IMF Managing Director Cambridge University Speech

Cambridge University is a place with meaning for the IMF. It was there in 1930 that a young professor, John Maynard Keynes, penned an essay that served as a roadmap for what would become our organization. Current IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva chose Cambridge to be the place where she laid out her own vision for the next five years – a speech that, like the venue in which it was held, created a link between our shared past to her proposal for our common future.

To make the most of the opportunity, Creative Solutions went beyond a simple PowerPoint deck to accompany her remarks. We drew up full video, animated charts, and illustrative materials, but at the points where the managing director was quoting Keynes’ foundational words, we felt we could go the extra mile and have the celebrated economist speak for himself.

Using the strange power of generative AI, we had Keynes read his own words aloud to the audience, his voice sounding out in the halls of Cambridge for the first time in nearly 80 years.

What could have been a ghoulish trick in the wrong hands served instead to reinforce our managing director’s sincere belief that the IMF’s legacy and mission is, at its very core, about nurturing growth, spreading prosperity, and creating a safer world for us all.