A New Role with the Kettering Foundation

As many friends and colleagues know, I have enjoyed a long association with the Kettering Foundation. When I first came to know the Foundation while I was working at the Institute for Global Ethics, I felt I had discovered an intellectual and philosophical home. And I was right.

Over the years, the good people at Kettering have become more than colleagues — they are friends and family. For some years, I have been proud to say I am an Associate of the Foundation. (This means I am not an employee but an independent professional working on a range of learning projects.)

The Kettering Foundation is a research foundation (not a grant making foundation) that studies the question: What does it take to make democracy work as it should? A fundamental part of that is to study public deliberation — how people make choices in communities. An excellent overview of Kettering research is in this brochure.

To further its research, the Foundation supports the development of issue books on various topics and makes them available to organizations throughout the National Issues Forums and to others. These issue books can serve as the basis of public deliberative forums where people wrestle with the difficult issues of the day such as energy, health care, economic security, the national debt, and more. I have written some of these issue books over the years.

I am thrilled and humbled to report that I’ve taken on a deeper role as a Kettering Associate, serving as executive editor of the issue book library. (I’ll still be working on all my other projects too, with other clients and collaborators.)

I’ll be doing this work closely with my friend Ilse Tebbetts, a longtime Kettering colleague, who will be serving as managing editor.

The announcement Kettering issued is below:

Two familiar names have recently taken on new duties in producing the deliberative issue guides that have long been key parts of the Kettering Foundation’s work.

Brad Rourke has taken the role of executive editor of the issue guide library. As executive editor, Rourke will have overall responsibility for the issue guide series, overseeing the writing of new books and the updating of earlier guides. He will work with David Holwerk, Kettering’s director of communications, to oversee the work of writing and updating issue guides.

Rourke has been associated with the work of the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forums since 1997. His first learning agreement with the foundation was in 1999, when he worked on framing the issue of election ethics and campaign conduct for public deliberation. Since then, he has been closely involved with Kettering’s work and has written a number of issue guides and reports for the foundation, including The Energy Problem: Choices for an Uncertain Future and Coping with the Cost of Health Care: How Do We Pay for What We Need?

Ilse Tebbetts will work with Rourke as the managing editor of the issue book series. In that role, she will have primary responsibility for editing the text of new and revised books and will work with Holwerk to oversee the design and production of the books in both print and digital formats.

Tebbetts, a freelance editor and writer, has worked on a variety of projects with the Kettering Foundation for more than 30 years. She has edited and written portions of many of the issue guides published by the foundation and has written and edited abridged versions for new readers. Tebbetts has also edited a number of the books published by Kettering Foundation Press, as well as a variety of occasional papers and KF reports. She was one of the principal editors of Selected Writings of Li Shenzhi, published this month by Kettering Foundation Press.

Thank you to Kettering for this unique opportunity.