New York: Within a span of a week, two Indian Americans were elevated to top positions: Parag Agrawal as Twitter CEO and Gita Gopinath as IMF’s First Deputy Managing Director (FDMD).
Most excitement was caused by social media platform Twitter going through a major organizational change on Monday as the company’s co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO, anointing Parag Agrawal to the top post with immediate effect.
With his elevation, Twitter’s former chief technology officer also joined the growing list of Indian Americans to lead top technology companies in the US:
Sundar Pichai (Google), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), Arvind Krishna (IBM) and Nikesh Arora (Palo Alto Networks).
Agrawal had joined Twitter as a software engineer in 2011 and became its CTO in 2017.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced Thursday that Gita Gopinath, currently the IMF’s Chief Economist, will be their new First Deputy Managing Director (FDMD). The position was held by Geoffrey Okamoto who is stepping down early next year.
Gopinath had been scheduled to return to her academic position at Harvard. Remarked Kristalina Georgieva, IMF’s Managing Director, “I am delighted that Gita has decided to stay and accept the new responsibility. I believe that Gita—universally recognized as one of the world’s leading macroeconomists—has precisely the expertise that we need for the FDMD role at this point,”
Accepting the new position, Gopinath said, “I… look forward to collaborating closely with all the incredibly brilliant and committed colleagues at the Fund, working with whom has been an absolute privilege.”
In 2019, Gopinath had created history to become the first female Chief Economist of IMF.
Gita Gopinath has been IMF’s Chief Economist.
