She is currently a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and a consultant at the World Bank. She was previously a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a nonresident fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution and a fellow in the Middle East program at the Stimson Center think tank. In 2017 Abdo released her latest book The New Sectarianism: The Arab Uprisings and the Rebirth of the Shi'a--Sunni Divide.