Prominent conservative commentator David Brooks cited Kornbluh's piece on juggler families as one of the notable magazine articles that characterized 2006 as a "year of losing ground", or a time of pronounced anxiety in the United States. Kornbluh has also published articles on economic policy in such periodicals as the "Atlantic Monthly", "New York Times" and "The Washington Post". She was a senior fellow for digital policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. She was appointed director of the German Marshall Fund's technology program in November 2018, where she has been charged with using the organization’s global, multi-sector network, reputation, and the sum of its substantive expertise to help shape a future in which technology strengthens rather than undermines democratic values. The technology program at GMF will contend with the challenge of online disinformation as well as other technology policy issues including 21st century jobs and innovation, democratic implications of frontier technologies, and cyber dimensions of national security. Obama hired her as his policy director in 2004—a move that was seen as a sign of his determination to build an unusually strong staff for a freshman Senator. A 2007 "New York Sun" article mentions Kornbluh as one of several former Clinton Administration officials who joined "the Obama camp", rather than Hillary Rodham Clinton's team, for the 2008 presidential election. She was primary drafter of the 2008 Democratic platform. As U.S. Ambassador to the OECD, she worked with Secretary of State Clinton to spearhead development of the first global Internet Policymaking Principles, launch the OECD Gender Initiative, and expand anti-corruption efforts of the international economic standards organization. In 2015 Kornbluh signed an open letter, coordinated by the ONE Campaign, addressed to Angela Merkel and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, urging them to focus on women as they serve as the head of the G7 in Germany and the AU in South Africa respectively, which will start to set the priorities in development funding before a main UN summit in September 2015 that will establish new development goals for the generation. In 1993, Kornbluh married lawyer James J. Halpert, for whom the character Jim Halpert, on the television show "The Office", is named. They have two children.