Nancy Birdsall

Nancy Birdsall is a senior fellow and president emeritus of the Center for Global Development, having served as founding president for its first 15 years from 2001-2016. From 1993 to 1998, Birdsall served as executive vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank where she oversaw a $30 billion public and private loan portfolio. Before that she worked for 14 years in research, policy, and management positions at the World Bank. Prior to launching the Center, she served for three years as senior associate and director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where her work focused on globalization, inequality and the reform of the international financial institutions. She is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books and many scholarly papers. Shorter pieces of her writing have appeared in dozens of US and Latin American newspapers and periodicals. Birdsall received her PhD in economics from Yale University and an MA from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Ms. Birdsall joined the board in 2017.