Spring Meetings

Kristalina Georgieva is the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). She is the first person from an emerging market economy to lead the IMF since its inception in 1944. Before joining the Fund, Ms. Georgieva was Chief Executive Officer of the World Bank and also served as Interim President for a time. Previously, she served at the European Commission as Vice President for Budget and Human Resources – and as Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response. She was named “European of the Year” and “Commissioner of the Year” by European Voice for her leadership in the European Union’s humanitarian response to crises.

John Lipsky is the Peter G. Peterson Distinguished Scholar at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs and a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Most recently, was first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund; previously held positions of vice chairman of JPMorgan Investment Bank, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase, chief economist and director of research at Chase Manhattan Bank, and chief economist and, previously, director of the European Economic and Market Analysis Group in London, at Salomon Brothers; is a Director of the American Council on Germany, and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations; PhD, economics, Stanford University.

Mr. Bo Li assumed the role of Deputy Managing Director at the IMF on August 23, 2021. He is responsible for the IMF’s work on about 90 countries as well as on a wide range of policy issues.

Before joining the IMF, Mr. Li worked for many years at the People’s Bank of China, most recently as Deputy Governor. He earlier headed the Monetary Policy, Monetary Policy II, and Legal and Regulation Departments, where he played an important role in the reform of state-owned banks, the drafting of China’s anti-money-laundering law, the internationalization of the renminbi, and the establishment of China’s macroprudential policy framework.

Outside of the PBoC, Mr. Li served as Vice Mayor of Chongqing—China’s largest municipality, with a population of over 30 million—where he oversaw the city’s financial-sector development, international trade, and foreign direct investment. Mr. Li was also Vice Chairman of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese. He started his career at the New York law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he was a practicing attorney for five years.

Mr. Li holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and an M.A. from Boston University, both in economics, as well as a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. He received his undergraduate education from Renmin University of China in Beijing.

Deborah Lehr is the Vice Chairperson and Executive Director of the Paulson Institute. In that capacity, she advises the Chairman of the Paulson Institute on U.S.–China relations as well as oversees the development and implementation of Paulson Institute programs and initiatives. She advised Mr. Paulson when he was the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs and helped then-Treasury Secretary Paulson to create and launch the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue. In addition, she served as Senior Advisor to the Chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch and was a Senior Managing Director at the New York Stock Exchange. Ms. Lehr also served in the U.S. Government in the Executive Office of the President as a Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for China, where she was a lead negotiator for China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, for two intellectual property rights negotiations and on the team for the 1992 Market Access Agreement. Also, Ms. Lehr was one of the youngest Directors of Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. Previous to that, she was involved in export control and trade policy issues at the Department of Commerce.

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Mr. Jin Liqun is the inaugural President and Chairman of the Board of Directors. On July 28, 2020, he was elected to serve a second term of five years, beginning on Jan. 16, 2021. Before being elected as the Bank’s first president, Mr. Jin served as Secretary-General of the Multilateral Interim Secretariat tasked with establishing the Bank. Mr. Jin has rich experience across the private and public sectors, as well as with MDBs. He served as Chairman of China International Capital Corporation Limited, China’s first joint-venture investment bank, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of China Investment Corporation, and as Chairman of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds. Mr. Jin previously served as Vice President, and then Ranking Vice President, of the Asian Development Bank, and as Alternate Executive Director for China at the World Bank and at the Global Environment Facility. He spent nearly two decades at the Chinese Ministry of Finance, reaching the rank of Vice Minister.

Dr. Uzziel Ndagijimana is the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning in Rwanda’s Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN) and has been since April 2018. He served as Minister of State in Charge of Economic Planning (MINECOFIN) from July 2014 up to April 2018 before his appointment as full Minister of Finance and Economic Planning.

Before joining the MINECOFIN, Dr. Ndagijimana was the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health, Republic of Rwanda from May 2011 to July 2014. He also served in different leadership positions as the Vice Rector of the National University of Rwanda from (2007-2011) and as the Rector of School of Finance and Banking in Kigali, Rwanda (2002-2007).

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Vera Songwe is Chair of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility. Songwe is co-chair of the High Level Panel on Finance for Climate Action.  She is member of the Global Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ). She is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Songwe was previously Under-Secretary-General at the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Songwe has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 most influential people in 2022 and was a recipient of the All Africa Continental Leadership Award, Songwe was named one of the nominees for Forbes Africa 50 Top Women in 2023. She recently co-authored a book entitled “Régional Integration in West Africa: Is There a Role for a Single Currency?” She has spent the last three years championing the cause for additional liquidity for emerging markets and the need for a new global financial architecture fit for the 21st century’s development challenges.

She has held a number of senior positions at the World Bank, and the International Finance Corporation. Her main areas of interest are financial stability, macro-prudential policy, fiscal and monetary policy, innovative financing mechanisms for development, climate finance, agriculture, energy, and economic governance. She has extensive experience working in Africa, East Asia, Europe and Central Asia and South Asia regions.

Prior to joining the Bank, Dr. Songwe was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern California and at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Dr. Songwe holds a PhD. in Mathematical Economics from the Center for Operations Research & Econometrics from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium. She holds a BA in Economics and a BA in Political Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Kenneth Lay is a Senior Managing Director at RockCreek. Before joining the firm, he served as Treasurer of The World Bank, where he and his colleagues managed more than $100 billion in investments for the World Bank, other international financial institutions, and more than 40 of the World Bank’s member countries’ central banks, sovereign wealth and pension funds. Ken also led the World Bank Treasury’s banking and capital markets programs as they delivered financing and risk management for the World Bank itself. He extended their reach to provide these services directly to the Bank’s member countries and their instrumentalities and introduced green bonds and catastrophe bonds to deepen the institution’s engagement in climate-change mitigation and adaptation.