manage the academic team, which designs and delivers the content of our academic programs. In that role, I met a lot of talented program participants who became Africa Center alumni for the first time. I also had the pleasure of crossing paths with alumni returning for a second or third program. As a scholar, I learned an extensive amount about African security from each of them.” Dr. Kelly plans to leverage the Engagement Team’s proximity to alumni further to enrich the Africa Center’s programming and research. “I will continue to work with subject matter experts and practitioners from the alumni community to inform Africa Center’s work. The Engagement Team will double down on its efforts to connect alumni who have innovative ideas for catalyzing solutions on the continent with each other, as well as with Africa Center faculty and staff.”

The Approach of the Community, Alumni, Partnerships, and Engagement Team

“How do we continue to engage with participants after they complete a program with us in which they have developed recommendations or conclusions about the next steps they need to take to address security challenges or strengthen the necessary security institutions? How can we support alumni who return home from a program and are looking for ways they can apply their knowledge?

“Our very talented alumni are the greatest asset the Africa Center has for fulfilling our mission and realizing our vision of security for all Africans championed by effective institutions that are accountable to all citizens. I hope that in return, we can be one of the essential assets that Africa Center alumni turn to when they are enacting solution frameworks for themselves, for their immediate communities, and their country’s institutions. When the Africa Center looks at the kind of impact we could make in partnership with different African alumni communities and chapters, we consider ideas as a basis for our shared commitment, we look at individuals and their communities of interest in our network as the principal initiators of solutions, and we seek to ensure that the alumni network provides them with substantive and professional support within the institutions that they can affect.”

According to Dr. Kelly, “We strive to do work that motivates alumni to look to the Africa Center network to develop and maintain four things that are essential for chapters to catalyze defense and security solutions: initiatives, tools, capacitation, and organizational structure. In particular, we want to make sure alumni and the community feel that the Africa Center practically capacitates them through their ongoing participation in our network, and that they are motivated to share their ideas for developing solutions in core areas of defense and security that concern their countries.” She added, “I wish to underscore to alumni that the Africa Center wants them to be part of creating tools that are needed to arrive at strategic solutions. We hope that alumni themselves will get involved in developing guidelines, plans, programs, publications, or other practical tools to address the defense and security challenges that concern them. If there are ways for the Africa Center to leverage the alumni network to support these efforts, the CAPE team is eager to discuss them.” Finally, the Africa Center will continue to link community chapter leaders to each other to enhance organizational development and sustainment. “It is always impressive to work with alumni who help their chapters develop organizational structures that allow for lasting commitment to enhancing civil-military relations in their countries, and that include both current and retired senior leaders from the security sector, as well as prominent emerging leaders.”

Sustaining Relationships with Alumni

In the coming years, Dr. Kelly hopes the Engagement Team will continue to “amplify the different ways that we engage alumni, building off of what we’ve already had over the last 25 years with communities and chapters.” The team will creatively and adaptively lead the Africa Center’s effort to provide alumni with substantive engagement related to its ongoing programs, induct new alumni in ways that open new doors for their work with alumni communities and chapters, and leverage the Africa Center’s alumni communities of interest in ways that equip African alumni and the United States with concrete solution frameworks for addressing security challenges like terrorism, transnational organized crime, maritime insecurity, and more. With alumni who are proactive in working with their colleagues in the network and with the Africa Center to pursue concrete, specific projects and activities, it will be possible for the network to empower alumni to make lasting change in the defense and security space – whether in their individual capacities or through their institutions with other like-minded colleagues.

To facilitate these possibilities, Dr. Kelly noted, the Africa Center faculty and staff have created sequences of Africa Center programming, which have combined in-person seminars, virtual “reunions” of alumni from those seminars, and follow-up in-person workshops and alumni events on more advanced aspects of the same theme. “Smart sequencing of various types of activities allows for the Africa Center faculty, along with the alumni network, to build momentum in their strategic approach to countering and preventing threats to national and global security,” she remarked. For the explicit purpose of supporting the progress of solution-oriented agendas that alumni have created for themselves, the development of strategic solution frameworks, alumni-driven capacity building on defense and security, virtual reunions for communities of interest on countering transnational organized crime, strengthening security sector governance, and countering foreign information and manipulation have taken place in between face-to-face programs. “I hope we can continue holding reunions and convene follow-up workshops, particularly after initial programs where the alumni produced clear and concise policy recommendations about what to do next.”

In addition to building networks that stem from programs, Dr. Kelly has already begun engaging with chapter leaders to determine how best to connect active community chapters that care about similar common defense and security problem sets or face similar threats and challenges in their countries. She and other members of the Engagement Team are aware that alumni communities and chapters are committed to growing their organizations and cultivating their connections to the Africa Center and fellow alumni in other countries to ensure “maximum effect in tackling the problems of the day.”

Click on Dr. Cat Kelly’s profile to read her full biography and learn how to get in touch. In the meantime, she looks forward to greeting you as Director of Engagement at an alumni event or program soon.