In 1967 she earned her PhD in geography from Clark University.
In 1972, she was a visiting associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
During this time period she was also the editor of the monthly periodical Ekistics: The Problems and Science of Human Settlements of Ekistics in Athens, Greece (1966–1977) and a consultant to the United Nations for Indonesia, the Philippines, and Brazil (1970–1977).
After a short stint in 1978 as a social science editor for Pergamon Press (1978), Bell co-founded and became the first President of The Computer Museum (1979–1997).
[4] Bell also served as President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) from 1992 to 1994.