James D. Wolfensohn
President
World Bank Group

James D. Wolfensohn, the World Bank Group's ninth president since 1946, established his career as an international investment banker with a parallel involvement in development issues and the global environment. On September 27, 1999, Mr. Wolfensohn was unanimously reappointed by the Bank's Board of Executive Directors to a second five-year term as president beginning June 1, 2000. This will make him the third president in World Bank history to serve a second term.

Since becoming president on June 1, 1995, he has traveled to more than 100 countries to gain first-hand experience of the challenges facing the World Bank, and its 184 member countries. During his travels, Mr. Wolfensohn has not only visited development projects supported by the World Bank, but he has also met with the Bank's government clients as well as with representatives from business, labor, media, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), religious and women's groups, students and teachers. In the process he has taken the initiative in forming new strategic partnerships between the Bank and the governments it serves, the private sector, civil society, regional development banks and the UN.

In 1996, together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mr. Wolfensohn initiated the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) as the first comprehensive debt reduction program to address the needs of the world's poorest, most heavily indebted countries. Two years later, he led a global review of the HIPC Initiative, involving church groups, NGOs and representatives from creditor and HIPC countries, to assess its progress and identify ways to make the Initiative deeper, broader and faster. This review, and proposals by donor countries, culminated in September 1999 with an official endorsement at the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings to double the amount of relief, make more countries eligible for assistance, and speed up the process.

In January 1999, Mr. Wolfensohn introduced the Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF), drawing on the lessons of development experience and putting into action the key concepts laid out in his Annual Meetings speeches of 1997 and 1998. Together with the Bank's partners, the CDF is now being piloted in 13 countries. A central feature of Mr. Wolfensohn's Strategic Compact is to incorporate key aspects of the information revolution into the Bank's work by transforming the institution into a Knowledge Bank.

Prior to joining the Bank, Mr. Wolfensohn was an international investment banker. His last position was as President and Chief Executive Officer of James D. Wolfensohn Inc, his own investment firm set up in 1981 to advise major US and international corporations. He relinquished his interests in the firm upon joining the World Bank.

Currently, in addition to serving as President of the World Bank Group, he is Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Mr. Wolfensohn is also an Honorary Trustee of the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Association in New York.

Born in Australia in December 1933, Mr. Wolfensohn is a naturalized US citizen. He holds a BA and LLB from the University of Sydney and an MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

He and his wife, Elaine, an education specialist and a graduate of Wellesley, BA, and Columbia University, MA and MEd, have three children—Sara, Naomi, and Adam.