Sheryl WuDunn was born on November, 16, 1959. She received a B.A. in European history from Cornell University in 1981. She worked in banking for three years, before receiving a M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and M.P.A. from Princeton University. After working for the Wall Street Journal and other publications, WuDunn joined the staff of The New York Times as a correspondent in the Beijing bureau in 1989. She and her husband, Nicholas D. Kristof, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990, for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. WuDunn and Kristof have written numerous books including A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity; Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide; Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia, and China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power.