Meet McKinsey & Company’s MBA Class Of 2024

DAY ONE IMPACT

McKinsey is sometimes described as a CEO Factory. Their alumni include Google CEO Sundar Pichai, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, and Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet – not to mention chief executives at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Visa, Novartis, and Allianz. According to Fortune, McKinsey boasts 65,000 alumni worldwide, with over half of partners who exit the firm ultimately becoming a CEO.

That’s hardly a surprise to Tunde Olanrewaju, who has spent over 23 years at the firm after studying Electrical Engineering as an undergrad. In his experience, McKinsey teaches muscle memory, repeating a systematic problem-solving methodology that hammers home an unforgettable lesson: Every company experiences the same problems differently – and no two companies or situations are ever the same. As a result, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions at McKinsey, just different engagements that require different questions, tools, alternatives, and messaging.

“If you think about it in McKinsey, on day one, the first problem you walk into is something that a senior executive is grappling with,” Olanrewaju explains. “So if you were starting at [a client] company, you would not be working on that problem. With McKinsey, when you leave an MBA program, you are working on that problem two weeks later. When you do that, you are at pace with people who’ve done it multiple times from apprenticing next to them. That massively accelerates their development. And then, if you’re encouraged to then pursue your own leadership proactively, to try things, develop knowledge, and build on ideas, that’s what trains you to be able to step up with confidence.”

This early impact has been a boon to Oscar Gutiérrez. “I was very young and already sitting with CEOs and CFOs. I never imagined I would have that kind of access so early. At McKinsey, we work on the most pressing issues and being part of that was very appealing.”

MAKING YOUR OWN MCKINSEY

Tunde Olanrewaju experienced this dynamic during one early engagement. Here, he was counseling a divided board and leadership team, with McKinsey’s findings running counter to the CEO’s views. In fact, Olanrewaju jokes, there was a point where the executive team wasn’t speaking to him. Ultimately, the firm accepted McKinsey’s recommendations. Over time, they turned out to be the correct moves, with one of McKinsey’s champions eventually becoming the firm’s leader. For Olanrewaju, this engagement encapsulates the best of McKinsey: consultants given the independence to tell the truth and stick to their facts regardless of the pressure around them…even if it costs a client.

This non-conformist streak extends to internal McKinsey team functions too, where the Obligation to Dissent is the centerpiece. Basically, team members – even junior analysts – are expected to speak up and lay out a case if they don’t believe the team’s findings are correct or serve the client’s best interests.

“If you have a different perspective, it’s your responsibility to voice it,” explains Jamar Williams. “Staying silent doesn’t help the team or the client. This lesson has helped me overcome imposter syndrome and trust that my perspective adds value. I’ll carry that mindset throughout my career.”

Another foundation of the McKinsey community is the concept of Make Your Own McKinsey. Tunde Olanrewaju defines this as proactively going after and building out what makes you passionate. An example comes from his own experience 15 years ago. Watching the emergence of apps – and how it was changing consumer behavior – he partnered with several peers to create McKinsey’s Digital practice. As a result, he cracks, McKinsey has as many developers and designers as MBAs and PhDs.

“That notion of you see the future and you go after it and you make it happen and you coalesce people around it: that is celebrated because you’re literally creating the version of the firm that you’re going to get to live in,” adds Olanrewaju.

These possibilities – and the “endless opportunities” that MBAs can create for themselves – fuels a sense of optimism at McKinsey, says Chase Byington. “There are so many amazing people across the world at McKinsey, and you don’t know where your career will take you. Tomorrow you could work on something completely new. That was exciting and invigorating.”

A MENTORSHIP CULTURE

More than anything, McKinsey is an apprenticeship culture. Here, best practices and values are transmitted by feedback and example. That’s one reason why Tunde Olanrewaju counsels new hires to find mentors and sponsors early, noting that he still seeks input from the people who invested in his growth when he was an analyst. Over the past year, 2024 MBA hires have seen apprenticeship up close. Take McKinsey’s “Top-Down Approach”, which Aline Boanova describes as “leading with the main point” before reinforcing it with reasoning and supporting details. To illustrate this point, one engagement manager created an exercise than none of his team members would ever forget.

“We each had to create a one-pager on a fun topic, like surviving a zombie apocalypse, and present it to the team for feedback,” writes Cassandra Esinaulo. “Everyone—peers and leaders—gave input in a safe space, which made it easy to learn and grow. It was a great example of mentorship and apprenticeship in action.”

Indeed, apprenticeship takes many forms at McKinsey. In one case, says Oscar Gutiérrez, an engagement manager would hold 30-minute weekly Microsoft Excel sessions to turn team members into spreadsheet ninjas. In another, he adds, a senior partner would join the office’s Thursday team dinners to dish out advice and build relationships. Fehin Ibiloye, a Darden MBA working out of the DC office, points to a relationship she developed with Katherine Linzer, a partner in the Chicago office. After Ibiloye dissented over the team’s project scope, Linzer responded with questions. Two weeks later, the team embraced Ibiloye’s ideas.

“She didn’t give me the answer,” Ibiloye observes. “She pushed me to think through every angle and every possible client response. That conversation stretched me, improved my critical thinking, and left me better prepared to engage at higher levels.”

NEVER TOLD ‘NO’ WHEN YOU ASK FOR HELP

Another example is Carlos Pardo Martin, a partner in the New York City office, who devoted time to showing Chase Byington how to craft an unbeatable PowerPoint. “He would print out our decks, lay them on the table, and go through them with pen and sticky notes—very hands-on, very old-school McKinsey. It was inspiring. It felt collaborative, like we were solving together. The best mentorship moments are when hierarchy falls away and leaders act as true thought partners.”

That is rule at McKinsey, not the exception. “At many companies, you’re left to figure things out on your own,” observes Oscar Gutiérrez. “At McKinsey, people always step up to help. I’ve never reached out for guidance and been told no. The firm is full of exceptional people, but also caring people, and that was a welcome surprise.”

How have MBA hires found mentors? Avery White, for one, has scheduled over 50 coffee chats during the past year with managers and partners. In contrast, Aline Boanova asks for feedback “on the spot”, with the understanding that quicker is better. That said, mentoring isn’t relegated strictly to the higher-ups at McKinsey. Alexia Kyriakopoulous recalls how a teammate completely changed her approach by urging her to ask “So what” and “What next” instead of simply “What”. A colleague posed a similar question that resonated deeply with Chase Byington: “What would we need to believe to make this opportunity real?”. This give-and-take – up-and-down the chain and across the various functions – ensures no stone is left unturned during McKinsey engagements.

“That combination—new hires asking the base-level questions that make you go back and check yourself, and leaders stretching you with those “what would it take?” questions— gives you a comprehensive view,” Byington continues. “It pushes you to rethink what you thought you knew and gets you to better answers than you’d ever reach alone.”

BIGGEST DANGER: HUBRIS

The MBA Class of 2024 hires has also picked up plenty of lessons over the past year. One of the biggest, says Aline Boanova, is the importance of humility. In medicine, she notes, physicians sometimes fall into the “hero syndrome”, believing they alone can solve problems. In contrast, McKinsey is team-first all the way, following the dictum that “If you fail, you don’t fail by yourself”.  Chase Byington shares a similar sentiment.

“With new hires coming in, I’ve been thinking a lot about how risky it is to start believing you’re an expert. Inevitably, that’s when you stop learning. It’s that curve where you think you’ve learned a lot but then realize how much you don’t know. Having brand-new people on the team makes you reconsider assumptions you had set in place and realize those “rules” aren’t as fixed as you thought.”

McKinsey MBAs also list several other lessons. Among them: pivot quickly, distill complex ideas into simple stories, frame problems as opportunities, and follow the 80/20 rule. Whatever you do, adds Fehin Ibiloye, trust the process.

“At a firm that’s nearly 100 years old, systems exist for a reason. While there’s room to innovate, there’s also value in respecting what works.”

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…

Latasha Desideria, who earned her MBA at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, would add structure and problem-solving to the list of lessons. “Structure helps you see the bigger picture, prioritize, and connect individual tasks to the overarching problem. Problem-solving is about curiosity—always asking “what if” and exploring possibilities. These skills shape how I work with teams and clients, and they will remain valuable no matter where my career takes me.”

Regardless of who pays the bills, adds Oscar Gutiérrez, always know who the real client is. “It’s not always the most senior person in the room—it’s sometimes the one most affected by the outcome.”

That’s particularly true in the age of AI, which has been disrupting everything from automation to decision-making. Taking the big picture view on AI, Tunde Olanrewaju harkens back to when he joined the firm in early 2002, when fax machines reigned and Blackberries required headsets. As a result, he views AI tools and capabilities as more of a “natural evolution”, no different than retail’s ongoing shift from brick-and-mortar to online and mobile sales. He also expects AI to creep into unexpected spaces, pointing to ChatGPT’s Agentic Commerce Protocol that will enable users to make purchases right off its platform.

“I’m actually very excited about the shift that this means for businesses because it creates lots of opportunities for us to support them,” Olanrewaju continues. “So I’m not sitting here feeling like we’re going to get disrupted. I feel more like our work is going to get accelerated and change again, like it’s always changed since I’ve been here.”

MEET LILLI: YOUR AI ANALYST

While AI creates opportunities for McKinsey to help clients with new challenges, it will disrupt some aspects of McKinsey internal operations. Even there, Olanrewaju emphasizes, AI carves out opportunities for McKinsey to bring time-saving resources to staff. That takes the form of Lilli, an internal AI tool that is fast becoming the firm’s “knowledge corpus” says Olanrewaju. Named after McKinsey’s first female consultant, Lilli is comparable to a junior analyst supporting teams. Rather than taking the time to identify subject matter experts or engagements within similar industries, teams can tap Lilli to synthesize all of that so they can hit the ground running.

Olanrewaju finds Lilli to be particularly invaluable in helping teams draft a Week One Hypothesis: a McKinsey starting point where teams boil down the essential problem in lieu of gathering more facts and identifying where information is incomplete or contradictory. While Lilli maintains client confidentiality, it tips off teams to relevant information and patterns to make them more productive.

“Lili takes [this] to a faster, more productive level,” Olanrewaju continues. “[It] frees us up to do the higher order stuff. So I feel it’s a natural evolution of the way we’ve always worked, that we try and take away from the consultant’s daily life as much of what we might call the commodity problem-solving and data gathering so that our consultants can actually focus on synthesis and counseling of our clients.”

Next Page: Profiles of 15 MBA Hires From the Class of 2024

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