Michael Birshan

About Michael

Michael is a senior partner and coleads McKinsey’s Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice across Africa, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. He also serves on the McKinsey Global Institute council, which advises on MGI’s research on global economic, business, and technology trends.

Michael partners with bold and determined executives to set strategy, transform organizations, and deliver value. He has served companies around the world at the board and executive-committee levels across a diverse set of industries, as well as institutions in the public and social sectors, and his work is often shaped by insights and analogies from other contexts. Michael’s deepest sector expertise is in energy, natural resources, and industrials, where he works with several of the leading global organizations across their agenda.

Examples of his recent client work include the following:

• serving an energy major on transforming its financial performance and organizational health, embracing digital, and becoming agile
• supporting a global natural-resources company on defining its purpose, refreshing its strategy, changing its approach to stakeholder engagement, and taking out billions of dollars of cost
• working with a leading industrial company on setting its strategy, conducting M&A, managing performance, building functional excellence, and improving the effectiveness of its top team

Michael is passionate about helping talented executives to succeed as individuals–particularly as they take on new roles–and coleads McKinsey’s research on CEO excellence. His perspectives on strategy, finance, and CEO transitions have been published and cited in the McKinsey Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, and Financial Times, among other leading publications. He is also the author of the McKinsey Global Institute’s publication, Superstars: The dynamics of firms, sectors, and cities leading the global economy.

Michael has a strong interest in education and serves as a governor of the Royal College of Art and on the advisory board of King’s Business School. He has also been a trustee of the World Schools Debating Championships, a governor of Brentford School for Girls, and a commissioner of the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission. In 2016, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

Before joining McKinsey, Michael was an aide to a US congressman and to a Canadian member of parliament, and a member of the British national debating team.

Based in London, Michael previously worked in McKinsey’s San Francisco and Mumbai offices.