Sven Smit, Chairman of McKinsey Global Institute & Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company

On November 14, 2025, the TUM Speakers Series proudly welcomed Sven Smit, Chairman of McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) and Senior Partner at the firm, to the Audimax at TUM’s main campus for an insightful keynote.

Right at the start of the new semester we had the great opportunity of listening to one of McKinsey’s key figures in Wester Europe and the chance to learn from his perspectives and experiences he has collected over 35 years with one of the leading strategy consulting firms and who is also serving as Chairman of the firms own research institute.

In his keynote titled “Entering a new Era: Towards a Century of Plenty” he provided the audience with valuable perspectives and outlooks on long-term solutions for tackling current and arising problems in order to navigate towards a better future for all of humanity - a century of plenty to come.

In the second part of the event he reflected on his outstandingly long career at McKinsey through a moderated talk with our moderator Nick Wellen. Here the audience had the chance to hear first-hand experiences from a very successful career and how to steer towards excellence.

To round the evening off, our attendees finally had the chance to ask their questions, which Sven Smit answered on stage to provide even more insights.

A sincere thank-you to Prof. Helmut Schönenberger, Vice President of TUM and Founder of UnternehmerTUM for his introduction speech and everyone who contributed to making this special evening possible.