She was committed to engaging local communities, particularly regarding the environment on the Hudson River and Maine coast, and also concerned with access to high-quality education.
Early in her career, Mrs. Davis worked for the Council on Foreign Relations and authored The Soviets at Geneva: The USSR and the League of Nations, 1919-1933.
Following an eight-decade legacy in philanthropy, much of it anonymous, Davis launched her signature project on her 100th birthday, in 2007, when she committed $1,000,000 to fund 100 practical, student-led peace actions, each with a $10,000 grant, at selected institutions around the world.
Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on February 25, 1907, she said her first memory was of walking in a suffragette parade with her mother as they waved their yellow flags in support of equal rights for women.
After completing her doctoral work in international relations in 1934, she later, following World War II, became active in Planned Parenthood in the Tarrytown, New York, area, coordinating with Eleanor Roosevelt, who was then the national head.
The Wasserman family's philanthropic activity extended throughout Mrs. Davis' long life, building an (often anonymous) legacy of extraordinary generosity.
This initiative, created on her 100th birthday, launched 100 prizes of $10,000 each to student projects submitted on a competitive basis and built on tangible, local community means to foster peace.
In the ensuing years, nearly 1,000 ideas have been planted, many growing into sustained, locally rooted peace actions in a multitude of countries.
[4] In partnership with her husband, they made a mark with gifts to Princeton University and the Hoover Institute, and as founders of New York City's Lincoln Center, where they established the library, and The Heritage Foundation.
Her gifts totaled over $50 million, with significant portions directed to the Davis Museum & Cultural Center, student financial aid, campus revitalization, and professorships in Asian and Slavic studies.
Her earliest philanthropic efforts, dating back to her student days as a resident in International House, reflected her concern for the Hudson River.
Frontiers of medicine also fascinated Kathryn, who had vivid memories of the 1918 flu pandemic, which infected 500 million people around the globe, killing 4 percent of the world's population.
The issues of refugee safety that these trips frequently brought to her attention often connected back to the work of the International Rescue Committee.
Music performance was a special joy, inspiring her not only to assume a leadership role with her husband in the founding of New York's Lincoln Center, but also to recognize how the arts could connect to peace bridging.
This was reflected in her support for the American-Russian Youth Orchestra, which led to her friendships with Joshua Bell, Misha Simonyan, and a world of young performing artists.