Dr. Helene D. Gayle, whose work as president and CEO of Atlanta-based CARE USA, has helped improve the lives of women and girls around the world, will join the McKinsey Social Initiative this summer.
Gayle, who becomes the new organization’s inaugural CEO, has led CARE since 2006, becoming the first woman to do so.
She announced last fall that she would leave the humanitarian organization, which fights poverty and provides disaster relief, at the end of June.
The McKinsey Social Initiative was created last year by the management consulting giant, McKinsey & Company, to address some of the most challenging social issues using public and private solutions. One of the new, independent organization’s first projects is Generation, which focuses on reducing global youth unemployment, Gayle said in a March 19 email to staff. The key, she said, is developing sustainable remedies.
She told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday that she expects to draw upon her own experience working across the public, private, foundation and nonprofit sectors. Gayle, a physician trained in pediatrics and public health, worked for many years at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and later at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She has also served on several boards.
This job “allows me to mesh all of those different worlds,” she said during a phone interview from Dubai, where she is attending a gathering of CARE’s international staff. “When you think about solving large, global social issues, it’s really going to take all of those different sectors coming together and leveraging resources to create solutions.”
Because it’s a new organization, “it’s almost like having a blank slate to create something totally from scratch,” she said.
Although she is still focused on completing her work at CARE, Gayle believes that CEOs shouldn’t necessarily stay on the job for decades. “Every organization deserves the chance to have someone come in with new ideas,” she said. “It’s better to leave on a high note instead of when people have to carry you out.”
While at the helm of CARE, Gayle placed more focus on improving the lives of women and girls throughout the world and building partnership with other groups, government and in the private sector. Recently, for instance, CARE became part of the White House’s “Let Girls Learn Initiative” designed to tackle barriers that prevent girls from getting an education. CARE will collaborate with the Peace Corps to develop a training program for volunteers.
Her new job will take her to Washington, D.C., where she has several siblings and other relatives. “It was a very natural place,” to relocate, Gayle said.
The change may have been also been fueled by personal reasons.
“Turning 60 was on my mind,” said Gayle, 59. ” Those decade birthdays make you reflect. When you have more years behind you than in front of you, you want to make sure you’re using them well.”
A search is underway for a successor.
“What I really want most is to make sure that whomever takes the helm is as passionate about the work at CARE as I am,” she said. “And that can be a man or a woman.”
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