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Filipe Barbosa

Senior PartnerHouston

Co-leads our technology-enabled work globally across McKinsey’s Global Energy & Materials Practice. He is a member of the National Petroleum Council and works with client executive teams across a variety of strategic, growth, organizational, operations, performance transformation, advanced analytics and energy transition topics

Filipe co-founded and led McKinsey’s Capital Projects & Infrastructure Practice on a global basis for almost a decade, serving clients on megaprojects across industries. He has been on McKinsey’s Global Energy & Materials leadership team (covering Oil & Gas, Basic Materials, Chemicals, and Electric Power & Natural Gas) for over a decade and has co-authored articles and research on global strategic shaping forces, strategy formulation, oil and gas industry dynamics, energy transition, and construction productivity. Before moving to Houston in 2012, Filipe was part of the Johannesburg Practice where he led the Global Energy & Materials Practice in Africa.

Filipe is a member of the National Petroleum Council (NPC), whose membership is selected and appointed by the US Secretary of Energy. Prior to joining McKinsey, he was a tenured lecturer in the School of Mechanical Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He taught courses in gas dynamics, control theory, and flight dynamics. He conducted research, and consulting activities, in the fields of shockwave physics, shockwave-vortex interactions, composite structures, and nuclear isotope & high-speed flow visualization techniques. His is published widely in international academic journals.

He lives in Houston and is married with three children. He is passionate about his family, ranching, tennis, current affairs, history, science and technology, the outdoors, fly fishing, and sport. Filipe is on the Board of Cristo Rey Jesuit, a high school for promising, economically-disadvantaged students. He was formerly on the Advisory Board of the Construction Industry Institute (CII), as well as the Board of the Houston Technology Center.

Published work

Beyond the hype: New opportunities for gen AI in energy and materials,” McKinsey & Company, February 2024

AI: The next frontier of performance in industrial processing plants,” McKinsey & Company, September 2023

Unlocking clean hydrogen in the US Gulf Coast: The “here and now”,” McKinsey & Company, August 2023

Houston as the epicenter of a global clean-hydrogen hub,” McKinsey & Company, June 2022

Oil and gas after COVID-19: The day of reckoning or a new age of opportunity?,” McKinsey & Company, May 2020

Reimagining supply-chain collaboration in a low-oil-price environment,” McKinsey & Company, June 2017

Reinventing construction through a productivity revolution,” McKinsey Global Institute, February 2017

Past experience

School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Tenured Lecturer

Education

University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
PhD, aeronautical engineering