MHS graduate picked to lead World Bank

MUSCATINE, Iowa — The man President Barack Obama will nominate to lead the World Bank has ties to Muscatine.

Obama has chosen Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim, a senior administration official told CBS News today.

CBS is reporting the Korean-born Kim is a physician by training and a prominent figure in global health and development circles. Officials believe his experience will help counter criticism from developing countries that have grown weary of the U.S. stranglehold on the World Bank presidency.

Kim, a 1978 Muscatine High School graduate, was named president of  Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., in 2009, becoming the first Asian-American to lead an Ivy League institution.

He attended Muscatine schools from fifth-12th grades. He was valedictorian at MHS, president of his class and played quarterback for the Muskies.He earned an undergraduate degree from Brown University, a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a doctorate in anthropology from Harvard University.

CBS says Obama was to announce Kim’s nomination today during a White House Rose Garden event. The president was to be joined by Kim as well as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Dartmouth alumnus, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who officials said was the first to recommend Kim for the job.

The 187-nation World Bank focuses on fighting poverty and promoting development. It is a leading source of development loans for countries seeking financing to build dams, roads and other infrastructure projects.

Keith Porter of Muscatine’s Stanley Foundation said, “Just hours before the news leaked of President Obama’s intent to nominate Jim Yong Kim as World Bank president, Reuters posted a story which speculated that the leading contenders were Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Sen. John Kerry, and Larry Summers, former president of Harvard. So Kim, who was not mentioned in all this specualtion, beat out some pretty impressive competition.”