Inside the Strategy Room

Rebecca Schechter, healthcare AI leader and board director; Aamer Baig, McKinsey tech leader advising CEOs on AI strategy; Celia Huber, McKinsey board-governance expert. They discuss boards needing clearer AI oversight and archetypes of board readiness. Topics include AI adoption vs. value, tests for useful AI, privacy and risk foundations, and how boards should align strategy, incentives, and talent for AI-driven change.

Preeya Mody, an associate partner focused on capability building and operational performance improvement. Dominic Skerritt, a partner who drives radical performance uplift and EBITDA gains. They unpack what rigor means in transformation. They explore speed, resilience, and consistency. They discuss bankable plans, avoiding burnout while keeping momentum, scaling frontline wins, and using incentives and transparency to sustain change.

Robin Nuttall, McKinsey partner and Oxford Business Fellow, and Jean-Paul Carvalho, Oxford political economy professor and director of Oxford Elevate, discuss AI and strategy. They explore AI as cognitive automation and its labor effects. They debate scaling AI inside incumbents, managerial and trust risks, and where value will be captured in the AI value chain.

David Solomon, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, brings decades in investment banking and financial services. He discusses market resilience drivers for 2026, how AI is being embedded to reengineer processes, trade-policy impacts on growth, and leadership lessons on culture, tough personnel choices, and long-term investment priorities.

Rahel Schneider, McKinsey partner focused on fundraising and investor relations. Christopher Croke, London partner advising PE on investment strategy and operations. Alex Edlich, senior partner leading private capital strategy. They discuss 2025’s rebound and structural shifts, record entry multiples and longer holds, the rise of scale and specialization, embedding AI across portfolios, and changing fundraising dynamics and capital pools.

Mieke Van Oostende, McKinsey senior partner who co-leads M&A in Europe, and Jake Henry, McKinsey senior partner focused on M&A in healthcare and tech, discuss 2025’s surprising deal rebound and five trends driving 2026. They cover regional recoveries, why large deals and private equity returned, rising divestitures, and how AI and geopolitics are reshaping deal strategies.

Jane Fraser, Chair and CEO of Citi, leading a multi-year transformation to modernize the bank for the digital age. She discusses global trends and regional differences, why engaging with China matters for AI and green tech, AI’s productivity lift and cyber risks, tokenization for instant cross-currency payments, and how refocusing on global platforms reshapes talent and strategy.

Tim Koller, longtime McKinsey partner and co-author of Valuation, reflects on three decades shaping corporate finance thinking. He traces the book’s rise from an internal binder to a global reference. Listens to how core ideas like discounted cash flows, growth, and return on capital stayed central. Covers additions for sustainability, digital, AI, and lessons from market bubbles and practice.

Harmit Singh, Levi Strauss & Co. Chief Finance and Growth Officer who led multi-year transformations, returns the brand to growth and scaled DTC and e-commerce. He discusses the “Magic of the And” balancing top- and bottom-line goals. Short takes include building a performance culture, navigating tariffs and volatility with cross-functional teams, developing finance talent, and practical AI use cases in finance.

Charlie Lewis, cybersecurity and tech resilience lead with board-level advising experience, and Rich Isenberg, former CISO turned resilience partner, unpack agentic AI risks and governance. They define agentic versus generative AI. They cover attacker use of adaptive agents, operational fragility from shared models, risk-based agent classification, observability and kill switches, and treating agents like digital employees for safe scale.