[2] She is now a resident fellow and co-director with Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute's Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies launched in 2012.
She began her career as a journalist at her family's Journal newspapers in the Washington, D.C. area in 1978.
During her tenure she redesigned the paper and oversaw writing on Operation Just Cause in Panama, the First Gulf War, and the mission to Somalia.
She was the principal author of Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century published by PNAC in September 2000.
Donnelly had begun transitioning before publicly living as a trans woman in October 2018, taking the name Giselle.