Dr. Helene Gayle will be the inaugural CEO of the McKinsey Social Initiative (MSI), a nonprofit that the global consulting firm created last year. She will join the organization in July after almost 10 years as president and CEO of CARE USA in Atlanta, Ga.
MSI is an autonomous, independent nonprofit that will be based in Washington, D.C. It currently has plans for five staff members in addition to 25 full-time McKinsey consultants donated to MSI at any given time and part-time leadership support from 10 McKinsey partners, according to a spokeswoman.
Gayle outlined her first priorities as CEO to continue to the organization and to build its first program, Generation, a global youth-employment program to connect 1 million young people with jobs in the next five years in India, Kenya, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. 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,” she said in a statement announcing her new role.
Gayle has been CEO of CARE USA, among the largest charities in the country, since 2006. The organization reported approximately $492 million in total revenue for 2013, ranking No. 35 on The NonProfit Times 2014 NPT 100, a study of the nation’s largest nonprofits.
A native of Buffalo, N.Y., Gayle earned her bachelor’s degree from Barnard College of Columbia University, her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and her master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins University. She is a former staff epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control, studying malnutrition in children in the United States and abroad. She also served as AIDS coordinator and chief of the HIV/AIDS division of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and director of the HIV, TB and reproductive health program for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gayle twice was named to The NonProfit Times Power & Influence Top 50, in 2010 and 2011.
