Daniel is part of the firm’s extended operating team and drives a global initiative to develop future senior leaders at McKinsey and within our clients’ organizations and invest more deeply in the art of 21st-century leadership. Aligned with McKinsey’s work on fostering CEO excellence, this unique initiative builds the leadership capabilities of McKinsey’s most senior members and supports their journeys as they counsel our clients, lead our teams, and build our firm. For our clients, it brings our latest approaches and experiences to build higher performing leaders and leadership teams to thrive in the 21st century.
This work deepens the firm’s commitment to an idea first sparked by the late Ron Daniel, a former managing partner of McKinsey, of our firm as a “leadership factory”: a place that develops exceptional people into not only firm partners, but C-level leaders, founders, nonprofit executives, and more. Daniel is committed to taking this vision to the next level, investing in the frontier of 21st-century leadership—a time when leaders must navigate multiple challenges and competing stakeholder demands across a fragmenting global landscape.
Daniel also serves a wide range of global institutions across the technology, defense, industrial, energy, and private capital sectors, where he focuses on strategy, operations, organization, technological innovation, leadership development, and advancing the energy transition. His work is driven by a desire to help leadership teams and organizations raise their ambitions, accelerate their performance, and build high-performing executive teams.
For the last 15 years, Daniel has built and scaled new firm capabilities. Most recently, he co-founded and scaled McKinsey Sustainability, which helps accelerate decarbonization efforts in the toughest sectors, scale innovative green ventures, and deploy substantial investments so that organizations can make rapid strides toward their climate commitments. He also launched McKinsey New Ventures, which incubated new digital assets and capabilities such as Periscope and Wave. In addition, he founded and co-led the firm’s North America Aerospace & Defense Practice.
Daniel has been a member of McKinsey’s global board for the last ten years, including creating and chairing the firm’s Technology and Knowledge Committee. He leads the firm’s partnership with the World Economic Forum and convenes the McKinsey Advisory Council, a group of 15 CEOs.
Passionate about helping not-for-profit institutions, Daniel serves on the Board of Trustees of Rockefeller University and the Advisory Board of the Hospital for Special Surgery, both in New York.