The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has appointed Kenyan Ceda Ogada as secretary to the fund and the director of the Secretary’s department starting September 1, 2020. Mr. Ogada replaces Jianhai Lin who retires at the end of this month and has served as the Fund’s Secretary since March 2012.
The IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said, “Ceda has outstanding institutional knowledge, strategic and intellectual heft, and people leadership. His unparalleled ability to bring people together, combined with his profound appreciation of the Fund’s institutional history and legal principles, as well as strong service orientation, will help the Fund to even more effectively serve our member countries in a very challenging economic environment.”
Mr. Ogada joined the IMF in 1999 and rose through the ranks to become Deputy General Counsel in 2014. During his 21 years at the IMF, Ogada worked across different aspects of the fund’s work such as advising on the governance of the Fund, on country operations, helping to develop Fund policies and implementation guidance, and providing technical assistance to member countries.
Some of the key projects Ceda Ogada worked on are; enhancing IMF’s policy to address governance and corruption issues; reforms in lending policy such as the establishment of the Flexible Credit Line (FCL) and the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT) and reviews on surveillance policy and capacity development strategy. Mr. Ogada was heavily involved in the work on euro area crisis countries during the global financial crisis.
Before he joined the IMF, Mr. Ogada worked at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development as a legal expert and before that he was in private legal practice in the United States.
He holds a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in history from Dartmouth College.
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