Co-Founder of Development Charity Nominated to Head World Bank
March 26, 2012 | Read Time: 1 minute
Jim Yong Kim, a co-founder of the development group Partners in Health, was nominated by President Obama on Friday to head the World Bank, The Boston Globe notes.
Mr. Kim, now president of Dartmouth, is an unusual choice because World Bank leaders typically have a financial background, but President Obama said, “It’s time for a development professional to lead the world’s largest development agency.”
Ophelia Dahl, another one of the five co-founders of Partners in Health, said Mr. Kim would excel in the job because “he sways and woos people and brings unlikely partners together. That will be important, because some of these institutions are quite staid in the way they do things.”
Mr. Kim, who won a MacArthur “genius” prize, directed the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS program and is given credit for improving the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis in developing countries.
