Gita Gopinath, the chief economist at International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been promoted as the multilateral financier’s Deputy Managing Director. That makes her the first woman to hold the post. Gopinath would succeed Geoffrey Okamoto.

Born in Mysore, Gita Gopinath was appointed IMF’s chief economist in 2018. Gopinath was earlier the economic advisor to Kerala Chief Minister’s Pinarayi Vijayan. The appointment of a Western-educated liberal economist as an advisor to a Marxist chief minister had created ripples back then.

Gopinath graduated from Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College and joined the Delhi School of Economics to pursue her master’s degree in 1994. In 1996, Gita Gopinath earned another postgraduate degree in economics at the University of Washington and thereafter in 2001, she completed her PhD in economics Princeton University.

The same year, she was appointed the assistant professor of economics in the University of Chicago. In 2005, she became an assistant professor of economics in Harvard University. In 2015 she was appointed John Zwaanstra professor of international studies and economics at Harvard.

Gita Gopinath’s research has focussed finance and macroeconomics. She also co-edited the American Economic Review.

Gopinath has won many awards such as the Schumpeter-Haberler Distinguished Fellow Award 2021 from the International Economic Association. Financial Times named her among the 25 Most Influential Women of 2021; she was named Bloomberg 50 people who defined 2019; Foreign Policy named her one of the Top Global Thinkers and IMF counted her among the world’s top 25 economists under the age of 45.

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