About

Donald Waite is director of the Executives in Residence Program at Columbia Business School, where he is also an adjunct professor. He is retired from McKinsey & Company, the international management consulting firm, where he spent his entire career. He remains a McKinsey director emeritus and continues as a member of the McKinsey investment committee.

Mr. Waite joined McKinsey’s New York office in 1966, directly after graduating from Columbia Business School. In 1970, he moved to the Amsterdam office, where he helped build the firm’s financial services practices in Europe. He returned to New York in 1975 and assumed leadership of the banking and securities practice in 1977 and of the combined financial institutions practice in 1983.

From 1990 to 1996, Mr. Waite was managing partner of the five McKinsey offices in the northeast United States (New York, Boston, New Jersey, Stamford, Washington, D.C.). From 1996 to 2002, he was one of three members of the firm’s office of the managing director and chairman of its investment and compensation committees.

Throughout his career, Mr. Waite has maintained a focus on the management of firms employing high-talent professionals. He has worked extensively with investment banks, law firms, foundations, educational institutions, and advertising and media companies on matters of strategy, organization, the role of the corporate center, and the retention and motivation of their professional staff. During the period Mr. Waite was partner in charge of McKinsey’s consulting activities for financial institutions, the firm conducted extensive research into the environmental and management challenges facing financial institutions. He has personally advised branches of the federal government on regulatory policy and execution.

Mr. Waite received an MBA with honors from Columbia Business School, where he was a Harriman scholar, and a BA with distinction from Dartmouth College. He serves as a director of several corporate and not-for-profit institutions.