Gita Gopinath To Exit IMF, Return To Harvard; Calls Tenure 'Once In A Lifetime Opportunity'

Last Updated:July 22, 2025, 07:25 IST

Gita Gopinath will step down in August to rejoin Harvard University. She described her IMF stint as a "once in a lifetime opportunity," earning praise for her leadership.

First Deputy Managing Director of the Monetary Fund (IMF) Gita Gopinath (File photo/Reuters)

Gita Gopinath is set to leave her post of No. 2 official at the Monetary Fund towards the end of August, Reuters quoted a statement by the IMF on Monday. She would returning to join the Harvard University as a professor of economics.

In a statement, Gopinath said she was grateful for a “once in a lifetime opportunity" to work at the IMF, thanking both IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and the previous IMF chief, Christine Lagarde, who appointed her as chief economist.

“I now return to my roots in academia, where I look forward to continuing to push the research frontier in international finance and macroeconomics to address global challenges, and to training the next generation of economists," she said in a statement.

Georgieva will name a successor to Gopinath in “due course," the IMF said.

Gopinath, an Indian-born US citizen, joined the fund in 2019 as chief economist and became the first woman to serve in that role.

She had left Harvard.

Later, in January 2022, Gita Gopinath was promoted to first deputy managing director.

According to Reuters, Gopinath’s departure will offer Treasury a chance to recommend a successor at a time when US President Donald Trump is seeking to restructure the global economy and end longstanding US trade deficits with high tariffs on imports from nearly all countries.

Her return to Harvard also comes at a time when the University has been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs after it rejected demands to change its governance, hiring, and admissions practices.

The report also quoted Georgieva as saying that Gopinath joined the IMF as a highly respected academic and proved to be an “exceptional intellectual leader" during her time, which included the pandemic and global shocks caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Gita steered the Fund’s analytical and policy work with clarity, striving for the highest standards of rigorous analysis at a complex time of high uncertainty and rapidly changing global economic environment," Georgieva said.

Gopinath has also overseen the fund’s multilateral surveillance and analytical work on fiscal and monetary policy, debt, and international trade.

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News world Gita Gopinath To Exit IMF In August, Return To Harvard University As Economics Professor