World Bank President David Malpass unexpectedly announced Wednesday that he will step down in June, leaving open the race for the job that oversees billions of dollars in funding and has a direct impact on poverty, climate change preparedness, emergency aid and other development issues. countries of the world, Reuters reports.

Traditionally, the bank has been headed by a person from the United States, its largest shareholder, while the International Monetary Fund is headed by a European, but developing countries and emerging markets are seeking to expand these opportunities.

According to the bank’s 2021 annual report, Malpass earned $525,000 in net salary that year and the bank made more than $340,000 in annual contributions to the pension plan and other benefits.

Here are the names being floated by US officials, climate change experts and global development colleagues as possible candidates for the post:

NGOZI OKONJO-IWEALA

The current head of the World Trade Organization and former World Bank official has been discussed as a potential successor to Malpass. The dual American-Nigerian citizen served twice as Nigeria’s finance minister and was managing director of the World Bank, overseeing an $81 billion operating portfolio in Africa, South Asia, Europe and Central Asia.

GAIL SMITH

A former administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) during the Obama administration, Smith is now the executive director of One Campaign, a non-governmental organization focused on ending extreme poverty and preventable disease.

She also served under Democratic President Bill Clinton as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council.

SAMANTHA POWER

Power, who currently heads USAID, is a longtime human rights activist, diplomat and former journalist. She served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama and won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2002 book The Problem from Hell, a study of the U.S. failure to prevent a series of genocides over the past century.

RAJIV SHAH

Shah is a former USAID administrator under Obama and is now president of the Rockefeller Foundation, a philanthropic group that says it aims to “advance human well-being around the world.”

The foundation recently partnered with the US State Department for a carbon offset program at COP27, the international climate conference.

MINUSH SHAFIK

Shafiq is a British-Egyptian American economist who is currently President of the London School of Economics and has served as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and Deputy Managing Director of the IMF.

WALLY ADEYEMO

Adeyemo is the US deputy treasury secretary who played a leading role in coordinating sanctions and other measures against Russia to try to cut funding for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine