Kristalina Georgieva was born in Sofia in 1953, trained as an economist at what is now the University of National and World Economy and built her career at the World Bank, where she served as chief executive, and at the European Commission, where she was budget commissioner. She has been managing director of the International Monetary Fund since October 2019.
Her tenure has been defined by the Fund's response to overlapping crises: the pandemic, the cost-of-living shock following the invasion of Ukraine, sovereign-debt distress in low-income countries and the structural challenge of financing both adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. Under her leadership the Fund has expanded its concessional and climate-related lending facilities.
Georgieva is one of the most globally visible advocates for what she calls 'building resilience' in low- and middle-income economies, and for the modernization of the international financial architecture more broadly.