Billie Tsien received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Yale in 1971 and her Master in Architecture from UCLA in 1977. She has taught at Parsons, Yale, Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Pennsylvania. She shares with Tod Williams the Louis I. Kahn chair at Yale University. She has worked with Tod Williams since 1977 and has been in partnership with him since 1986. She and Tod Williams have received various awards for their work. The Natatorium at the Cranbrook School, the Rifkind residence, the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California and two interior projects have all won National AIA Honor Awards. In December 2001, the office completed The American Folk Art Museum in New York City, the first new museum to be built in New York in more than thirty years. The museum has been recognized by Newsweek magazine as giving New York "a beautiful place to be." In 2002 the museum received the Arup World Architecture award for Best Building in the World.