He’s first WB president without finance background
World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim has made the surprise announcement that he is stepping down after six years in the post.
His resignation will take effect from 1 February.
Mr. Kim, 59, was not due to leave until 2022, after he was re-elected for a second five-year term in 2017.
He will “join a firm and focus on increasing infrastructure investments in developing countries”, the World Bank said.
In a statement, Mr. Kim said: “It has been a great honour to serve as President of this remarkable institution, full of passionate individuals dedicated to the mission of ending extreme poverty in our lifetime”.
No reason was given for his unexpected resignation.
Kristalina Georgieva, the World Bank’s chief executive officer, will assume the role of interim president.
Kim, a Korean American nominated by the Obama administration, was up against a Colombian, José Antonio Ocampo and a Nigerian, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala when he was first appointed.
Born in Seoul, South Korea in 1959, Jim Yong Kim immigrated with his family to the U.S. at the age of five and grew up in Muscatine, Iowa. His father taught dentistry at the University of Iowa, while his mother received her PhD in philosophy. Kim attended Muscatine High School, where he was valedictorian, president of his class, and played both quarterback for the football team and point guard on the basketball team. After a year and a half at the University of Iowa, he transferred to Brown University, where he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in human biology in 1982. He was awarded an M.D. at Harvard Medical School in 1991, and a PhD in anthropology at Harvard University in 1993. He was among the first enrollees of Harvard’s experimental MD/PhD programme in the social sciences.
In 1987, Kim, along with Paul Farmer, Todd McCormack, Thomas J. White and Ophelia Dahl, co-founded Partners in Health (PIH). He left the organization as executive director in 2003.
Kim joined the World Health Organization (WHO) as an adviser to the director-general and was appointed as director of WHO’s HIV/AIDS department in March 2004 after having success creating programmes to fight the disease at PIH. He served WHO until 2007.
In March 2009, Kim was named the 17th President of Dartmouth College, becoming the first Asian-American to assume the post of president at an Ivy League institution.
On March 23, 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama announced his nomination of Jim Yong Kim to become the next president of the World Bank.
That same day Kim sent a letter addressed to the Dartmouth Community stating that the position was “one of the most critical institutions fighting poverty and providing assistance to developing countries in the world today. After much reflection, I have accepted this nomination to national and global service” and that “if I am elected, our Board will take appropriate steps to ensure continuity of leadership and determine the timing of a search. For now, I remain president of Dartmouth.”
On April 16, 2012, the World Bank officially elected Kim as its next president. He is the first Bank leader whose professional background is not in the political or financial sectors, and the first to have previous experience personally tackling health issues in developing countries.
