President Obama’s Groundbreaking Choice for World Bank President [View all]

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Last edited Fri Mar 23, 2012, 10:04 AM - Edit history (1)

President Obama introduces Dartmouth College president Jim Yong Kim as his nominee for the next president of the World Bank, during an announcement in the Rose Garden at the White House (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)


March 23 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Friday nominated Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim, a public health expert of South Korean origin, to head the World Bank . . .

"I do not think that the World Bank could have a better leader," Obama said as he made the announcement with Kim at his side in the White House rose garden.

Obama said, "it's time for a development professional" to lead the world's largest development agency.


____ Though the board of the World Bank is scheduled to officially vote on the new president at a meeting scheduled for Saturday afternoon, the president’s nomination effectively guarantees Kim the post as the new head of the prestigious 187-nation lending organization focused on economic development.

Kim, 52, has been involved in development work as the former executive director of the non-profit Partners In Health, which provides medical services in countries including Haiti, Peru, Russia, and Rwanda. He also led the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department from 2004 and 2006, in addition to formerly being a professor at Harvard Medical School.

read; http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74394.html



from Fred Hiatt at WaPo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/jim-yong-kim-president-obamas-groundbreaking-choice-for-world-bank-president/2012/03/23/gIQAnKXiVS_blog.html

Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President Obama’s pick to head the World Bank for the next five years, is an old friend, so don’t look for any objective journalism here.

But I would say it’s an inspired and groundbreaking move.

By groundbreaking, I don’t mean because Kim would be the first person from a minority community to head the bank, although that is significant. Kim’s appointment as the first Asian-American to head an Ivy League university — he was named president of Dartmouth College in 2009 — was a source of pride to many Asian-Americans, and Korean-Americans in particular.

But Kim’s appointment to head the Bank is pioneering for a different reason. The mission of the World Bank is to help lift people out of poverty, and Kim will be the first Bank leader who has dedicated most of his professional life to working with and for the world’s poor.



from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Yong_Kim

Jim Yong Kim (born December 8, 1959) is a Korean-American physician, and 17th President of Dartmouth College. He has been a Professor of Medicine and Social Medicine and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was a co-founder and later Executive Director of Partners in Health along with Paul Farmer, Todd McCormack, Thomas J. White and Ophelia Dahl. On March 2, 2009, Kim was named the 17th President of Dartmouth College, a position he formally assumed on July 1, 2009. Kim is the first Asian-American to assume the post of president at an Ivy League institution.



from KoreAm Journal: http://iamkoream.com/world-vision/

In world-saving circles, he is perhaps best known for his work with Paul Farmer, a similarly trained physician and anthropologist who in 1987 founded Partners in Health (PIH). Kim joined the Cambridge-based nonprofit while a Harvard Medical School student and is credited now in PIH historical literature as a co-founder of the organization, which describes its admirably ambitious mission this way: “At its root, our mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone. When a person in Peru, or Siberia, or rural Haiti falls ill, PIH uses all of the means at our disposal to make them well — from pressuring drug manufacturers, to lobbying policy makers, to providing medical care and social services. Whatever it takes. Just as we would do if a member of our own family — or we ourselves — were ill.”

Armed with this vision, Kim has traveled with Farmer from Haiti to Peru, Russia to Rwanda, to treat the health problems of the poor. They have gone into neighborhoods suffering from near-epidemic cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis, and have used guerilla-like tactics to bring treatment to their patients. For some perspective on the dangers of being in this kind of environment, one need only look back at the recent case of the newlywed placed on lockdown after traveling across the United States with this form of TB, commonly known as MDR-TB.

In 1999, the World Health Organization appointed Kim and Farmer to help lead the international response to drug-resistant TB by establishing pilot treatment programs and organizing delivery systems for antibiotics.

Although Kim and Farmer were initially viewed by the international health community as dreamers who did not understand what they were up against, a decade and a $45-million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant later, drug-resistant tuberculosis is being treated successfully in 50 countries, and PIH has served as a leader in that fight . . .

read: http://iamkoream.com/world-vision/



Dr. Kim tells Bill Moyers: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09112009/profile2.html

One of the things that we've learned is that community health workers, which are really members of the community who help people go through very difficult treatment regimens, this can work anywhere. We've done it first in Haiti. Then we did it in Peru. And then in Africa. But most remarkably, we've also implemented that program in Boston, and are now thinking of implementing it on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico...Having someone who just visits every day, just to make sure that you're taking your medicines and you're doing okay, that has a huge payoff down the line in terms of overall health outcomes.

Dr. Kim, 49, has had a profound impact on a wide range of organizations throughout his distinguished career, including, among others, the Harvard Medical School, the World Health Organization and Partners In Health, a non-profit organization that supports health programs in poor communities worldwide. He is widely respected for his leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases.

Dr. Kim's academic, humanitarian and global health work has earned him widespread recognition. He was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2003; was named one of America's 25 "Best Leaders" by US NEWS & WORLD REPORT in 2005; and was selected as one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2006.

read: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09112009/profile2.html



from Dr. Kim's 2009 Inaugural Address at Dartmouth: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~president/inauguration/speeches/kim.html

Consider the challenges before us: the stresses on our natural environment — nearly 7 billion people living amidst growing inadequacies of food and water; the deepening chasm between rich and poor; the ravages of epidemic disease; the denial of human rights and basic freedoms to so many who thirst for them; and the need to inspire, provoke and energize humanity with art, literature and critical thought that resonate in a changing world . . .

In his inaugural address, President John Kennedy focused on the distance that can separate dreams from delivery—and the role of the College in bridging that divide.

Kennedy argued that Dartmouth must train leaders who “will enlarge human knowledge . . . work in high office . . . guide great corporations to new service to society . . . and work to wipe out poverty and disease.” To the moral motivation to solve the problems of society, Kennedy explained that a Dartmouth education must also add the know-how to devise and implement practical solutions . . .

I’ve worked in villages where less than 1-in-10 adults can read and write. But these communities had a deep appreciation for the importance of education in driving social change . . .

Through 25 years of working to help improve health in some of the poorest communities in the world, what has become clear to me is that delivering on ambitious social goals requires more than principled individual action, more even than courageous social justice movements. It requires building and implementing systems that can deliver sustainable solutions.

Educators helping peasants in Latin America break the chains of poverty seem worlds apart from systems engineers in cutting-edge production facilities. Yet, I believe that they embody two sides of the educational mission set forth by my predecessors, a mission that in this historical moment is more vital than ever: on the one hand, the passionate commitment to making the world a better place; on the other, the practical understanding of complex systems required to deliver solutions on a global scale. Passion and practicality: Either without the other will be inadequate to tackle the challenges we face today.

The need for both brings to mind lessons I learned about education as a boy growing up back in Iowa. My father was a dentist, and dentists are among the most practical people on earth. My mother is a theologian and philosopher. She was always trying to lift my sights to the higher things. This is what my dentist father and philosopher mother taught me: Keep your feet on the ground—but shoot for the stars.

This historical moment requires a generation that unites the passion to transform the world with the intellectual capacity to tackle the most difficult scientific challenges; to apply sophisticated management strategies in new ways; to create art that resonates in a changing world; and to lead teams of people toward common goals . . .