As first deputy managing director, Gita Gopinath has been steering the International Monetary Fund through difficult times of global uncertainty
Gita Gopinath, First deputy managing director, International Monetary Fund
Imaging: Kapil Kashyap
Gita Gopinath, 53, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has made a mark in the area of global finance and macroeconomics. She influences critical policy decisions in trade, investment, debt and interest rates.
Former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan says, “After an extraordinary career as an academic, Gopinath has helped steer the IMF through difficult times, both as its chief economist and as its first deputy managing director. Her achievements on the world stage should make every Indian proud.”
Gopinath was born in Kolkata and completed her school education in Mysuru. After graduating from Lady Shri Ram College for Women in Delhi, she joined the Delhi School of Economics for a master’s degree, and pursued a PhD from Princeton University in 2001. She had the opportunity to learn from revered economists such as Kenneth Rogoff and former US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke.
She started her career as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in 2001. After four years, Gopinath worked as the Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and of Economics at Harvard University’s economics department. Between 2019 and 2022, the academician, who has written a wide range of research articles on policy issues and financial crises in developed and emerging markets, served as the IMF’s first woman chief economist, bringing her experience and skills to help navigate the global economic crisis unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In January 2022, at a time when the world was struggling to recover from the pandemic, Gopinath was appointed as the first deputy managing director of the Fund, making her second in command at the IMF.
(This story appears in the 18 April, 2025 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)