Spring Meetings

Gita Gopinath
First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Gita Gopinath is the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). She oversees the work of staff, represents the Fund at multilateral forums, leads the Fund’s work on surveillance and related policies, and oversees research and flagship publications. Previously, Ms. Gopinath was the Fund's Chief Economist. In that role, she helmed thirteen releases of the World Economic Outlook. She also worked with other Fund departments on a new analytical approach to help countries respond to international capital flows via the Integrated Policy Framework. Prior to joining the IMF, Ms. Gopinath was the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and of Economics at Harvard University and before that she was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Her research, which focuses on International Finance and Macroeconomics, is widely cited and has been published in many top economics journals. She has authored numerous articles on exchange rates, trade and investment, international financial crises, monetary policy, debt, and emerging market crises.

Full bio

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Director-General, World Trade Organization
Government of Pakistan

Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation. The first woman and first African to hold the position.

She is an economist and international development expert with over 40 years of experience. Dr Okonjo-Iweala was Chair of the Board of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, African Risk Capacity and Co-Chair of The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, in addition to serving as a Senior Advisor at Lazard and sitting on the Boards of Standard Chartered and Twitter, now X. She is Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Harvard Kennedy School Global Public Leader.

She served as Nigeria’s first female and longest serving Finance Minister (7 years) and was also the first female Foreign Minister. Her 25-year career at the World Bank culminated in her rising to the No.2 position of Managing Director, Operations.

Dr Okonjo-Iweala is the recipient of numerous honours and has authored several books. She holds a Bachelor’s in Economics from Harvard University and a PhD in Regional Economics and Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Maurice Obstfeld
Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics

Maurice Obstfeld is the C. Fred Bergsten Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Class of 1958 Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2015 through 2018, he served as Economic Counsellor and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund. During 2014 and 2015, he was a Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. He co-authored International Economics (with Paul Krugman and Marc Melitz), Foundations of International Macroeconomics (with Kenneth Rogoff), and Global Capital Markets (with Alan M. Taylor). Prior to arriving at the economics department at Berkeley in 1991, he held faculty appointments at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a visiting appointment at Harvard.

Minouche Shafik

Minouche Shafik is an economist, policymaker, and higher education leader who has spent over three decades in leadership roles across a range of prominent international and academic institutions. She was most recently President of Columbia University and of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where she drove academic excellence and improved student experience. Before that, Shafik served as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, where she led work on fighting misconduct in financial markets and managed a balance sheet of about $600 billion; Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, navigating turbulence surrounding the European debt crisis and the Arab Spring; Permanent Secretary of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, where she helped secure the UK’s commitment to giving 0.7% of GDP in aid and focused on fighting poverty in the poorest countries in the world; and the youngest-ever Vice President of the World Bank, where she worked on the institution’s first-ever report on the environment, led work on infrastructure and private sector investment, and advised governments in post-communist Eastern Europe. She is a trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Raghuram Rajan
Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School

Raghuram Rajan is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School. He was the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between 2013 and 2016, Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Bank for International Settlements (2015-16) and Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (2003-2006).

Dr. Rajan was the President of the American Finance Association (AFA). He received the AFA’s inaugural Fischer Black Prize in 2003, the Deutsche Bank Prize for financial economics in 2013, Euromoney magazine’s Central Banker of the Year award in 2014, and The Banker magazine's Global Central Banker award in 2016.