Helene Gayle to Lead McKinsey Social Initiative

McKinsey Social Initiative (MSI) is pleased to announce that Helene Gayle will join the organization as the inaugural CEO in July 2015. She will remain at the helm of CARE, where she served as CEO and President for nearly a decade, until June. We would like to share a short statement from her about this transition:

I am excited to be preparing to transition into the role of founding CEO of McKinsey Social Initiative (MSI) in July. I come to MSI from my role of almost a decade as the President and CEO of CARE. CARE is a leading humanitarian and development organization dedicated to eliminating extreme poverty around the world. CARE was founded in 1945 to deliver food and essentials through “CARE packages” to survivors of World War II. My time at CARE has been incredibly rewarding and inspiring. I am grateful to have worked alongside an incredibly dedicated, passionate team of almost 10,000 people in 90 countries, who share my commitment to social justice and to empowering the world’s poorest communities. Before coming to CARE, I spent 20 years with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and 5 years with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, working on public health challenges in the United States and globally. I am also trained as a pediatrician and public health physician. So my career has taken many twists and turns along the way.

In deciding my next career step, I knew that I wanted to take on a role that would allow me to leverage my experience working across the government, private philanthropy, NGO, and private sectors to drive lasting change and tackle major global challenges. Having explored a range of possibilities, I was excited to find MSI, which I believe offers a unique opportunity to have a major social impact in new and innovative ways. I was also intrigued by the challenge of leading and helping to build an organization that is just beginning to chart its course and define its strategy for supporting stable, prosperous, and inclusive communities.

My first priorities as CEO will be to continue to shape MSI as an organization and to continue to build Generation, which is MSI’s first program, focused on addressing youth unemployment. Generation’s goal is ambitious—to reach 1,000,000 young people across five countries in five years. To achieve its goals, Generation plans to create a scalable, open-source training approach and to measure the return on investment of engaging with this kind of training for both employers and young people.

Generation is only the beginning for MSI, an independent nonprofit founded by McKinsey & Company that will house individual programs, each of which, like Generation, focuses on a single complex social issue and brings together different partners to design and implement solutions. As CEO, I welcome the opportunity to work with our partners to continually shape initiatives that impact the most pressing issues around the world.

I am so thrilled to take this next step in my career and for the opportunity to lead a new organization with such ambitious goals. I look forward to meeting and working with everyone who will contribute time and talent to making the vision of MSI a reality.

(photo credit: Caroline Joe/CARE)