Founder & CEO-AGENTISIQ - AI, But Make It Insurance | Chief Data & AI Advisor | Mckinsey & Accenture Alum | Board, Advisory, Consulting | Innovator
From Consultant to CEO: Why McKinsey’s Alumni Rule the Corporate World Ever notice how a surprising number of Fortune 500 CEOs seem to trace their roots back to one powerhouse McKinsey & Company? It’s almost like there’s this secret club, quietly shaping boardrooms from Silicon Valley to Wall Street and beyond. Let’s pause for a moment: why does one consulting firm produce more CEOs than Harvard University, Stanford University, or The Wharton School? Alright, here’s what I felt when I was there. McKinsey doesn’t just teach you “strategy” like some boring textbook. It’s a bootcamp for problem structuring and pattern recognition, a relentless focus on breaking messes into solvable chunks. Jane Fraser’s story is wild: she starts at McKinsey fresh out of Harvard, rotates through every kind of crisis, and learns how to fix broken systems. By the time she’s Citi’s CEO, she’s not just fluent in finance, she’s mastered transformation at scale. There’s more. Over 700 McKinsey alumni now run companies with $300 million-plus in revenue. And half of their leaders over age 40 reach the C-Suite. In a world obsessed with quick fixes, that’s staying power. It’s not just a pipeline, it’s a rocket booster, one you don’t really see until you notice who’s driving the biggest decisions. My takeaway? The real secret is learning to see patterns in chaos, then rallying people to solve what others run away from. That’s a formula for leading anywhere, not just at the top. If you’re driving change maybe you’re already closer to the corner office than you think. https://lnkd.in/exhxkbCe
