Michael

Associate Principal

I don’t think I had any idea what management consulting was at school. I arrived at Oxford—to study philosophy, politics, and economics at Balliol College—intending to become a lawyer. I thought lawyers wrestled with difficult problems and made a difference by solving them. I still do but realised that the problems that most excited me were management ones. So I applied to management consulting firms and accepted an offer from McKinsey.

I joined McKinsey as a business analyst in the London office and worked in financial services, energy, high tech, and the public sector. I put on a bit of weight while serving a biscuit manufacturer and then worked it off on a project for a major English sports organisation. I loved working with great people, many of whom remain close friends, to help some of Britain’s and the world’s leading institutions solve their toughest problems. It was a truly terrific two years—a fabulous first job.

I knew that I wanted to do a graduate degree in America once I finished the business analyst programme. I thought seriously about doing a master’s in public administration but settled on an M.B.A. at Harvard, which McKinsey then sponsored. A lot of my fellow analysts went on to other things instead—private equity, hedge funds, the Prime Minister’s Strategy and Delivery Units, the Foreign Office, Comic Relief, big companies, start-ups, work in other parts of the world, even film school. Being a McKinsey business analyst seemed to be great preparation for almost anything.

After two years at Harvard, I returned home to London with an M.B.A. and my then-future wife and returned to McKinsey as an associate. I worked in a variety of sectors once again, taking on larger and more complex parts of projects than before. Like many former business analysts, I was promoted to engagement manager and so now manage whole projects and teams. I am also beginning to focus more, specialising in strategy questions at the intersection of the public and private sector. For example, I recently helped one of the world’s leading philanthropic foundations evaluate which global problems to concentrate upon—an amazingly exciting project.

I have also joined McKinsey’s Global Rotation Programme and so am writing this in San Francisco where my wife and I have lived for the past six months. We are soon going to move to Mumbai for the second rotation, before ultimately heading back to London.