Co-creating a Bold Strategy to Tackle the World's Toughest Problems
Game-Changing Impact
Since 1982, The Carter Center has been guided by its enduring motto: Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope. Partnering with communities around the world, the Center works to prevent and resolve conflict, promote democracy and election integrity, eradicate diseases and improve mental health and caregiving.
Examples of The Carter Center's enduring impact include:
128 full and limited election observation missions in 40 countries
Reducing Guinea worm disease incidence by 99.99%
Supporting the distribution of more than 1 billion doses of medicine to combat neglected tropical diseases
Our Partnership
With a new management team in place and coming out of a global pandemic in 2021, The Carter Center sought to develop a bottom-up, participatory approach to strategy, one that could integrate distinct strategic efforts across Peace and Health, honor the vision and values of its founders, and chart a clear, unified direction for the future.
The Carter Center engaged Frontier to co-create and implement this approach, working closely with staff at headquarters and in field offices around the globe. Frontier designed and facilitated a deeply participatory strategy process that centered staff expertise, built alignment across teams, and translated ambition into action.
"I was a skeptic about strategic planning because I rarely saw it done well or in ways that stick. But, now, I've drunk the Frontier kool-aid. I'm all in on strategic planning. Thank you for such an energizing, engaging process!"
Paige Alexander, CEO, The Carter Center
Over the course of the engagement Frontier:
Led nine co-creation workshops with staff to define shared goals and measures of progress
Developed initiative charters and interactive dashboards to track priorities, milestones, timelines, and progress
Facilitated an in-person staff retreat where teams validated the strategy and claimed ownership of its implementation
The result was a strategy employees believed in and used. Staff reported "positive shifts" in collaboration and clarity, and when global events created disruption in 2025, The Carter Center again turned to Frontier to re-envision the strategy for the road ahead.
Services + Deliverables
Organization-wide strategic plan
Participatory strategy design
Initiative charters
Data dashboards
Virtual co-creation workshops
Facilitated in-person retreat
Mentorship + capacity building
Facilitated board engagement
