This new year brings new projects—and some sad goodbyes. Today, I’m excited to begin my leadership of Sister Cities International, the world’s largest and oldest network of citizen diplomats. And I’m sorry to leave the Wilson Center, which has been my home for the last five years. But it’s not a long goodbye: I will continue to work with the Global Sustainability and Resilience team as a Global Fellow and as an advisor to the New Security Beat. In all of these roles, my New Year’s resolution is to renew our commitment to making a real difference in global well-being and sustainability. And while this year promises great changes, three key priorities will continue to inspire me and guide our collective efforts: resilience, complexity, and diplomacy.

Resilience Matters: Moving From Analysis to Action

When I joined the Wilson Center in 2013, the Global Sustainability and Resilience Program was still seeking a way to contribute to the dialogue on resilience. As the only think tank program on global resilience, there aren’t other models or best practices to guide us—or even critical consensus on what resilience means for foreign policy. But as a member of the UN’s Resilience Academy, I was able to connect with an emerging network of global resilience experts that informed our audience about what it means to be truly resilient.

At its heart, resilience means leveraging the mechanisms and processes that strengthen the most vulnerable sectors of our society and that can persist in times of crisis and disruption. To build resilience, we must first identify the vulnerabilities we face—such as economic policies that do not protect the poor, the old, and the young; failing infrastructure that endangers urban residents; or ecosystems stretched so thin by ever-increasing resource demands and climate change that they threaten human well-being.

By recognizing and naming these vulnerabilities, we can then focus our analysis, integrate our planning, and take actions that are innovative, nimble, and rapid. The resilience framework has inspired new ways to mitigate coastal risks, address vulnerabilities of small-island developing states, build smarter cities, and provide health care in crises and conflicts.

Over the last five years, the Wilson Center has shared the successes and challenges of the resilience approach with our global audience, which has welcomed this fresh take on the world’s oldest challenges, as well as its newest battles. And it matters who shares those lessons: The Wilson Center—a nonpartisan, non-advocacy forum—offers a neutral platform for nuanced examination and thoughtful engagement, which we can all agree is more critically important than ever before. While I’ll miss being in this sweet spot, as a member of the Center’s network, I will continue to partner with them to drive us to meaningful action in 2018 and beyond.

Embrace Complexity: Seeing the Holistic Picture

Our reality is complex, and complexity is our reality. Only by embracing complexity can we deconstruct it and determine the most effective entry points for policies and programs. As the #1 Transdisciplinary Think Tank in the United States, the Wilson Center and its cross-cutting programs have long embraced our complex world in all of its messiness and sought out the interconnections that others have tried to ignore. But there are still significant barriers to sharing and learning across disciplines and between sectors that we must continue to work to overcome.  

Some examples:

• As climate change pushes people from their homes and potentially into conflict, we need to learn how to navigate the complexity of these interlinked environmental and security challenges.
• To heal the sick more rapidly and efficiently, we need to learn from the private sector and its innovation in technology and finance.
• To build a more resilient America, we need to combine social, environmental, and economic expertise, as no one discipline or perspective is the purveyor of all solutions.
• To ensure a more peaceful and productive world, we need to empower women to choose their own families and their own future.

When we are able to see the whole—and holistic—picture, then we can zoom in on opportunities to develop a common understanding. Where differences divide us, we can use the power of stories to unlock our prejudices and inform our perspectives. We can identify possible solutions for even seemingly intractable wicked problems and test innovations through trial, failure, and renewed effort.

 It is more clear than ever that our complex world demands complex policies and programs that address our multiple and interconnected challenges.  The integrated solutions that the Wilson Center has championed, like environmental peacebuilding and population, health and environment (PHE), can bust us out of our silos, reach new people in need, and keep us from making the same mistakes over and over.

Diplomacy Steadies the Seas of Constant Change

If there’s one thing we can depend on, it’s change. The ever changing political landscape requires that we step out of politics and engage in policy; that we move beyond partisanship to partnership; that we focus not just on the personal, but on the public at large.

Human action is rooted in human interaction. We must leverage our personal power to generate public goods and goodwill among all. Diplomacy is key, but it’s not a job we can leave to the high-level politicians and diplomats. In these times, we need all kinds of diplomacy: individual, personal, citizen, and sidewalk. Each and every one of us is a diplomat.

As the living memorial to President Wilson, the Wilson Center leverages its nonpartisan convening power to bring people together to meet the key diplomatic challenges of our time. Similarly, Sister Cities International, which was established at President Eisenhower’s behest, brings together citizen diplomats from more than 500 U.S. cities.

With 2,000 partnerships in 146 countries, Sister Cities International promotes peace through mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation—one individual and one community at a time. For more than six decades, Sister Cities has touched the everyday lives of millions of people through economic development projects, academic and scholarship opportunities, resilient cities initiatives and environmental programs, arts and cultural heritage activities, and municipal, youth and sports exchanges.

Today, as I become President and CEO of Sister Cities International, I’m looking forward to serving my fellow Americans and international partners. And I’m looking forward to serving the Wilson Center as a Global Fellow and advisor to the New Security Beat and on building on existing collaborations between the two organizations. These roles combine the leverage, substance, action, and networks that can support my lifelong goals: to increase mutual understanding, encourage authentic engagement around our shared interests, and improve global well-being and sustainability. As we say goodbye to 2017, I hope you’ll join me in committing to a more resilient, more complex, and more diplomatic 2018.