Born in a middle-class family in Norfolk, Virginia, Boulding grew up in Boston, where she attended The English High School and Simmons College before studying medicine at Tufts University.

As president of the National Council of Negro Women, she issued a "Nine Point Programme" against racism and misogyny in American public life.

She worked at the Freedmen's Hospital as an obstetrician, where she began promoting contraception and sex education to women, both highly controversial topics at the time.

[1] To improve healthcare in the neighborhood, she persuaded the trustees of the Friendship House, a charitable segregated medical center, to open an additional clinic for African Americans.

[1] Here, she augmented the organization's efforts to promote healthcare, and education, and continued its work to end discrimination against African Americans and women in the military, housing, employment, and voting.

As president of NCNW, she issued her "Nine Point Program" which outlined a plan to achieve fundamental civil rights through educational and legislative initiatives.

She was appointed to the Council for Food for Peace by US president John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, in which capacity she spent five months travelling in Africa and speaking on preventative medicine.

[4] In 1967, Boulding was appointed as one of the five U.S. delegates to the World Health Organization's twentieth assembly in Geneva as well as the D.C. Commission on the Status of Women, which she chaired from 1971 to 1974.