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.”

Goldfajn often returns to a formative experience from his youth. As a teenager, he spent a year on a kibbutz in Israel, working in agriculture, an experience that clearly stayed with him.

“I was very impressed,” he recalls. “This was 40 years ago, and already Israel had irrigation systems in places with very little water.” The memory, he suggests, still shapes the way he thinks about Israel’s role in the world.

Technology born out of scarcity, he contends, can prove transformative in regions facing similar constraints, Latin America among them. For Goldfajn, the goal is not merely to plant seeds but to build a system in which governments, investors, and communities all share in the outcome.

“This is about generating fruits together,” he says. “Business opportunities but also shared values.”

Goldfajn and IDB form one of the most significant financial engines in the developing world, channeling tens of billions of dollars annually into infrastructure, education, climate resilience, and social programs.

“It is a bank, because it lends,” Goldfajn says. “But it does not lend like a private bank. We lend with a clear mandate – to improve people’s lives.” This distinction, he insists, is not semantic but rather the institution’s organizing principle.

Projects are not evaluated solely on financial return but on their social impact. “If I just lend for profit, my board will ask me, ‘Why are you doing this?’” he says. “We are not here to make profit.”

The numbers are nonetheless striking. In 2025, the bank financed some $35 billion in projects across the region, a record figure, which Goldfajn is quick to contextualize. “Compared to the US, where everything is in trillions, it may not sound large,” he says. “But for Latin America, for countries like Israel, it is significant.” Still, he resists reducing the institution’s work to balance sheets.

The real measure of success, he suggests, is harder to quantify. “When you go to Jamaica after a hurricane, and you see the destruction,” he says, “and then you see how your work helps communities become resilient, that’s when it becomes real.”

Goldfajn recalls a visit to Haiti, the poorest country in the region, where the bank funds hospitals and school feeding programs designed to keep children in classrooms. “It’s dominated by security issues, very poor,” he says. “But we are there.”

At one school, he sat among students as meals were distributed, and the memory remained with him since. “That’s my favorite photo,” he smiles. “Being in a classroom with the kids.” For Goldfajn, these moments serve as a counterweight to the abstractions of macroeconomics, a reminder that, at its core, development is about lived experience.

“You can do good anywhere,” he reflects. “Even in a small grocery shop, you affect maybe 100 people. But here, you can affect millions.”

The IDB’s model rests on three pillars, which Goldfajn outlines with characteristic precision: lending; technical assistance; and knowledge. The bank finances long-term projects, provides grants and expertise to build local capacity, and produces research to guide policy decisions.

“We don’t just give money,” he says. “We help people learn how to use it. And we generate knowledge so countries can make better decisions.” It is a framework that positions the IDB not only as a financial institution but as a kind of developmental intermediary – part bank, part think tank, part diplomatic platform.

That last role has become increasingly central. The bank’s ownership structure – 48 member countries, which include the US, Japan, much of Europe, and Israel – gives it a unique ability to operate across geopolitical lines. “We are a bridge,” Goldfajn says. The metaphor recurs throughout the conversation, and not by accident.

In recent years, shifting political currents and rising tensions in parts of the Western world have left some Israeli and Jewish investors searching for new opportunities and alliances. Latin America, Goldfajn suggests, may be one such arena.

“I see countries that want to get closer to Israel,” he says, pointing to Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Panama, and El Salvador. He mentions meetings with Isaac Herzog and ongoing discussions with Israeli officials to deepen economic cooperation. “There is interest on both sides,” he says. “And we can help make that connection.”

The opportunities are not merely diplomatic. They are also technological. Israel’s strengths – in water management, irrigation, cybersecurity, and start-up innovation – align closely with the needs of Latin America, a region rich in natural resources but often lacking in infrastructure and technological integration.

“Latin America feeds the world,” Goldfajn says. “But it needs technology to do it better. And Israel has that technology.” Israeli companies are already active within the IDB ecosystem.

Through IDB Invest, firms can access financing and regulatory guidance for projects across the region. Through IDB Lab, the bank’s innovation arm, start-ups can connect with local partners and scale their solutions.

There are concrete examples: Israeli-backed investments in water infrastructure in Panama; funding initiatives in energy and cybersecurity; and thousands of Israeli companies linked into the bank’s business networks.

Goldfajn seems less interested in listing achievements than in describing a broader alignment, which he repeatedly frames as a convergence of interests and values. 
“We share values,” he says. “Rule of law, respect for contracts, but also tolerance, dialogue, keeping conversation open.” 

As the conversation draws to a close, he returns once more to the idea of the bridge, not as a rhetorical device but as a description of his role.

“I will continue to be the bridge,” he says. “With Israeli investors, with European investors, with Asian investors, with US investors.” It is a role that requires balancing competing interests, navigating political sensitivities, and maintaining credibility across vastly different contexts.

It is also, in a quieter sense, an extension of the career he has built: moving between worlds, translating between them, and trying, however incrementally, to align them. “We care about investors,” he says. “But we also care about the lives of the people in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

In an era defined by fragmentation, that dual commitment can sound almost unfashionable. But Goldfajn does not frame it as idealism. For him, it is simply the job’s logic. “You want to make a difference,” he says again. And, if possible, to do so at scale.

This article was written in cooperation with Inter-American Development Bank.