Between Israel and Latin America, Ilan Goldfajn builds a quiet economic bridge

From water technology to start-ups, the IDB chief sees a growing opportunity for Israeli investors in a region of 660 million

- • RONNIE ROSENMAN

By all conventional measures, Ilan Goldfajn has already lived several professional lives. Goldfajn has been an academic, a central banker, a private-sector economist, and an international financial official. But when he speaks about his current role – president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a position he assumed in December 2022 – his tone shifts from résumé to something closer to conviction.

“At some point in your life,” Goldfajn says, “you want to make a difference. You want to affect the well-being of people, and you start thinking about scale.” Scale, in this case, means 660 million people across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Born in Israel and raised in Brazil, Goldfajn built a career defined by movement – between countries, sectors, and disciplines. He taught economics at universities, served as chief economist at one of Brazil’s largest banks, and later became president of the Central Bank of Brazil, maneuvering the private sector, testing, as he puts it, “different ways of having impact.”

“I kept switching,” he says. “From central bank to private sector, from academia to policy.”

Each transition expanded his vantage point but also sharpened a question that would come to define his later career: Where can one do the most good? “After a long time in both the public and private sectors, I felt I wanted to contribute at a larger scale,” he says.

A role at the International Monetary Fund followed, but it was the unexpected opening at the IDB that ultimately drew him in. Brazil nominated him for the presidency, and today Goldfajn leads the region’s largest development bank, overseeing not only the IDB itself but also its private-sector arm, IDB Invest. However, he does not present himself as a man driven by ideology but rather by a clear sense of direction. “Purpose,” he says simply. “That’s what brought me here.”