Mekala Krishnan

Leads the McKinsey Global Institute’s research on various topics related to sustainable and inclusive growth, including climate risk and the net-zero transition, globalization, productivity, and gender economics

Dr. Mekala Krishnan is a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey & Company’s business and economics research arm, based in Boston, MA.

Her research focuses on various topics related to sustainable and inclusive growth, including the economics of climate change, globalization, productivity growth, and gender economics. Her most recent research focuses on the net-zero transition, adaptation and physical climate risk across sectors and geographies, including its implications for companies and countries. Her latest McKinsey Global Institute publications include: , An affordable, reliable, competitive path to net-zero; The net-zero transition: What it would cost, what it would bring, From poverty to empowerment: Raising the bar for sustainable and inclusive growth, and Climate risk and response: Physical hazards and socioeconomic impacts.

Mekala is a frequent speaker on these topics at global conferences as well as with executives at Fortune 500 companies. She has authored numerous articles and her work has been cited in leading business publications, including The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Harvard Business Review.

Mekala serves on a Bretton Woods Committee working group on climate finance and on advisory boards for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and the Sibley School of Mechanical Engineering at Cornell University. She is also Chair of the Audit Committee on the board of the Global Fund for Women, a leading public foundation dedicated to improving global gender equality. She was previously a member of a task force at the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings focused on improving productivity measurement.

Mekala received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 2011. Prior to Cornell, she received a Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2006 from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.