Kari is a leader of McKinsey’s consumer-growth work in North America. She also leads our consumer insights efforts, which helps leading consumer-facing companies understand actionable decisions based on what today’s consumers think, say, and do. Over her 25+ years with McKinsey, she has served a range of clients on commercial topics including growth strategy, marketing, and sales. Kari has helped clients achieve significant performance improvement, bringing to bear industry expertise and best practices in commercial excellence. She has worked extensively in North America and also served clients in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Examples of her recent client experience include the following:
- leading enterprise strategy and operating model transformation for $10B+ food company working directly with the CEO, and senior leadership team to re-set the strategic direction, identifying new vectors for growth and realigning the operating model to deliver
- coaching the C-suite members of a large beverage company over the course of a two-year transformation and delivered $1 billion in bottom-line profit improvement while identifying growth initiatives, reorganized sales function, and built revenue management capabilities
- leading commercial integration—business unit, sales, innovation, and marketing services—for a multibillion dollar consumer-goods deal, including the consolidation of integrated sales forces and process wiring to address cultural differences
- guiding an industry-wide effort with retail and consumer-packaged-goods leaders to develop and launch a global data model to transform engagement for trading partners across the value chain by directly engaging with key industry leaders to build a business case, and delivering recommendations to cross-industry board of governors, the author of industry-wide publications, and speaker at key forums
Kari serves on the board of trustees at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and she previously served on the boards of the Blake School and the Minnesota Children’s Museum.