Spring Meetings

Rhoda Weeks-Brown, IMF General Counsel and Director of the Legal Department

Rhoda Weeks-Brown is General Counsel and Director of the IMF’s Legal Department. She advises the IMF’s Executive Board, management, staff and country membership on all legal aspects of the IMF’s operations, including its lending, regulatory and advisory functions. Over her career at the IMF, she has led the Legal Department’s work on a wide range of significant policy and country matters. She has written articles and many IMF Board papers on all aspects of the law of the IMF and co-taught a Tulane University seminar on that topic.

Ms. Weeks-Brown has also served as Deputy Director in the IMF’s Communications Department, where she led IMF communications and outreach in Africa, Asia and Europe; played a key role in the transformation of the IMF’s communications strategy; and led IMF strategic policy communications on key legal and financial topics.

Ms. Weeks-Brown has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in Economics (summa cum laude) from Howard University. Before joining the IMF, she worked in Skadden’s Washington DC office. She is member of the Bar in New York, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia and a member of the Supreme Court Bar. Ms. Weeks-Brown serves on the Board of TalentNomics, Inc., a non-profit organization focused on developing women leaders globally.

Professor Robert Klitgaard­, Claremont Graduate University

Robert Klitgaard advises countries around the world on government reform and economic strategy. He is a University Professor at Claremont Graduate University, where he served as President from 2005 to 2009. He has served as Visiting Professor of Economics at Yale’s School of Management, and an associate professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he also was a half-time special assistant to Harvard President Derek Bok.

His widely read books include Tropical Gangsters, one of The New York Times’ Books of the Century, and Choosing Elites, named in The Harvard Guide to Influential Books.

Patricia Moreira­, Managing Director of Transparency International

Patricia Moreira was appointed as Managing Director of the International Secretariat of Transparency International in October 2017. She is Spanish-Brazilian and has worked for more than a decade promoting social impact and innovation in a global environment. For the past 14 years, she worked at Ayuda en Acción, a Spanish aid organization operating in 20 countries around the world. She became the organization’s CEO in 2009, heading a team of around 100 people at headquarters and more than 300 in the field.

Prior to that, Ms. Moreira worked as an international management consultant for ten years with a focus on technology, innovation and impact. She holds an MBA from INSEAD, France and a BA in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has done PhD research in Social Entrepreneurship at ICADE University in Madrid.

Tristan Walker, Innovation Unit Chief, International Monetary Fund

Tristan Walker joined the IMF in August 2017 as the Fund's first Innovation Unit Chief, overseeing the Innovation Lab (iLab) and the Fund's Innovation Strategy. Prior to the Fund, Tristan has held innovation and finance leadership positions in public and private organizations, including at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, Crossrail, Transport for London, and Oxfam GB. Tristan co-founded and led two e-commerce startups in the early 2000s.  Tristan holds an MBA from Oxford University Said Business School and a Bachelor's degree from the London School of Economics.

Mark Weber, MIT IBM Watson AI Lab

Mark Weber conducts applied research and leads the Advanced Prototyping Team at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, a $250 million partnership founded in 2017. The lab has 50 active projects co-led by MIT faculty and IBM Research scientists who are among the world's leading AI researchers.

Through the lab's membership program, which Mark leads, companies and strategic partners work with the lab to bridge fundamental research to real-world impact.

Prior to IBM Research, Mark was a fellow at the MIT Legatum Center for Development & Entrepreneurship while he earned his MBA in finance from MIT Sloan. At the MIT Media Lab, advised by former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, he led a research engagement with the Mexican Ministry of Finance and the Inter-American Development Bank. Conducting field work in Mexico and Ukraine, Mark's team developed a new open-source protocol for blockchain-based warehouse receipts in agricultural supply chains. In a paper published in the Journal of Management Science, Mark and his colleagues explain how such a protocol could be used to improve access to credit for small-medium enterprises (SME) through inventory transaction signaling.

Rosmarie Schlup, Macroeconomic Support, Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO)

Rosmarie Schlup is head of the Macroeconomic Support Division at the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) since November 2016. She has previously worked as Senior Technical Assistance Officer at the International Monetary Fund’s Institute for Capacity Development and SECO’s Macroeconomic Support Division as Deputy Head. Prior to joining the division she was Deputy Head of SECO’s Export and Location Promotion Division, and served as Head of Delegation to the Paris Club. Before joining SECO, she worked as policy advisor for the Swiss government. She holds a MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a MA in International Relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.