History of Gita Gopinath

Gita Gopinath was born on 8 December 1971 in Calcutta, India in a Malayali family. She is the younger of two daughters of T.V. Gopinath and V.C. Vijayalakshmi. Her family is related to the late A. K. Gopalan.

Gita received a B.A. degree from Lady Shri Ram College for Women of the University of Delhi in 1992.

Gita further completed an M.A. degree at the University of Washington in 1996.

Gita earned her Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 2001 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Three essays on international capital flows: a search theoretic approach," under the supervision of Ben Bernanke and Kenneth Rogoff.

Gita was chosen as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2011.

Gita was named one of the top 25 economists under 45 by the International Monetary Fund in 2014.

In 2017, Gita received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Washington.

In October 2018, Gopinath was appointed chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

In 2018, Gopinath was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society.

In 2019 Gita was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, the highest honor for a person of Indian origin, by the President of India.

In June 2021, Gopinath was appointed to the World Bank–International Monetary Fund High-Level Advisory Group (HLAG) on Sustainable and Inclusive Recovery and Growth, co-chaired by Mari Pangestu, Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, and Nicholas Stern.