Annual Lecture Series

Christine Lagarde is the eleventh Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.

Born in Paris in 1956, Christine Lagarde completed high school in Le Havre and attended Holton Arms School in Bethesda (Maryland, USA). She then graduated from law school at University Paris X, and obtained a Master’s degree from the Political Science Institute in Aix en Provence.

After being admitted as a lawyer to the Paris Bar, Christine Lagarde joined the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie as an associate, specializing in Labor, Anti-trust, and Mergers & Acquisitions. A member of the Executive Committee of the Firm in 1995, Christine Lagarde became the Chairman of the Global Executive Committee of Baker & McKenzie in 1999, and subsequently Chairman of the Global Strategic Committee in 2004.

Christine Lagarde joined the French government in June 2005 as Minister for Foreign Trade. After a brief stint as Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, in June 2007 she became the first woman to hold the post of Finance and Economy Minister of a G-7 country. From July to December 2008, she also chaired the ECOFIN Council, which brings together Economics and Finance Ministers of the European Union.

As a member of the G-20, Christine Lagarde was involved in the Group's management of the financial crisis, helping to foster international policies related to financial supervision and regulation and to strengthen global economic governance. As Chairman of the G-20 when France took over its presidency for the year 2011, she launched a wide-ranging work agenda on the reform of the international monetary system.

In July 2011, Christine Lagarde became the eleventh Managing Director of the IMF, and the first woman to hold that position.

Mario Draghi has served as President of the European Central Bank (ECB) since 2011. Prior to his appointment to the ECB, he served as Governor of the Bank of Italy from 2006 until 2011. As Governor of Italy’s central bank, Mr. Draghi was a member of the ECB’s governing council, which sets interest rates in the euro zone. He also became Chairman of the Financial Stability Forum, an advisory body for the Group of 20 economically advanced countries. Following the worldwide financial crisis of 2008, that forum became the Financial Stability Board, and it acquired a mandate to devise regulatory standards that would prevent another near collapse of the banking system.

From 2002 to 2005 he was a Vice-Chairman and Managing Director at London-based Goldman Sachs International, a subsidiary of the American investment bank. Prior to that, Mr. Draghi was Director General of the Italian Treasury from 1991 to 2001. In that position, and as Chairman of a national committee for privatization, he played a central role in reducing Italy’s public debt and annual budget deficits and in stabilizing interest rates and currency exchange rates. Those actions succeeded in allowing Italy to qualify for participation in the European Monetary Union of 1999.

Mr. Draghi received a Ph.D. from MIT in 1976, the first Italian to earn a doctorate at that institution. During the 1980s he taught economics at the University of Florence and worked for the World Bank in Washington, D.C.