James is a Senior Vice President at Google. He focuses on Technology and Society, on issues ranging from AI to the future of work and the digital economy, computing infrastructure, sustainability that have the potential for broad impact on society.
Prior to Google, he spent over 25 years at McKinsey & Company, including serving on its board, and is now Senior Partner emeritus and Chair emeritus of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). Based in Silicon Valley, James advised the chief executives of many of the world’s leading tech companies. He led MGI for 13 years, including leading research on technology’s impact on business, the economy and society, as well as on other global economy trends.
He was appointed by President Obama to serve as Vice Chair of the Global Development Council at the White House, and by two US Commerce Secretaries to the Digital Economy Board and the National Innovation Board. He serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, Hewlett and MacArthur foundations.
He is a Visiting Professor at Oxford’s School of Government and a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Committee on Responsible Computing. He serves on the board of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and on advisory boards of research institutes at Stanford, Havard, Oxford, and Toronto.
He has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Distinguished Fellow of Stanford’s AI Institute, a Distinguished Fellow in Ethics & AI at Oxford, a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College and a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. A Rhodes Scholar, James has a DPhil, MSc, MA from Oxford in AI and robotics, mathematics and computer science, a BSc in electrical engineering from the University of Zimbabwe.