Kristalina Georgieva, who was elected managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will assume her position on October 1, 2019, for a five-year term. Georgieva is the 12th MD since the fund’s inception in 1944.
Georgieva was CEO of the World Bank from January 2017 to September 2019. She also served as Interim President of the World Bank Group for three months. Georgieva helped shape the agenda of the European Union -her service as European Commission Vice President for Budget and Human Resources, overseeing the EU’s €161 bn (US $175bn) budget and 33,000 staff.
In that position, she was deeply involved in efforts to address the Euro Area debt crisis and the 2015 refugee crisis. Before that, she was Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, managing one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid budgets.
Georgieva worked for 17 years at the World Bank, culminating in her appointment as Vice President and Corporate Secretary in 2008. In this role, she served as the interlocutor between the World Bank Group’s senior management, its Board of Directors, and its shareholder countries.
She held a number of other senior positions, including World Bank Director for Sustainable Development, World Bank Director for the Russian Federation, based in Moscow, World Bank Director for Environment, and Director for Environment and Social Development for East Asia and Pacific Region. She joined the World Bank as an environmental economist in 1993.
Georgieva serves on many international panels including co-Chair of the Global Commission on Adaptation to climate change, and as co-chair of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing.
She has authored and co-authored over 100 publications on environmental and economic policy topics, including textbooks on macro- and microeconomics.
Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1953, Georgieva holds a PhD in Economic Science and a MA in Political Economy and Sociology from the University of National and World Economy, Sofia, where she was an Associate Professor between 1977 and 1993.
During her academic career, she was a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2010, she was named “European of the Year” and “Commissioner of the Year” by European Voice for her leadership in the EU’s humanitarian response to crises.
