Ask a Korean! News: Dr. Jim Yong Kim Nominated to Lead World Bank

This is exciting. President Barack Obama nominated Dr. Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth College, to lead the World Bank. To be sure, Dr. Kim is not the only nominee for the post. Angola, South Africa and Nigeria put forward Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Nigerian finance minister and former World Bank official. José Antonio Ocampo, a former finance minister of Colombia and a professor at Columbia University in New York, has also been mentioned. But given the World Bank's structure and history, Kim is overwhelmingly likely to head the organization.

Kim's nomination was generally unexpected, but is being praised as "an inspired pick" for the World Bank, which provides loans to developing countries. He was a former director of World Health Organization's AIDS/HIV department. Prior to working for WHO, Kim spent 16 years founding and operating Partners in Health, a non-profit healthcare provider which now employs more than 13,000 people in 12 developing countries. Given the importance of health issues in the developing world, Kim is expected to bring valuable new perspective to the World Bank, whose goal is to reduce global poverty.

This blog has long been a fan of Dr. Kim. Here is an excellent short video of Dr. Kim discussing leadership.

A great quote for those of you who want to help people:

I find myself giving that advice to my students today. You know, it's great to have all those great ideals. But when you go to Haiti, when you go to Africa, they don't ask you, "How much do you feel for my people? How much have you studied my people?" They say, "Have you brought anything?"

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