At Harvard, Bilmes founded and directs the Rappaport Greater Boston Applied Field Lab, a program in which teams of students work in local communities on budgeting and financial challenges.

She leads budgeting workshops and training sessions for newly elected Mayors and Members of Congress run by the Harvard Institute of Politics.

Bilmes also teaches and conducts research at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, where she was a visiting fellow at Brasenose College.

As a principal at The Boston Consulting Group, Bilmes helped build the company's United Kingdom healthcare practice, launch the Madrid office, and was appointed as one of 10 Western advisors to the Russian Ministry of Privatization, where she helped to draft Russia's first healthcare financing legislation and managed public financial restructuring projects throughout Europe.

[6] Bilmes has held senior positions in the US government including US Assistant Secretary and CFO of the United States Department of Commerce.

She was confirmed twice by the U.S. Senate, first as Assistant Secretary for Administration and Budget, and additionally as Chief Financial Officer, of the United States Department of Commerce, from 1998 to 2001.

[9] She is co-author of The People Factor: Strengthening America by Investing in Public Service with W. Scott Gould[10] and Gebt un das Risiko Zuruck[11] with Peter Strueven and Konrad Wetzker.