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Gemma D’Auria

Senior PartnerMilan

Gemma D’Auria

Senior PartnerMilan

Supports retail, fashion, and luxury brands in driving transformations for higher performance and health

Gemma, a senior partner based in McKinsey’s Milan office, has over 15 years of consulting expertise. Starting her career in the New York office, she later worked in the Middle East before becoming the driving force in Italy, spearheading our initiatives with global consumer retail, fashion, and luxury players.

She leads with a focus on organizational learning and leadership development—pivotal elements for sustainable and impactful change. Gemma supports companies in the luxury lifestyle sectors, driving transformations for higher performances and health, including building capabilities and developing leadership capacity.

Gemma is a key figure in our People & Organizational Performance practice, contributing significantly to articles on organizational topics and coauthoring McKinsey’s recent book, Leadership at Scale, which delves into effective strategies for enhancing leadership skills across organizations.

Recent engagement experience includes the following:

  • driving a performance acceleration program at a leading retail organization in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)
  • leading a holistic digital and advanced-analytics transformation with a prominent B2C conglomerate across the grocery, retail, luxury shopping malls, and leisure and entertainment industries with meaningful impact on both performance and health
  • defining a lifestyle ecosystem strategy and supporting its implementation for a leading retail group in EMEA
  • establishing a corporate academy for a private-sector conglomerate encompassing a school of leadership, analytics and technology, and customer experience
  • transforming the operating model and culture of a prominent family-owned business, changing its operating model from a passive investor to a strategic architect

Before joining McKinsey, Gemma worked in the investment banking division of a multinational investment bank in London. She now lives in Milan with her husband and four children.

Published work

Time to move: Sporting goods 2024, McKinsey & Company, January 2024

The State of Fashion 2024: Finding pockets of growth as uncertainty reigns,” McKinsey & Company, November 2023

Dolce&Gabbana’s next chapter: A conversation with CEO Alfonso Dolce,” McKinsey & Company, November 2023

La spesa e gli italiani: scenari e impatti sul sistema Paese [Shopping and Italians: Scenarios and impacts on the country system],” GS1 Italy, June 2022

How CEO Alain Bejjani, an emerging-markets leader, models resilience,” McKinsey & Company, February 2022

Grocers can fuel growth with advanced analytics,” McKinsey & Company, June 2021

Sustainably shifting how an organization leads,” blog entry, McKinsey & Company, July 2020

Reimagining the post-pandemic organization,” McKinsey Quarterly, May 2020

Tuning in, turning outward: Cultivating compassionate leadership in a crisis,” McKinsey & Company, May 2020

Leadership in a crisis: Responding to the coronavirus outbreak and future challenges,” McKinsey & Company, March 2020 

Education

Stanford Graduate School of Business
MBA

LSE (London School of Economics)
BSc., government and economics