[2] After undertaking a mission to British Columbia and Alaska she was chosen as world missionary at the WCTU national convention in New York City in October 1888.

[7] Ackermann arrived at Adelaide in South Australia in 1889, to continue the work started by Mary Leavitt, the WCTU's first world missionary.

Described as "vital and charismatic",[1] Ackermann inspired the founding of the WCTU of Western Australia by her visit in 1891 and her administrative efforts revealed considerable organisational skill.

[8] She also held a ten-day temperance mission in Adelaide Town Hall and organised the first Colonial Convention of the WCTU of South Australia, with a membership of 1112 and 23 local unions.

In 1885, 45,000 women in the state of Victoria (almost a quarter of the adult female population) signed a petition asking the government to introduce local option to protect their sex from bad treatment associated with alcohol consumption.

[19] In a conference during her visit to China, for example, all women delegates were made voting members "amid storms of applause" in contrast to the previous meeting thirteen years earlier, when the idea of a woman presenting her work resulted in many "indignant" people leaving the room.

For example, she went camping in 1898 in the Yosemite Valley in America to regain her strength for more travel; she rode horseback through the Australian bush to the Jenolan Caves before going underground to explore them; and she defied convention by going down a coal-mine.

[21] Countries and regions Ackermann visited included: Afghanistan via the Khyber Pass and Peshawar;[7][22] Alaska, to which she was first sent by the WCTU (before it became an American state);[23] Australia, including the states of South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania;[2][7] (she declared Hobart to be "delightful" having "a complete absence of distinguished persons");[24] Burma;[7]{China more from "a sense of duty than inclination"[2] on a steamer, which she called a tea boat,;[25] England (London);[26] Europe;[7] Iceland, between 1894 and 1897[1] where she founded a WCTU;[7][27] India, where she noted the devotion of the Hindus and toured the Taj Mahal;[7][28] Japan, including Hokkaido as well as Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands not long after the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894–95[29] (In 1906, she published an article in the Scottish Geographical Society about her visit to the Ainu people in which she expressed her concern about the tattooing done on the women, comparing it with the foot binding in China and noting that the Ainu women "share the fate of all the women of the East" by being far from equal with the men in spite of the fact that they did all the heavy work.

'Of course, the men cheerfully aid by free advice and directions' she added ironically");[30] Java, where a journey to a temple was two hundred miles by slow rail;[31] Kashmir;[7] New Zealand, a place she said she would have chosen to live other than America;[32] Siam, a place that was very difficult to reach at that time;[7][33] the Sandwich Islands, where the Japanese Consul-General acted as her interpreter;[2] Singapore, where she noted that "thirty different languages are spoken";[31] South Africa, en route to which, she climbed the mast in a divided skirt alongside the captain and another man.

[3] When working as the American Union's second world missionary, Ackermann particularly ensured that women's suffrage was high on the agenda and in the late twentieth century her contribution was acknowledged.