Jim Kim: new President of the World Bank
Venue: The Lancet
Year: 2012

On July 1, Jim Kim took the helm as President of the World Bank, as the fi rst physician and development expert to lead this important economic development institution. Both his nomination and subsequent appointment came as a surprise to many, not least himself. Kim was at home when he got a phone call from Tim Geithner. "Not often do you get a call from the US Treasury Secretary, who then asks you to meet the President of the United States the next day!" he said incredulously. At the time, Kim was established as President of Dartmouth College and had no plans to leave. But to lead the World Bank and continue his life long work of tackling the problems of poverty made perfect sense. "This was a call to service that I couldn't ignore or turn down" he said. Kim's background is an interesting one. He grew up as an Asian American in the 1970s, and was infl uenced by his father, a dentist, and mother, a theologian and philosopher, who steered him towards medicine and nurtured his belief in social justice. He also studied anthropology, which has served him well in his career. "Anthropology gets at the most critical questions; the nature of human beings and their social life. I can't think of a better way to prepare yourself for tackling challenges in global health and economic development, because fundamentally these are questions about the nature of human societies" he said. Combined with his evidence based medical training, this dual educational process has been pivotal to Kim's achievements. As a radical 24 year old medical student at Harvard University, Kim and Paul Farmer, a Harvard medical professor today and Kim's colleague and friend, co founded with others Partners in Health in 1987 an organisation that tries to break the cycle of poverty and disease by strengthening public sector and other partners in some of the poorest places in the world. Today, it operates in about a dozen countries. Farmer describes Kim as "visionary, pragmatic, and forceful" qualities which were evident in 2003, when Kim joined WHO. At that time, the world seemed paralysed about how to tackle the HIV pandemic, but with boldness and creativity Kim spearheaded WHO's ambitious "3 by 5 Initiative" to provide antiretrovirals to 3 million people in developing countries by the end of 2005. "The thing I am most proud of is that I hav e been so fortunate to work with people who had the courage to step up and tackle what others said were the most intractable problems" Kim told The Lancet. More recently, Kim has focused his eff orts on health care delivery. "The enormous investments that have been made in global health should have led to what we might have called a science of implementation and execution, but this has not happened. In the US and developed world healthcare systems, we focus so much on discovery, on the basic science of disease, and the development of new treatments. We have just not focused on the enormous complexity of delivering health care in a way that keeps people healthy that provides high quality health care at low cost." Kim thinks that "the spread of innovation and going to scale are critical, and the great development organisations in the world have not been as eff ective as they could be in tackling this issue" Kim's arrival at the World Bank has prompted speculation about how it will do business, especially as Kim was a critic of the Bank's neoliberal and privatisation policies in the 1990s. But Kim is quick to point out how much the Bank has evolved, its commitment to a modernisation agenda, and the critical role it has had in global poverty reduction. He is impressed by its "enormous capacity for thinking, researching, and doing" but adds "I think far too few people know the breadth of the problems the Bank tackles" Kim also acknowledges that "the Bank could be more nimble and do things in ways that are more effi cient and eff ective on the ground" He feels prepared for this task given his achievements at Dartmouth, which he took through a major budget reduction initiative. "I became a student of management which was really natural for me being an anthropologist because management is all about people. It is about getting complex social organisations to do things they otherwise would not" he said. What strikes me most about Kim is his fearless character and resolve to get things done and move fi elds forward, whilst displaying humility at all he has achieved. Ambassador Eric Goosby, the US Global AIDS Coordinator who has known Kim a long time, thinks he will bring to the Bank an "intellectual honesty, commitment to do the correct thing always, encourage compassion and empathy, and apply out of the box thinking to develop solutions" The biggest challenge, says Goosby, will be that: "He must weave the competing demand for resources to support economic growth with the need to improve the health outcomes of the workforce. Defi ning the unique role the World Bank could play in helping countries learn how to access resources from 'extractive industries' (mining, precious metals/gems, water, gas and oil) so they become the 'resource motor' for health and education programs remains the challenge." Kim is clearly excited by his new role. "In my experience, it is rare to fi nd an organisation full of individuals who are passionate about the mission. My job is going to be to continue to fuel that passion so that we continue to get better, more focused and eff ective, and deliver on the Bank's promise: our dream is a world free of poverty. The Bank can play an absolutely transformative role through this period of [economic] crisis and help countries to achieve great things."