Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan
Michel-Kerjan is an international strategist whose career intersects markets, public policy, and frontier research on managing and financing large-scale systemic risks. He has a proven track record of designing and supporting the execution of solutions and national programs for Fortune 100 companies, sovereign governments, and multilateral institutions.
Dr. Michel-Kerjan joined McKinsey & Company in New York a decade ago as a directly elected Partner—a rare distinction in the firm’s century-long history. A leader in McKinsey's Financial Services, Public Sector and Risk and Resilience Practices, he is the global co-leader of the firm's work on risk in insurance, supporting premier financial institutions and governments. He also serves on McKinsey’s People Development Committee. In addition to his work on climate risks, terrorism, and geopolitical risks, he is passionate about supporting the adoption of sovereign AI, steering AGI alignment and proactively designing national and global governance models for an agentic world. Notably, his team also spearheaded the world’s most extensive community resilience program—a major bipartisan initiative supported across successive U.S. Presidents.
Before McKinsey, Dr. Michel-Kerjan served as Executive Director of the Wharton School’s Risk Center at the University of Pennsylvania. During his tenure, the Center tripled in size, published innovative research on extreme events globally, and structured some of the market innovations and landmark federal legislation that stabilized economies following 9/11 and other major disasters. He also taught value creation in the Wharton MBA and executive programs.
He has (co-)authored of over 150 publications in top academic journals (incl. Nature, Science, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Risk and Insurance, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Risk Analysis, European Journal of Political Economy) and six books, including At War with the Weather (MIT Press), Leadership Dispatches (Stanford Press), Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response (CUP; co-edited with the late Lewis Branscomb, former director of the Belfer Center’s STTP). His
insights are frequently featured in popular outlets, including BBC, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, Le Figaro (in French).
He regularly advises senior policymakers on national resilience frameworks, including consultations with the White House and testimony before the U.S. Congress.
On the international stage, Dr. Michel-Kerjan served for two 5-year mandates as elected Chairman of the OECD Secretary-General’s Board on Financial Management of Catastrophes. In this role, he directed the financial resilience agenda in support of the Finance Ministries of the 38-member countries, fostering policy consensus among diverse nations and funneling strategies into G20 discussions. These themes are highly relevant in today’s debate managing AI risks and building lasting resilience. A co-founder of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Initiative (the world’s prominent insight platform on global risks, now in its 21 year), he has been involved in numerous WEF activities (including as a speaker and moderator in Davos), translating complex macroeconomic and strategic risk realities into actionable insights for live executive audiences.
His broader work includes guiding the President of Chile, the World Bank, and serving on the advisory board to the CEO and Chairman of AXA Group ($1 trillion assets under management). He is the recipient of prestigious honors, including the US Kulp-Wright Award, the UK Lloyd’s of London Science of Risk Prize, and the Swiss WEF Young Global Leader recognition. A dual American-French citizen, he studied at École Polytechnique (France), McGill, Wharton/Penn, and completed professional programs at Harvard (KSG) and MIT (2025).
