David Lebryk spent more than 35 years at the US Treasury, serving six administrations and 12 treasury secretaries and holding numerous senior positions, including acting secretary of the treasury in 2025. From 2014 to 2025, he was the fiscal assistant secretary, the department’s most senior career official. During his tenure, Lebryk managed the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s $6 trillion annual payment operation and led the effort to deliver 480 million COVID-19 economic impact payments in record time. He also led the department’s financing, collections, and government-wide reporting operations.
As America marks its 250th anniversary, we’re sitting down with public- and private-sector leaders to explore the ideas and opportunities that will shape the country’s next chapter: from competitiveness and innovation to resilience and institutional renewal. In this interview, McKinsey Senior Partner Tom Dohrmann talks with Lebryk about the ingenuity and leadership that has enabled America to overcome some of its greatest challenges, what makes public–private partnership so central to America’s ability to innovate, and why people are mission-critical to making government work—and work better—for all.
Tom Dohrmann: As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, what are some of the uniquely American traits that have contributed to our ability to innovate and reinvent ourselves over time?
Dave Lebryk: I would focus primarily on the intersection between government and the private sector. Go back to the Manhattan Project, the interstate highway system, the Apollo Space Program—and most recently the response to COVID-19, including Operation Warp Speed. When the nation puts its mind to it, we can do very remarkable things.
I saw that repeatedly throughout my 35-year career. When a crisis hit, the government acted as a catalyst and was quite effective in addressing genuinely tough problems. That meant working at every level of government—federal, state, and local—and with the private sector, academia, nongovernmental agencies, and nonprofits. When those entities come together, big problems can be solved.
That collaborative dynamic is a unique feature of our country. You have the private sector, from individuals working out of their garages to organizations—large and small—innovating and creating in a vibrant way. At the same time, the government is conducting and funding important research, often basic research that is foundational to private sector innovation, and helping citizens when they need it. That intersection of a strong private sector and an effective public sector is critical to our national success.
Tom Dohrmann: You’ve said in the past that the government doesn’t have an innovation problem; it has an innovation adoption problem.
Dave Lebryk: I often ask the question, “Could the government have produced the iPhone?” And a similar question, “Could Apple have produced the iPhone without the government?” And the answer is no to both questions. The basic research that went into the iPhone came from government-funded work, so there is a great deal of innovation being driven by the public sector.
At the same time, government operates in silos—and silos sometimes get a bad name. But they can be silos of excellence where very good work is being done. In my world of payments, where we were responsible for issuing 75 million benefit payments per month, we had great expertise in that silo. We were really good at making payments; I would say best in class. But we were not particularly good at routinely looking outside the silo to examine different and better ways of doing our work, and we had to be very intentional about maintaining an outward focus.
What I learned, often the hard way, is that when you are trying to implement new technology, it is often more effective to do it outside the silo. You see this in the private sector a fair amount; small, agile, cross-cutting teams that are looking at problems differently. Government doesn’t do that as well. Leaders should more regularly ask, “How do I explore and assess a new idea? How do I set up teams so they are unencumbered by the day to day and can test, incubate, and deploy new technology with the goal of scaling it?”
This last piece—successfully integrating new technology into standard workflows—is where most efforts fail. McKinsey has done a lot of research about change initiatives and integration, which fail not so much because of the underlying technology but because successful adoption and integration is inherently a people issue. You can get the underlying technology right, but how people actually use that technology is ultimately the determining factor. And one thing I’ve observed in government that is not well understood: The frontline supervisor is the one who makes or breaks lasting change. You can articulate a vision at the senior most level, but if you don’t have the frontline supervisor translating that vision to the employees, change doesn’t take hold.
Tom Dohrmann: How did you drive innovation at the Treasury Department?
Dave Lebryk: It’s genuinely important for senior officials, or anyone in an organization, to be outward looking. For me, innovation was always about: “How can we be a learning organization, constantly scanning the horizon for new opportunities and evaluating what we can take advantage of?”
That said, there are differences between the private sector and the public sector. We can’t afford to fail fast in public sector. We need to ensure that the mission-critical systems deliver and that important work continues to get done. Government failures are different from private sector failures; the stakes are much higher; we don’t want our air traffic controllers to fail fast. At the same time, we need to be thinking constantly about how to do the job better, today and in the future.
One of the things we did, and McKinsey was a genuine help here, was periodically step back to scan emerging trends and think about where we were headed over the course of the next decade. In doing so, we would identify a handful of high-impact initiatives, then prioritize and sequence them carefully to ensure we were well positioned for the future.
Tom Dohrmann: What’s an example of one innovation that you’re especially proud of?
Dave Lebryk: There are several, but one that sticks out—because we looked at the problem differently, leaned into emerging technology, and challenged existing processes—was our effort to digitize a large number of savings bonds records: over two billion of them. Five or six years previously, we purchased optical scanning equipment that was effectively obsolete by the time we accepted delivery. So when it came time to scale the effort, we ran the procurement differently. We gave a number of vendors sample files and said, “You have six months to show us what you can do.”
The firm we ultimately chose put together a small team that used machine learning to accommodate the numerous formats of savings bonds. Their solution was faster, higher quality, and significantly less expensive than every other proposal and a significant improvement over the old approach. We ended up saving tens of millions of dollars and completing the project at least a year ahead of schedule.
Tom Dohrmann: When I think about the opportunity for AI, I think of all of the services that we do in the public sector, from renewing a driver’s license to applying for social security or Medicare, to air traffic control. And I look at these and say, “How could they work better?” These are real opportunities to dramatically change things and increase the speed of adoption.
Dave Lebryk: I agree. Many of the challenges we face are structural. Many of our IT systems, some of which go back 50 years, have been layered and cobbled together in often unimaginable ways. Changing those systems is not a matter of having a great idea but a much more complicated undertaking. This is where greenfield is often a better approach.
When you’re working within an embedded infrastructure and entrenched skills, the runway for change is much longer than when you’re building something new or responding to a pressing need. Crises tend to mean you accept more risk and break the rules a little bit. The challenge then becomes: Can you take those learnings and apply them into your day-to-day operations? A harder thing to do.
We would also benefit from using technology to improve the citizen’s experience—and in doing so, strengthen trust in government. McKinsey has done important work on this: The better your experience with government, the more trust you have in the institution. Whether it’s tax collection or passport applications, or a range of services delivered directly to the public, we need to do better at understanding how citizens use those services. Flexible, user-centric technology would make a meaningful difference.
Tom Dohrmann: Some historical crises led to some of the greatest moments in American government: the Manhattan Project, the creation of NASA, Operation Warp Speed. What were the rules you broke to manage crises successfully during your government tenure?
Dave Lebryk: The Economic Impact Payments, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, is something I was very intimately familiar with. The last time we tried something similar, it took us six weeks to get the first payment out. To put it in context: We were heading toward 20 percent, 30 percent unemployment, and GDP was collapsing domestically and internationally. There was an urgent need to move fast.
It was one of the most memorable moments in my career: We were gathered in the [treasury] secretary’s conference room when Secretary Mnuchin walked in, looked at me, and said, “You’re responsible for getting those payments out in two weeks.” I thought, “Is there someone else here he’s talking to? We’ve never done anything like this before.”
What it really meant was getting the senior career leadership—me—and a political appointee together to work closely with the IRS and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, and we were all forced to think differently about the problem. We issued 80 million payments within ten days and 163 million payments within five weeks—a timeline that, to put it in perspective, was faster than we got out the first payment the previous time. In the second round, we were able to issue 110 million payments within a day of the president signing the bill.
We matched payment records against existing accounts to speed up electronic delivery. We increased our capacity by running our checking production facilities seven days a week, during a period when very little was known about the virus and most employees were not coming into work. And we issued debit cards to many people, including those without a bank account.
It was a collective will to get something done, and the results were extraordinary. The remarkable thing is that the 163 million people who received payments didn’t have to do anything. The payments simply showed up in their mailbox or bank account. And in the third round, through the Child Tax Credit program, we issued payments that by some estimates reduced childhood poverty by 50 percent. When you look at that impact, on both the economy and millions of children, you think: Government can do big, impactful things when it puts its mind to it.
Tom Dohrmann: If you think about the leaders who have shaped America’s history, perhaps the best known leader of the treasury—where you’ve served as a career official—is Secretary Alexander Hamilton. What lessons did you draw from him and other leaders to be successful?
Dave Lebryk: Early in my career, I was called into a meeting with Secretary [Robert] Rubin, and he turned to me and asked for my opinion. I looked around the room and saw some remarkable people, many of whom are household names in the financial world, and wondered, “How am I going to add something of value to the discussion?” My recollection is that I did all right. But I took two lessons away from that experience.
The first was to always be prepared. You never know when you may be asked to contribute. The second was, as a leader, it’s critically important to actively engage people—including younger staff—when deliberating an important issue. I had no expectation that Secretary Rubin would take my advice, but I was struck by the fact that he was drawing from a wide range of perspectives before making his decision. When it came time for me to lead, that approach served me well. Throughout my career, when I was faced with a difficult decision, I consulted a variety of sources before acting. It never failed me.
Another formative boss was Frank Newman, the former CFO of Bank of America. When I worked for him he was a political appointee at the Treasury; he understood that his tenure was limited and that success required focus. So he focused on three or four priorities and was very disciplined in filtering out the noise in pursuit of those. And he was enormously effective: Five pieces of legislation that were related to domestic finance passed during his tenure, in large part because he stayed focused on a handful of issues.
Finally, from another early mentor: the role of character in leadership. Several years after this mentor left the Treasury, he offered a thought that has stayed with me: “We are human, we will make mistakes. But we will not make mistakes of character or integrity.” That character and integrity are the most important qualities of any great leader is an important lesson.
Tom Dohrmann: As we look forward 50 or even 100 hundred years, what gives you optimism about America’s next chapter?
Dave Lebryk: I come back to that essential dynamic between a strong private sector and an effective public sector. They need each other, and when both are functioning well, America accomplishes remarkable things.
On the public sector side, people’s expectations are fairly clear: They want government to be reliable, responsive, and committed to consistency and fairness. As long as these principles remain intact and our institutions remain committed to them, I am genuinely optimistic about our future.
