Jim Yong Kim, an American doctor who was born in Korea, began his new job as World Bank president in July. In this World Bank video, he answers a sundry of the 1,000 questions his office has received worldwide on the economy, jobs, gender equality and other topics. The World Bank is part of the United Nations development system.
One aspect he reiterates in the video is the need to lift people out of poverty, particularly looking at ways of breaking the cycle of poverty, which most often means investing in girls, who are more vulnerable to a life of indigence than boys. Kim also discusses the necessity of creating good jobs, but emphasizes there are “no silver bullets” in improving the worldwide economy, yet he says that the right development methods can make a difference.
“Our focus will always be on the most vulnerable,” he finishes the short program.
Dulcie Leimbach is a co-founder, with Barbara Crossette, of PassBlue. For PassBlue and other publications, Leimbach has reported from New York and overseas from West Africa (Burkina Faso and Mali) and from Europe (Scotland, Sicily, Vienna, Budapest, Kyiv, Armenia, Iceland and The Hague). She has provided commentary on the UN for BBC World Radio, ARD German TV and Radio, NHK’s English channel, Background Briefing with Ian Masters/KPFK Radio in Los Angeles and the Foreign Press Association.
Previously, she was an editor for the Coalition for the UN Convention Against Corruption; from 2008 to 2011, she was the publications director of the United Nations Association of the USA. Before UNA, Leimbach was an editor at The New York Times for more than 20 years, editing and writing for most sections of the paper, including the Magazine, Book Review and Op-Ed. She began her reporting career in small-town papers in San Diego, Calif., and Boulder, Colo., graduating to the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and then working at The Times. Leimbach has been a fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies as well as at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; taught news reporting at Hofstra University; and guest-lectured at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the CUNY Journalism School. She graduated from the University of Colorado and has an M.F.A. in writing from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
