Gary Pinkus is a senior partner of McKinsey & Company Inc. and serves as chairman of North America. He was previously the managing partner for the firm in North America, and before that led McKinsey’s office for the Western United States. Pinkus is also the former Global Leader of McKinsey’s Private equity & Principal Investors Practice, which he helped co-found more than two decades ago. He has been a long-time member of McKinsey’s Shareholders Council (the firm’s global governance board), including historically chairing the Finance and Infrastructure Committee and the Risk, Audit, and Governance Committee. His client work spans multiple industries with a particular focus on private equity and principal investors.
Pinkus joined McKinsey in Los Angeles in 1987 as a business analyst and came to the firm’s San Francisco office in 1992. Over the course of his career, he has worked for Dole Food Company in Honduras, Bear Stearns’ mergers and acquisitions group in New York, and in McKinsey’s Houston, Mexico City, Sydney, and Zurich offices.
Pinkus currently serves on the boards of Wake Forest University and U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. He is a prior member of the boards of the San Francisco Opera, California Academy of Sciences, Menlo School, California Business Roundtable, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, ReSurge International (formerly Interplast), and the investment committee for Woodside School Foundation. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English and quantitative economics from Stanford University and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, both with distinction. He and his wife, Mary, celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in 2019 and have four children and three dogs.