[3] Prior to becoming the President of CGD, Birdsall served for three years as Senior Associate and Director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Birdsall is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books and over 100 articles in scholarly journals and monographs, published in English and Spanish.

Her most recent work concentrates on the relationship between income distribution, economic growth, and the role of regional public goods in development.

She said that the wealthier developing nations should lead the World Bank's transformation into an institution that "could become the focal point for projects to cope with climate change or other major risks to the "global commons."

In 2006, Birdsall published the online version of Rescuing the World Bank: A CGD Working Group Report and Selected Essays.