Jim Yong Kim

“Economic development and poverty alleviation are so complicated that I don't think there's a single background or a single discipline that is sufficient to tackle these great human problems.”

“Many people could benefit from meditation.”

“Institutionalized discrimination is bad for people and for societies. Widespread discrimination is also bad for economies. There is clear evidence that when societies enact laws that prevent productive people from fully participating in the workforce, economies suffer.”

“What happens when corn and wheat prices rise is that we see real increases in malnutrition and under-nutrition. And when children are malnourished, their brain development actually slows down and is affected. So this is not just a short-term impact.”

“Water and sanitation has not had the same kind of champion that global health, and even education, have had.”

“We are watching things happen with one degree changes in ocean temperature that we thought wouldn't happen until there were two or three degree changes in ocean temperature. These are facts.”

“One of the things I had to really work on is, when you're the leader of an organization, people look at the expression on your face. Your mood has a lot to do with how people think the whole organization is doing.”

“World Bank is a bank that's focused on economic development and poverty alleviation.”

“One of the lessons of leadership worth emphasizing is that you want to get to know other great leaders and take their advice. At some point in your development, it's only people who've been in the seat of having to be leaders who can help you in a deep way.”

“The water issue is critically related to climate change. People say that carbon is the currency of climate change. Water is the teeth.”

“If I care about poverty, I have to care a lot about investments in the private sector. The private sector creates the vast majority of jobs in the world, and social protection only goes so far.”

“If you look at three diseases, the three major killers, HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, the only disease for which we have really good drugs is HIV. And it's very simple: because there's a market in the United States and Europe.”

“Hope is a moral choice.”

“A lot of young people don't think they can make a difference. That's really what I am at Dartmouth to do. I'm there to tell the young people, 'Look, a few committed souls can change the world.'”

“Social media has changed the world forever. We're not going to go backwards. People are not going to accept being poor, accept being excluded anymore.”

“I want to eradicate poverty. I think that there's a tremendous passion for that inside the World Bank.”

“I've spent my entire life working to invest in human beings and human communities, to help them move down the path of economic development.”

“I feel like I'm calmer, I'm kinder, I'm more patient the more I do my own meditation.”

“No matter how good you think you are as a leader, my goodness, the people around you will have all kinds of ideas for how you can get better. So for me, the most fundamental thing about leadership is to have the humility to continue to get feedback and to try to get better - because your job is to try to help everybody else get better.”

“What I learned from my work as a physician is that even with the most complicated patients, the most complicated problems, you've got to look hard to find every piece of data and evidence that you can to improve your decision-making. Medicine has taught me to be very much evidence-based and data-driven in making decisions.”