Michael O'Leary

Michael O'Leary is a partner at L Catterton, one of the world's leading consumer growth investors, where he focuses on impact investing. Previously, he was a managing director with the investment firm Engine No. 1, where he oversaw the firm's approach to active ownership. Engine No. 1 is best known for its successful activist campaign at ExxonMobil, as well as its work with companies like General Motors to achieve their net zero ambitions. Before that, he was on the founding team of Bain Capital's social impact fund and invested in consumer, industrial, and technology companies through Bain Capital's private equity fund. He has served as an economic policy advisor in the United States Senate and on two presidential campaigns.

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O’Leary’s and co-author Warren Valdmanis’s book, Accountable: The Rise of Citizen Capitalism, offers a pragmatic and original view on how to transform capitalism into a system that's more inclusive, sustainable, and just. By combining compelling examples and analytical insights, O’Leary and Valdmanis cut through the tired dogma of current economic thinking to reveal a hopeful truth: If we can make our corporations accountable to a deeper purpose, we can make capitalism both prosperous and good. Likely to spark controversy among cynics and dreamers alike, this book is essential reading for anyone with a stake in reforming capitalism — which means all of us.

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Accountable has been featured by the Aspen Institute, the Financial Times, the Harvard Business Review, and the World Economic Forum, among many others. It was named one of the best business books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Porchlight Books.

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O'Leary is a regular speaker on sustainable and impact investing, including at Bloomberg and Goldman Sachs's sustainability conferences; on podcasts, national radio, and TV; and through lectures at Harvard, the London School of Economics, Stanford, and the University of Chicago. His work at Engine No. 1 trying to reinvent ESG investing has been profiled in the Atlantic, Fortune, the New York Times, and elsewhere.

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Michael studied philosophy at Harvard College and earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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