Gita Gopinath

Gita Gopinath (born 8 December 1971) is an Indian-American economist who is currently serving as the Gregory and Ania Coffey professor of Economics at Harvard University and previously served as the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), from 21 January 2022 to 31 August 2025. Before that she also served as chief economist of the IMF between 2019 and 2022. Prior to joining the IMF, Gopinath had a two-decade-long career as an academic including at the economics department of Harvard University, where she was the John Zwaanstra Professor of International Studies and Economics (2005–2022), and earlier an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (2001–05). She is also a co-director of the international finance and macroeconomics program at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has earlier worked as the honorary economic adviser to the chief minister of Kerala. Gita Gopinath was appointed as chief economist of the IMF in October 2018 by its managing director Christine Lagarde. In an interview with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, she named the worldwide recession of 2020 as "the Great Lockdown". In December 2021, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva appointed her the first deputy managing director of the IMF, which is the organization's second-in-command position. Gopinath will leave the IMF by the end of August 2025 to rejoin Harvard as the inaugural Gregory and Ania Coffey Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics.