MCKINSEY ALUMS DOMINATE THE WORLD'S C-SUITES. WILL AI DRY UP THE FIRM'S CEO PIPELINE?

THE CONSULTING GIANT HAS PRODUCED MORE FORTUNE 500 CEOS THAN ANY OTHER INSTITUTION. NOW IT'S SPRINTING TO RETHINK HOW IT TRAINS LEADERS.

- BY RUTH UMOH

FOUR YEARS AGO, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser shattered Wall Street's glass ceiling to become the first woman to lead one of the Big Four U.

S. banks. But long before taking the helm of the $2.6 trillion financial institution, Fraser was honing a skill set that would quietly define her ascent—one forged not just in the corridors of high finance, but also inside the high-pressure, hyper-analytical halls of the world’s most famous consulting firm.

Fraser joined McKinsey in 1994, fresh from Harvard Business School, and the superpower she learned there was “problem structuring.” As a young consultant, cycling through boardrooms and back offices, Fraser was trained to break down sprawling challenges, design transformation road maps, and rally teams across silos. By the time she made partner in 1997—at the age of 30—she had advised multinational corporations on everything from growth strategy to crisis recovery.

It was a crash course in decision-making and pattern recognition across a range of industries. “You learn to structure issues from the ground up, to define what success looks like, and to pull the right people together to get there,” Fraser says. “That way of thinking has never left me.”

Fraser left McKinsey in 2004 to join Citigroup. The skills she developed in consulting didn’t apply immediately. But over time, they became central to her executive playbook: a methodical, systems-driven approach to fixing what's broken, reimagining what can be achieved, and scaling what works. Fraser rotated through critical roles, often in battered businesses, from private banking to Citigroup's mortgage unit after the housing crash. When she was tapped to lead Citigroup Latin America in 2015, she inherited a franchise still dealing with fallout from a major fraud scandal and in need of a cultural and risk-management overhaul. Each assignment sharpened her instincts as a fixer and strategist.