Gita Gopinath leaves IMF to return to Harvard

04 Aug 2025
Financial Nigeria

Summary

Ms. Gopinath joined the IMF in January 2019 as Chief Economist – the first woman in the position – and was promoted to the First Deputy Managing Director in January 2022.

Gita Gopinath

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has announced that Gita Gopinath, its First Deputy Managing Director (FDMD), would be leaving the Fund at the end of August to return to Harvard University, where she will be the inaugural Gregory and Ania Coffey Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics. 

Ms. Gopinath joined the IMF in January 2019 as Chief Economist – the first woman in the position – and was promoted to the FDMD in January 2022.

IMF Managing Director, Georgieva Kristalina, said: “Gita has been an outstanding colleague – an exceptional intellectual leader, dedicated to the mission and members of the Fund.” She added that Ms. Gopinath steered the Fund’s analytical and policy work with clarity, striving for the highest standards of rigorous analysis at a complex time of high uncertainty and rapidly changing global economic environment. 

“She oversaw the Fund’s multilateral surveillance and analytical work on fiscal and monetary policy, debt, and international trade. Gita made a strong contribution to systemic country surveillance and to Fund country programmes, including those for Argentina and Ukraine. As a key member of my senior leadership team, Gita represented the Fund with integrity and fortitude in many international fora, notably the G-7 and G-20,” said Ms Kristalina.


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