Fort has rich experience in an array of sectors. She has worked for organizations, including the Association of Bay Area Governments and the New Alchemy Institute. In 1976, she started at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as an Ecologist for the Bureau of Science and Technology, becoming USAID’s first diplomat ecologist. In 1979, she became the Regional Environmental and Natural Resources Advisor for West and Central Africa. She was based in the Ivory Coast but worked in 26 countries. From 1983 to 1991, Fort held several roles, including as Watershed Management Instructor at the University of Chaing Mai in Thailand, Economist for the Africa Region, and Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean. From 1991 to 1995, Fort was an Economist for the Eastern Caribbean, working in eight countries. From 1995 to 1999, she was the Economist for the Jamaica Bilateral Program and Caribbean Regional Program. She then became Deputy Director of the Office of Middle Eastern Affairs and then the Acting Director of Southern African Affairs. During her 27-year career with USAID, she led the organization and international organizations in developing and adhering to environmental regulations and designing, implementing, and evaluating projects with countries around the world. She left USAID in 2003.

Fort is also very engaged in art and music, using it as an agent of change for environmental sciences and ecology. In 2004, Fort joined The Music and Human Rights Project (MHRP) as a Cultural Development Consultant. The Music and Human Rights Project supports and draws on academic research to inform applied work. Since 2007, Fort has been the organization’s Director, Researcher, and Producer for Democracy through the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities Association. Fort’s research with the organization focuses on the relationship between music and human rights through neuroepigenetics, political economy, and ethnography. The organization won the International Communication Association Award for the Best Visual Display of Research and other recognitions.

From 2008 to 20009, Fort was a Visiting Scholar and a Teaching Assistant in New Media, Culture, and Society in 2012 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Institute of Communications Research. In this role, she supported undergraduate students in critical thinking, writing, and related skills in media, culture, and society. She also facilitated discussions and designed and delivered a course-wide lecture, “The Ecology of Media,” which examined the cultural ecology of media and its biophysical impact on ecology. As a visiting scholar, her research focused on music and human rights, culminating in a work entitled “Music and Human Rights in the Peoples’ Great Turning: A Systesm and Intersectional Perspective.” In 2015, Fort was the Opera Director at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she directed the opera, working with artists from around the world in collaboratively repurposing the first opera of the Americas, 1701 Lima, Peru “La Purpura de la Rosa,” which means from empire to empowerment.

In 2019, she became a Regenerative Democracy Research Scholar at the University of Illinois’ Center for African Studies and Women and Gender Global Program. At the University of Illinois Global Institute, she researches global democracy and new ecological-economic and international systems per Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, post-growth futures, and opportunities to review the UN Charter to create a new global contract that encourages thriving people everywhere.

In 2021, she became the Board Director for the Center for United Nations Constitutional Research. As a Board Director for the Center for U.N. Constitutional Research, Fort researches, educates, and engages with policy diplomacy, mentoring Youth Ambassadors, and representing the organization at meetings and conferences such as COP27 in Egypt. Since 2022, she has been a Member of the International Working Group for the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.