Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) – and specifically its International Affairs Forum (IAF) program – will soon be on the map in a brand-new way. According to IAF Director Alex Tank, the world-issues-focused event series has been tapped to host the 2028 council leadership meeting of the World Affairs Council of America (WACA). It’s a first-of-its-kind opportunity for IAF – and instantly ups the profile of the three-decade-old program.

“I was talking with Matthew Hughes, who is the president and CEO of WACA, and what he said is that hosting this meeting ‘is a bit of a flex’ for an organization like ours,” Tank says. “It’s an opportunity to share the great work we’re doing, and represents an affirmation from peers and colleagues at fellow councils and the national office, essentially saying ‘We see that you’re doing good work, we see how you’re enriching your community, and we want to give you this opportunity to do more of that.’”

According to its website, WACA “supports, strengthens, and represents a national network of 90 nonpartisan organizations working to deepen their communities’ global perspective.” IAF is a member council, alongside similar programs in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis, among others. All told, 41 states have WACA chapters.

For the most part, those organizations operate independently of one another by offering programming and resources to their communities. IAF, for instance, recently announced the second half of its 32nd season, which will bring conversations to Traverse City on topics like executive power, the new space race, rights of nature, global peacebuilding, and climate change and its impact on national security. Twice each year, though, WACA invites its members to get together and learn from one another.

“The biggest WACA event is the national conference, and that is held in Washington, D.C. every November. IAF participates in that event each year, and we use it as an opportunity to make connections, build speaker relationships, hear great experts, scholars, and thought leaders, and then import all of that back to Traverse City,” Tank says. “The council leadership meeting usually falls six months later, and it’s a smaller affair: fewer panels, fewer speakers, but mainly geared toward the leadership of these councils across the country.”

Since it was founded in 1994, IAF has never been the host organization for a WACA council leadership meeting. The honor of doing so is offered by invite-only, and IAF only recently got its first invitation.

“We were asked to host for either 2027 or 2028, and just for logistics’ sake, we chose 2028,” Tank says.

While that timeline gives IAF some 28 months to prepare – the council leadership meeting is scheduled for June 2028 – Tank expects he and his team will need every minute to pull off the biggest thing IAF has ever done.

“The meeting is this great opportunity to create really robust programming around a concentrated couple of days, when normally we're doing one event per month,” Tank explains. “So the frequency and intensity is just a lot higher. And while some of that programming will be just for the council leaders themselves, we’ll also be doing a bunch of panel and speaker events that will be open to the public, and to students and educators.”

One of the first steps on Tank’s “getting ready” list? Actually attending a council leadership meeting, something he hasn’t done since coming aboard at IAF in 2022 – and something he’s not certain any past IAF leader ever did, either.

“It’s actually a requirement [from WACA]. You have to go to a meeting, you have to see it done, you have to see what it’s like,” Tank says. “So this year, I’ll attend the meeting, which is being hosted in June by the World Affairs Council of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. That will help me get a sense of what this event looks and feels like, and what kinds of benefits it brings to the folks who host it and the folks that attend.”

In a bittersweet twist of fate, this milestone moment for IAF comes just as the organization bids farewell to one of its luminaries. Earlier this month, Jack Segal, a retired senior U.S diplomat and former IAF co-chair, died at the age of 80. Tank credits Segal and his wife, Karen, for getting the IAF to where it is today.

“The key takeaway I’ve gotten from attending WACA national conferences is that we’re punching way above our weight,” Tank tells The Ticker. “Our programming, our engagement with students, our integration of hybrid events – it all puts us on the same level as other councils in much larger cities. That speaks to the fact that IAF is a well-built machine running on a really strong legacy, and Jack Segal was a huge part of that. We owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude.”

Pictured: A fall 2025 IAF event featuring Ziauddin Yousafzai and Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn of the Malala Fund.