Dr. Kent Davis-Packard is President & Executive Director of Women Forward International (WFI), which she launched as an initiative at the Aspen Institute in 2019. She regularly directs WFI’s promotional films, including The Hour (intro), Walking in the Vanguard, Unity, Collaboration, and Service, and WFI’s current longer work in progress, The Hour.
Most recently, she initiated and developed the SAIS Women Lead curricular program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), launching a practicum program that partners students with public and private organizations on research that advances women.
She taught Johns Hopkins SAIS's first courses on global women's issues: "Transcending Culture: Women as Agents of Change in the International Order” and "Women, Peace, and Security: Moving Beyond the Myth" as well as U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East. She is Featured Editor for the Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism journal based at the London School of Economics and a member of the Advisory Board of Kallion, an organization that elevates leadership through the humanities.
Previously she was co-Executive Director of Women's Learning Partnership, and a 2014-2015 Council on Foreign Relations Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Guest Scholar and lecturer at the American University in Cairo. As a Presidential Management Fellow, Dr. Davis-Packard played a key role in launching the State Department’s Women in Public Service Project and managed the Egypt Desk's human rights portfolio. She served as a Political Officer in Syria and Department of Defense Desk Officer for Iraq.
Dr. Davis-Packard received her Ph.D. in international relations and Middle East studies and master's degree in conflict management and economics from Johns Hopkins SAIS; a master's degree in French and romance philology from Columbia University; a comparative literature Maitrise, Lettres Modernes, from the Universite of Paris VIII; and a BA in English and comparative literature summa cum laude from Cornell University. She also holds a Certificate in Management Essentials from Harvard Business School Online. As a Fulbright Scholar to Morocco, she studied the influence of returning migrants on local communities and literature. She is a graduate of the National Cathedral School for Girls in Washington, DC.
Dr. Davis-Packard has reported on such topics as family law reform, sectarianism and extremism, the women’s movement, labor, and language politics for the Christian Science Monitor and other publications including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. A term and International Affairs Fellowship Committee Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Cosmos Club's International Affairs Committee, she is fluent in French and able in Arabic and Spanish. She has studied or worked in Bangladesh, Bosnia, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, France, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, India, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Qatar, Senegal, Syria, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Dr. Davis-Packard's book on contemporary Islamic thought is forthcoming.