Gita Gopinath, the Deputy Manager of the International Monetary Fund, will step down from her role at the global organisation in August, it said on Monday.
Gopinath, born in India and now a US citizen, joined the IMF in 2019 as the chief economist — the first woman to serve that role. She quickly rose ranks to become the global organisation’s No. 2 official in 2022.
Her resignation will give US President Donald Trump an opportunity to name her replacement and put his stamp on the global crisis lender.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva will name a successor to Gopinath in “due course,” the IMF said.
Gita Gopinath resigned from her post at the IMF more than a year before her tenure ends.
Why is Gita Gopinath leaving IMF?
The IMF in its statement said Gita Gopinath is leaving the organisation to join as an economics professor at the Harvard University, where she previously used to teach.
“International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced today that Gita Gopinath, First Deputy Managing Director (FDMD), would be leaving the Fund at the end of August to return to Harvard University,” it said.
Gopinath taught economics at Harvard for more than a decade before becoming the IMF’s chief economist.
Harvard University confirmed the development in its gazette, saying: “Gopinath returns as the inaugural Gregory and Ania Coffey Professor of Economics, with a new slate of course offerings available next spring.”
Gita Gopinath will return to Harvard at a time when the university is at crosshairs with Donald Trump and his administration after it rejected demands to change its governance, hiring, and admissions practices.
Thanking her colleagues and calling the IMF stint a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”, Gopinath said, “I now return to my roots in academia, where I look forward to continuing to push the research frontier in international finance and macroeconomics to address global challenges, and to training the next generation of economists.”
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said Gopinath joined the IMF as a highly respected academic and proved to be an “exceptional intellectual leader” during her time, which included the pandemic and global shocks caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.