[1] From 1989 to 1995, she was an executive director of the Urban Foundation, an influential think tank established by Anglo American to lobby for reform in the apartheid government's approach to black urbanisation.
Early in her tenure as CDE director, in 1997, she testified at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's special hearings on the role of business in apartheid.
[8] In 1999, Bernstein was the lead writer on Policy-Making in a New Democracy, a lengthy report published by CDE that drew public criticism from Jeremy Cronin of the South African Communist Party.
[9] Bernstein responded by reiterating CDE's support for state-led development and suggesting, "It's time to call the bluff on those who mount easy sloganistic attacks on the direction and toughness of government economic policy.
[4] Her own book, The Case for Business in Developing Economies, was published by Penguin in 2010 and won the Atlas Network's 2012 Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award.
[16] In the book, Bernstein argues that contemporary anti-corporatism and an emphasis on corporate social responsibility, fostered in the West by people such as Naomi Klein, threatens to contaminate and misguide the policy debate in developing countries.