When Paul Laudicina arrived at global management consulting firm Kearney, he brought with him a lifetime of experience—as a strategic planner for Mobil Oil Corporation, research associate at the United Nations, associate fellow at an economic policy think tank, legislative director for then-Senator Joseph R. Biden, and as a senior executive of SRI International (the Stanford Research Institute), where he founded its policy division. His early life experience as a seminarian also helped shape Paul’s lifelong, principled, and passionate commitment to repairing what’s broken or damaged.

And as he began his Kearney career, Paul saw a world grappling with sweeping political liberalization and rapidly accelerating globalization. So in 1991, he founded the Global Business Policy Council, a specialized strategic advisory services unit within Kearney, to help senior leaders in business, government, and civil society rise to the challenge of navigating in a transformed world. More than three decades later, the Council is one of the world’s best-known and most highly-regarded private-sector think tanks.

Later, having become one of the firm’s most respected and visible leaders, Paul was Kearney’s first worldwide managing partner and chairman of the board to be elected following its 2006 management buy-out, which returned the firm to partner ownership. During his six-year tenure, he guided Kearney through an extraordinary period of turnaround, renewal, and growth despite the Great Recession—expanding its global footprint to include offices in nearly 40 countries.

Throughout this extraordinary transformation, Paul has consistently been called upon for his leadership and vision—as founder and leader of the Council; as the firm’s managing partner; as a trusted advisor and lead consultant to CEOs and boards of some of the world’s largest companies; as a scenario planner and futurist; as a strategist advising governments and policy-makers across the world; as a thought leader, author, columnist, commentator, and speaker; and as a mentor to a new generation of leaders. His achievements were recognized by his peers in 2019 with the consulting profession’s highest distinction, the “Lifetime Achievement Award.”

Paul is the author of many articles and several books, including Wall Street Journal best-seller Roadmap to a Brighter Future: Reimagining and Realizing America’s Possibilities (Matt Holt Books, 2021), World Out of Balance: Navigating Global Risks to Seize Competitive Advantage (McGraw-Hill, 2004) and Beating the Global Odds: Successful Decision-Making in a Confused and Troubled World (Wiley, 2012), which were also both published in numerous foreign language editions. Paul has been named multiple times to Consulting magazine’s annual ranking of the Top 25 Most Influential Consultants.

A graduate of the University of Chicago in political science and government, he is the Vice Chancellor of the International Academy of Management, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of America250 Advisory Council of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission. Paul is also a CEO Coach working with Korn Ferry, the world’s largest executive search, human resources, and leadership development firm, through which he actively mentors a rising generation of CEOs.

Paul serves as a senior advisor to Kearney, one of the pioneers of management consulting founded in 1926. However, it prides itself as being culturally quite distinct from its competitors—having always emphasized a practical, collegial, hands-on, and deeply collaborative way of working with clients. Today, with some 3,500 professionals (many with non-MBA backgrounds) working out of its global network of offices in over 40 countries, Kearney remains one of the most desirable places to work in the world. Its Global Business Policy Council, which Paul founded, is ranked as one of the world’s top private-sector think tanks publishing multidisciplinary research across a broad range of critically important global strategic issues.

Continue Reading »