Adelheid Burgi-Schmelz

Ms. Adelheid Burgi-Schmelz became Director of the Statistics Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in fall 2008. She is responsible for the IMF's statistical activities to support the IMF mission, including global, regional, and country-based surveillance. The work involves producing cross-country data and providing strong leadership for the development of sound statistical practices in the IMF, in member countries, and in the international statistical community at large. In this endeavor, the Statistics Department plays a pivotal role in the development of internationally accepted methodologies and standards providing technical assistance and training to promote the adoption of these standards, and modeling best practices in the dissemination of primarily economic and financial data.

From 2002 to 2008, Ms. Burgi-Schmelz was the Director General of the Swiss Federal Statistical Office, managing a staff of 670 and a comprehensive publication program covering economic, socio-economic, and environmental statistics.

Ms. Burgi-Schmelz has extensive public and private sector experience. In the private sector, she has worked at high-level managerial positions with Ascom Corporation and with Schindler Corporation, both in Switzerland, and with Bell Communications Research (Telcordia) in the United States.

Being both, a Swiss and German national, Ms. Burgi-Schmelz holds master and PhD degrees from the University of Bonn, Germany, in Classics/Latin and Mathematics; from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY, United States, in Operations Research and Statistics; and from the University of Berne, Switzerland, in Information Systems/Business Administration.