Birdsall House Rules
Lessons about impact and team building I've learned from a true trailblazer
This holiday, I’m thankful that dedicated people across the nonprofit world are adapting to our crazy moment. More than ever, we need people to build strong institutions.
People like Nancy Birdsall.
I witnessed radical team building when I took a job at a brand new think tank, the Center for Global Development, more than two decades ago. Nancy had just started it along with Ed Scott. Nancy was the wonky researcher known for fighting poverty in Latin America and global inequality. Ed was a gruff teddy bear with a big heart who decided to use the fortune he made in the internet hardware business to help poor people. What started with a random late night documentary about Nicaraguan debt became the birth of CGD in November 2001. At the time, Washington was reeling from 9/11 and Nancy had to create a new institution from scratch.
Not long after, I found myself in the upper floors of the Peterson Institute (then just IIE) meeting with Nancy and Sonal Shah. I’d already left LSE for the World Bank and was looking for a career path that would be a bit more creative. I pitched Nancy and Sonal on a few random ideas related to investment in Africa and the next day Nancy called, “Hi Todd. Yes, come do that. And whatever else you can think of.” The job was a license to dig deep, think big, and run free.
Last week, I had the tremendous honor to give a short tribute to Nancy at the 10th anniversary of CGD’s Birdsall House Conference on Gender Equality. I’ve worked at 7 think tanks over my career, so I know something about them and different styles of their leaders. In my brief remarks, I tried to share the lessons I learned from Nancy, most of which I deliberately harvested to build the Energy for Growth Hub.
So here are a few Birdsall House Rules that stuck.
1. Impact is not about you. It’s about evidence, relevance, and real-life people.
A sign outside the board room quotes Ed Scott, “CGD is not a sandbox for economists.” He and Nancy were adamant that policy change had to be based on evidence but that the evidence must be relevant. An effective think tank is not about the egos of the staff and its leadership. If you just want to show your peers how clever you are, then go back to academia. Policy research must be about advancing the mission. For CGD, that was creating economic opportunities for poor people. At the Energy for Growth Hub, it’s building a world where electricity is cheap and reliable for everyone.
2. Building teams is about hiring smart people with a shared mission – and then letting them run free.
Nancy often bet on young (mostly lesser-known) rising talent. That was me. And Michael Clemens, Ruth Levine, Sheila Herrling, Brian Deese, Amanda Glassman, Charles Kenny, Justin Sandefur, Vijaya Ramachandran, Scott Morris, Molly Kinder, and many, many more. While Nancy kept our feet to the fire on impact, she never meddled. She created space for exploration, where failure was ok, and pushed us to make low probability-high return bets. I’m following the same talent scouting + policy freedom recipe at the Hub.
3. Getting stuff done requires hard-headed pragmatism.
Nancy and the team had to grow up fast. CGD was born weeks after 9/11, just as President Bush was launching wars in Afghanistan and then the invasion of Iraq. But that troubled stressful time was also a window for bipartisan cooperation on development policy. By working with the administration and both parties on the Hill, Nancy and her team helped to shape the launches of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, PEPFAR, the President’s Malaria Initiative, and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative. Those early days for CGD, driven by Nancy’s relentless pragmatism, helped to create what now seems like the Heyday of Global Development.
Not to overdraw the parallel, but I started the Energy for Growth Hub in 2018, just as Washington was absorbing the chaos of the first Trump administration. By following Nancy’s pragmatic playbook, we were able to shape the creation of the US Development Finance Corporation, then lift its nuclear ban, and help to make energy abundance everywhere a bipartisan issue. I hope we’re entering the Heyday for Global Energy Abundance.
4. Carry yourself with humor and humility.
Nancy was always serious about her work but never about herself. She rejected ceremony unless it clearly advanced the mission. She had no time for pointless events with lots of empty words (ahem). If you’re going to bother to speak, say something worth listening to. “Don’t be boring” is an unofficial mantra of the Hub too.
5. Keep your edge by staying curious and challenging orthodoxy.
Nancy’s first big recruit was Bill Easterly who had just been thrown out of the World Bank for dissent. It was a brilliant hire with a clear message to the rest of us: it’s okay, even good, to upset people in power. When warranted, we were free to take aim at the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, Gordon Brown’s International Finance Facility, Jeff Sachs’s Millennium Villages, and more. When powerful people would call to complain (and they often did), Nancy would defend her team and then encourage us to keep it up. In this way, and at contentious research seminars, she actively fostered internal debate and disagreement. That’s why CGD – and now the Hub – do not take institutional positions.
6. Clear a path for the next generation of policy stars, especially women.
Nancy earned her PhD at Yale in 1979 when women in the upper echelons of economics were rare. So she learned to interrupt. If you know Nancy, you know she interrupts a lot. And she modeled that behavior for younger women on her team, especially when some blowhard was holding court. She wanted more women in high places – and for those women to speak their minds.
Ahead of my little talk last week, I texted a few alumni to canvas ideas. Sheila Herrling — who I think of as a model for speaking your mind and a guru for building teams — replied immediately with a long list of Nancy’s greatest hits that opened with this:
“I love Nancy so much and learned so much from her. For most of her career she was a woman ahead of her time, breaking the glass for the rest of us.”
I remain deeply grateful to Nancy, who opened a door for me at the World Bank back in 1988. One of her articles at that time—“Robin Hood and Other Themes…”—was particularly influential, helping me understand the core objective that guides development policy.
Love this so much! Nancy Birdsall is truly a legend, who in turn recruited, mentored and launched more legends. Little wonder my dad toasted her in his father-of-the-bride speech at my wedding. So enjoyed this trip down CGD and Nancy Birdsall memory lane.