INFLUENTIAL ECONOMISTS: INTERNATIONAL POLICYMAKING AND ECONOMIC STATECRAFT 

This Salon featured two highly accomplished economists. Heidi Crebo-Rediker is currently Chief Executive Officer of International Capital Strategies, and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She previously served as the State Department’s first Chief Economist under Secretary Hillary Clinton. Kalpana Kochhar is currently a Deputy Director in the Asia and Pacific Department of the IMF and has been at the IMF for more than two decades.

Kalpana Kochhar was appointed Director of the Human Resources Department (HRD) at the International Monetary Fund in June 2016. Prior to that, she was Deputy Director in the IMF's Asia and Pacific Department. Between 2012 and 2014, she was Deputy Director in the IMF's Strategy, Policy and Review Department. Before starting her career at the IMF, Ms. Kochhar was Assistant Professor at the George Washington University. She then joined the IMF’s Economist Program in 1988, assigned to the Asia and Pacific Department (APD). She worked on various country assignments in APD for six years before moving to the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department (SPR). In 1997, she returned to APD, where she was promoted to Assistant Director in 2003. While in APD, she led work on Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bhutan, and Nepal, and has also covered China, Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Ms. Kochhar also has extensive institutional experience. She served as Senior Personnel Manager in RES for two years, and again in APD during the downsizing of the IMF in 2006–08. She is currently a member of the Diversity Council, and also serves on the personnel Review Committee—appointments she also held before her move to the World Bank. Ms. Kochhar holds a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from the Universities of Madras and Delhi, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Brown University.

Heidi Crebo-Rediker is the Chief Executive Officer of International Capital Strategies. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, Ms. Crebo-Rediker served as the State Department’s first Chief Economist. Appointed to this Assistant Secretary level position by Secretary Clinton as a center-piece of her "Economic Statecraft" initiative, she provided advice and analysis to the Secretary on a wide range of foreign policy issues having a significant economic, market or financial component. Before this, Ms. Crebo-Rediker was the Chief of International Finance and Economics for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, following nearly two
decades in Europe as a senior finance professional. In the Senate, she advised then Chairman John Kerry on international and domestic economic and financial issues. During her time in the Senate, she was also the architect of the bi-partisan National
Infrastructure Bank legislation (The BUILD Act) introduced in March 2011 and included in President Obama’s Jobs Act.
Ms. Crebo-Rediker was named one of the "Top 25 Women in Business" by The Wall Street Journal Europe. She has been a guest lecturer at MIT, Stanford, Georgetown and American University. She holds degrees from Dartmouth College and the London School of Economics. Her views on financial and economic matters have been carried in many forums, including CNN, BBC, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Bloomberg, The New Republic, Forbes, Foreign Policy, Barron’s, The National Interest and elsewhere. She is based in Washington, DC.