CGD is an independent, not-for-profit think tank that works to reduce global poverty and inequality by encouraging policy change in the U.S. and other rich countries through rigorous research and active engagement with the policy community.

CGD was founded in November 2001 by Edward W. Scott, Jr., C. Fred Bergsten and Nancy Birdsall. A technology entrepreneur, philanthropist, and former senior U.S. government official, Ed provided the vision and a significant financial committment that made the creation of the Center possible. Fred, the director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, lent his formidable reputation in academic and policy circles as well as providing the fledgling Center with a roof and logistical support within the Peterson Institute for its initial months of operation. Nancy, a former head of the World Bank research department and executive vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank, became CGD’s first president. Her intellectual leadership and the rare combination of being both hard-headed and soft-hearted about development attracted a cadre of researchers and other professionals who are deeply dedicated to CGD’s mission.

CGD’s three founders perceived a growing need for independent research to generate practical, creative solutions to the challenges that global interdependence poses to the developing countries, starting with debt. Delivering on Debt Relief: From IMF Gold to a New Aid Architecture (CGD, 2004), by Birdsall and John Williamson, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, was the Center’s first book.