Category: Business & Economics
Created on Monday, 16 April 2012 20:31
Published Date
Written by GNA
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Accra, April 16, GNA – The World Bank (WB) Executive Directors on Monday elected Dr Jim Yong Kim as the 12th President of the World Bank Group for a five-year term beginning on July 1.
The President chair’s the Boards of Directors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association, a WB document made available to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Accra indicates.
He is also ex-officio Chair of the Boards of Directors of the International Finance Corporation, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and Administrative Council of International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.
A Curriculum Vitae of Dr Kim, obtained by the GNA indicates that the new WB President was born in 1959 in Seoul, South Korea, a co-founder of Partners in Health and former Director of Department of HIV and AIDS at the World Health Organisation and holds professorship at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health.
Dr Kim served as chair of Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Director of François Xavier Bagnoud Centre for Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health.
He was awarded a MacArthur Genius Fellowship (2003), named one of Americas 25 Best Leaders by US News and World Report (2005), and was selected as one of Time Magazines 100 Most Influential People in the World (2006).
Dr Kim was elected in 2004 to the Institute of Medicine of National Academy of Sciences one of the highest honours in the fields of health and medicine for his professional achievements and commitment to service.
He has published widely over the past two decades, authoring or co-authoring articles for leading academic and scientific journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and Science.
Dr Kim moved with his family to the United States at the age of five and grew up in Muscatine, Iowa, and a graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1982.
He earned a medical doctorate from Harvard Medical School in 1991 and a PHD in anthropology from Harvard University in 1993. He is married to Dr Younsook Lim, a Pediatrician. The couple has two young sons.
The Board expressed its deep gratitude for out-going President, Mr Robert B. Zoellicks for his outstanding leadership and dedication to reducing poverty in member countries, the core mandate of the World Bank Group.
“We, the Executive Directors, wish to express our deep appreciation to all the nominees, Jim Yong Kim, José Antonio Ocampo and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
“Their candidacies enriched the discussion of the role of the President and the World Bank Groups future direction,” the WB stated.
The WB noted that WB Executive Directors followed the new selection process agreed in 2011 which, for the first time in the Banks history, yielded multiple nominees.
The process included an open nomination where any national of the Banks membership could be proposed by any Executive Director or Governor, publication of the names of the candidates, interviews of the candidates by the Executive Directors, and final selection of the President.
