Nancy Birdsall was featured in an article in The Washington Diplomat on the her work as president of the Center for Global Development.
From the Article
Nancy Birdsall spent 14 years in research, policy and management positions at the World Bank, and later served as executive vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank.
She also spent a few years — from 1998 until 2001 — thinking big thoughts about global development at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. That's why now, armed with that invaluable experience, Birdsall feels perfectly qualified to critique those other institutions as founding president of the Center for Global Development, which recently marked its 10th anniversary.
"You can't sit in the World Bank and be very effective at criticizing what the World Bank does," Birdsall said with a laugh during a recent interview with The Washington Diplomat. "Places like the World Bank and United Nations are full of enlightened people who are trying to do the right thing and because of that, they are not that easy a target.
"You have to understand what they are doing, and their problems and their constraints," added Birdsall, who also boasts a Ph.D. from Yale University. "I wanted to have a place that was independent but had people with that kind of insider knowledge. I wanted it to be independent."
Independent — it's a word that crops up frequently in Birdsall's discussion of her think tank dedicated to global research and policy analysis, with special emphasis on crafting messages and communicating them to the outside world. Whether taking on Nigeria's debt crisis or ranking nations on their propensity to help the poor, the Center for Global Development (CGD) aims to cultivate a sense of shared global prosperity — using rigorous policy analysis and innovative thinking that pairs research with action. In particular, CGD analyzes the effectiveness of foreign aid and shines a spotlight on how rich countries impact poor ones in terms of education, health, migration, trade, climate change and a host of other issues.