Meet our Next Speaker
Martin Mühleisen
April 14, 2025
Topic: The IMF and World Bank in the New Geopolitical Environment
Martin Mühleisen is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former International Monetary Fund (IMF) official with decades-long experience in economic crisis management and financial diplomacy.
Among other responsibilities, Mühleisen led the IMF’s unprecedented response to the COVID-19 crisis and oversaw work on the institution’s overall strategy and lending policies. He represented the fund in Group of Seven and Group of Twenty (G20) communiqué discussions, participating in six leaders summits before his 2021 retirement from his position as director for strategy, policy, and review. He also played a leading role in the negotiations extending the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights allocation, the New Arrangements to Borrow, and the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative and Common Framework for Debt Relief.
Mühleisen served several roles at the IMF including chief of staff and principal advisor to Managing Director Christine Lagarde from 2013 to 2017. This period included the completion of the IMF’s Fourteenth General Review of Quotas, China’s inclusion into the SDR basket, the agreement on Greece during the 2015 European Union Summit, and the IMF’s rapid response to the Ebola crisis. As an IMF staffer, Mühleisen worked on several of the major G20 countries, focusing on fiscal- and financial-policy issues. He coordinated the IMF’s work on advanced economies during the global financial crisis, with personal sign-off responsibility for the Euro area programs with Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. He also drove innovations in risk management, knowledge management, and information-technology applications.
A German national and Konrad Adenauer scholar, Mühleisen holds a master’s degree in economics from Cambridge University and a PhD summa cum laude in economics from the University of Munich. He has published and overseen work on macro-financial analysis, the international monetary system and digital currencies, economic linkages, fiscal policy, aging, saving, and inequality.
Meetings open to members and members’ guests only. Unless otherwise noted, all meetings take place at Elk Hall, 210 Rankin Street in Rockland. The speaker begins promptly at noon and lunch is served from 1 PM.
Audios of Past Presentations
Listed below are links to recent presentations. Click to listen:
- Admiral Michael Rogers on Current Hot Spots of the World
- Henry Haggard on The US-Korea Relationship in Transition
- Ambassador Douglas Lute on The Future of NATO
- James Bosworth on Mapping Latin America’s Current Politics
- Clark Adams on Defense Diplomacy in Central Asia and Clark’s slides: Defense Diplomacy
- John Lee on China and Indo-Pacific Security
- Dr. Steven Koonin on The Realities of Climate and Energy. and Steve’s slides: Realities slides
- Dr. Elizabeth Cameron on National Security in an Age of Pandemic Threats
- Ambassador Lawrence Butler: NATO at 75—Relevant, Obsolete, or Dangerous?
- Jack Goldsmith on The Decline of Congress in the Conduct of Foreign Affairs, and accompanying slides
- Robert Einhorn on Nuclear Non-proliferation
- Matthew Goodwin on Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, and National Populism
- Ambassador Anne Hall: The Baltic Nations — Profiles in Courage
- Ambassador Jake Walles: The Israel-Gaza Conflict
- Heather Cox Richardson: Democracy Awakening
- John Deutch: Challenges to Future Climate Policy
- Thomas Blanton: The Downsides of Government Secrecy
- Shanthi Kalathil: Challenges to Democracy in the Age of Misinformation
- Ambassador Charles Ray: Why Africa Matters
- Tom Ricks: First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
- Amna Nawaz: On the Frontlines: Reporting Overseas and Here at Home
- Christopher Costa: Counterterrorism and the Future Terrorism Threat
- Susan Landau: The Reality of Cyberwar — In Ukraine and Elsewhere
- Jon Wolfsthal: Is a New Era of Nuclear Danger Upon Us?
- Amb. Derek Mitchell: Democracy and International Security
- Admiral Michael Rogers: Russia and Ukraine
- Daniel Golden: Ransomware, a Global Challenge
- Ambassador Steven Pifer: Putin’s War: Ramifications and Response
- Christopher Miller: Warnings about America’s most important enemies
- John Sopko: Afghanistan, Lessons Unlearned
- Paul Bodnar: Financing the Low-Carbon Future
- Stacia George: Winning Without Weapons
- Amb. Laura Kennedy: Central Asia (unedited audio)
- David Cooper: Between Disarmament and Armageddon
- Steven Simon: The US and the Middle East: What Went Wrong?
- Jok Madut-Jok: US Military Miltary in Africa: A Source of Influence or a National Security Risk? Download Slides
- Gordon Adams: A new approach to formulating foreign policy
- Richard Kessler: The Effect of Congressional Polarization on Foreign Affairs
- Mitchell Zuckoff: 9/11 and its Aftermath
- Sean McFate: The Future of War
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