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Gita Gopinath to Step Down as IMF Deputy Chief, Return to Harvard

Prime Highlights

  • Gita Gopinath is resigning as IMF First Deputy Managing Director in August 2025 to return to a professorship at Harvard.
  • She will be departing after a highly influential term of time in which she has counseled world economic policy.

Key Facts

  • Gopinath was the first woman Chief Economist at the IMF in 2019 and then took up the role of First Deputy Managing Director in 2022.
  • Harvard University will once more open its doors for her as she resumes her academic research in macroeconomics and international finance.

Key Background

Indian-American economist Gita Gopinath has been the IMF’s star since her record recruitment as its first female Chief Economist in January 2019. She was promoted to the role of First Deputy Managing Director in 2022, where she oversaw the IMF’s most pressing research, economic analysis, and policy agendas. Throughout her tenure, Gopinath made very sound recommendations on international financial stability, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic and economic disturbances by geopolitics-related hostilities like the Russia-Ukraine war. Her careful economic analysis and policymaking policymaking gained general appreciation within the IMF as well as internationally in the world of finance.

While her success, Gopinath is resigning and returning to academics, a step described as personal and unexpected. She referred to her experience at the IMF in optimistic terms as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to be in a place to make a contribution to world economic policy during times of hardship. Gopinath’s departure to Harvard is to resume her career in the academics, where she was previously Professor of International Studies and Economics.

She will also stand trial at Harvard for constructing studies on macroeconomic policy and world finance, and future economists. Her massive experience in handling global financial crises will also add more depth to research work and academic scholarship. Gopinath’s return is considered a huge present for the economics department of Harvard.

IMF indicated that the new First Deputy Managing Director would be appointed shortly. The selection would include decisive inputs from the U.S., which owns the largest quota share in the IMF and therefore plays an influential role.