After working as a loan officer with the World Bank from 1974 to 1979, Fukuda-Parr served as a technical adviser in agricultural economics at the United Nations Development Programme from 1979 to 1985.
Since leaving UNDP, Fukuda-Parr has worked as a professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
[6] She also serves on the advisory board for Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) and on the University of Oslo/The Lancet Independent Panel on Global Governance for Health.
She urges nations to redirect globalization so that it benefits all countries and all peoples, to promote democratization as a force for greater social justice and to address poverty as part of the agenda for collective security.
Her father's position with the Japanese Ministry of Finance moved the family from Tokyo to London to Washington, D.C. and, finally, to Manila.
She is a joint winner of the 2019 Grawemeyer Award, alongside Terra Lawson-Remer and Susan Randolph for "Ideas for Improving World Order".