McKinsey & Company Alumni Center Privacy Policy

 This Privacy Notice was last reviewed on March 3rd, 2024


McKinsey Alumni Program Privacy Notice


McKinsey & Company, Inc., its affiliates, and subsidiaries (collectively, “McKinsey” or “Firm” or “we”) is committed to respecting your privacy and protecting your personal data. We define personal data as data relating to an identified person or a person who can be identified, whether directly or indirectly, by reference to one or more characteristics.

This Alumni Program Privacy Notice (“Privacy Notice”) describes how we handle and protect your personal data in connection with the McKinsey’s Alumni Center website (the “Alumni Site” or “Site”) and the Alumni program. In case of a conflict between this Privacy Notice and applicable law, applicable law will govern. 

This Privacy Notice applies to the personal data of current and former McKinsey colleagues, as well as personal data of approved external recruiters who are permitted to publish job postings on the Alumni Site.

Personal data we collect

We collect personal data at various stages during your membership to the Alumni Program and your interactions with the Alumni Center website.  

For former employees, we collect the following information from the Firm´s HR management systems upon termination of their employment relationship with the Firm:

  • Basic information like your name, surname, location, contact information (including personal email, phone numbers, and mailing address), gender, birthdate, and profile photo
  • Employment-specific information and history, including positions held, McKinsey employment history (time at McKinsey, office affiliations, and tenure)
  • Education history, including degrees earned, educational institutions attended, and dates of enrollment

We may also obtain directly from former employees the following information:

  • Additional employement information and history
  • Additional educational information
  • Social media links
  • Stated interests (including function, industry, affinty groups, etc.)
  • Communication preferences
  • Alumni program survey data
  • Phone number
  • Personal and business email
  • Profile photo
  • Location

For current employees, we may collect:

  • Basic information like name, surname, location, contact information (including personal email and phone numbers), gender, birthdate, and profile photo
  • Employment-specific information and history, including positions held, McKinsey employment history (time at McKinsey, office affiliations, and tenure)
  • Education history, including degrees earned, educational institutions attended, and dates of enrollment

For external recruiters we may collect the following information:

  • Basic information like name, surname, location, contact information (including personal email and phone numbers)
  • Professional information, including job title, company, type of recruiter account (i.e., executive search firm, retained, contingent, etc.), and address

For former employees, current employees and approved external recruiters we also collect information regarding your access and use of the Alumi Site such as:

  • Website usage data, including logins, page views, clicks. We also automatically collect information about the devices used to interact with our Alumni Site. The information we automatically collect may include IP address, device identifier, web browser, and browsing information collected through cookies. We may also automatically collect information about how users use the Alumni Site, such as what visitors may have searched for and viewed on the site. The information automatically collected will be associated with any personal data they have provided.

Please refer to McKinsey´s Cookie policy at https://www.mckinsey.com/cookie-policy for further details

When we collect personal data from you, you may choose to not provide certain personal data, but your failure to do so may result in us not being able to properly administer or manage your participation in the Alumni program or to offer to you its full range of services.

Unless you opt out by contacting the Alumni program team at mckinsey_alumni_relations@mckinsey.com  , at the time of your onboarding into the Alumni program (and as per the terms of the Affinity Network Privacy Notice) information about your membership in any of the Firm´s Affinity Networks will be shared by the ADI team with the Alumni program team. This information will help to identify you as an alumni member of a Firm´s Affinity Network(s) to other members of the same Affinity Network(s), Firm alumni relations team, and ADI team members for purposes related to the management of diversity related initiates within the Alumni program (e.g., sourcing and staffing volunteers for Affinity Network and/or ADI events and initiatives; outreach to invite you to participate in programming and events). The Alumni program team may also collect directly from you information about your interest in receiving commnications and event invitations managed by the Alumni program team and related to any of the Firm´s Affinity Networks.

Use of your personal data

We use your personal data to manage your participation in the Alumni program. For instance, we use your personal data:

  • to invite you to relevant online and offline events and to track your attendance for the purpose of refining offerings we provide to you
  • to provide you with relevant training opportunities and offerings that you may find beneficial
  • to facilitate connections with other members of the Alumni program
  • to present you with job offers that may be of your interest

We may also analyze your personal data or aggregated/pseudonymized data to analyze overall alumni engagement, identify opportunities to improve our program and technology offering, and for other similar legitimate business purposes.

We do not make personnel-related automated decisions that have legal impact on you or that significantly affect your rights and liberties based solely on automated processing without significant human intervention.

Legal Basis for Processing Your Data

Our processing of your personal data for the purposes mentioned above is based on one or several of the following grounds:

  • in part, on our legitimate interests in operating our Alumni program . When we rely on this legal ground, McKinsey will only process your personal data after assessing the adequacy, proportionality, and legitimacy of the data processing activity; and
  • in part, and where permitted by applicable law, on your freely given consent. If we rely upon consent as a legal basis for processing, you can withdraw your consent at any time. If you do so, and processing cannot continue based on any other legal grounds, we may not be able to properly manage your membership in the Alumni program or make available to you certain services associated to it.

Data recipients and international data transfers

Your personal data may be disclosed to recipients within our organization and with service providers For instance, your personal data may be processed by:

  • our Firm members at McKinsey affiliates and subsidiaries as well as by external workers working for the Firm (e.g., members of the HR / IT / Professional Development / Staffing departments);
  • our legal and professional advisors;
  • suppliers and providers of services (e.g., event management partners, emarketing platform, etc.) engaged by us at local or at global level;
  • approved external recruiters
  • government authorities when legally required to do so

These disclosures may take place for one or many of the following purposes:

  • to manage and administrate our Alumni program and website and our relationship with our former employees.
  • if we are required to do so by law or legal process, including to law enforcement authorities or other government officials pursuant to lawful request;
  • when we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to prevent physical harm or financial loss or in connection with an investigation of suspected or actual illegal activity;
  • if disclosure is necessary to protect the vital interests of a person;
  • to enforce our policies;
  • to protect our property, services and legal rights;
  • to prevent fraud against McKinsey, our subsidiaries, affiliates and/or business partners;
  • to aid in McKinsey’s investigation of an actual or suspected security incident such as a breach involving confidential information or personal information or a violation of McKinsey policy;
  • to support auditing, compliance, and corporate governance functions;
  • to a successor or different business entity in the event of a re-organization, merger, sale, joint venture, assignment, or other transfer or disposition of all or any portion of our business; and
  • to comply with any and all applicable laws.

In those cases where the abovementioned disclosures involve the transfer of your personal data to countries different from the country where you personal data was collected , we have implemented data transfer measures that are designed to ensure appropriate data protection for your personal data, like technical organizational or legal measures including incorporating data transfer terms into our agreements with McKinsey affiliates, subsidiaries, service providers, and third parties. These legal mechanisms include the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or other data transfer mechanisms as required by local law.

For California residents – we do not share or sell your personal data as those terms are defined in California Civil Code § 1798.140.

We do not acquire, use, or allow others to use deidentified[1] data with the intent of identifying or reidentifying individuals. When we receive deidentified data or we transform personal data that we have collected into deidentified data, we make the following commitments:

  • McKinsey will maintain deidentified data in deidentified form.
  • Except to the extent necessary to confirm that personal data has been transformed into deidentified data, McKinsey will not attempt to identify or reidentify specific individuals within a deidentified data set or otherwise use deidentified data to attempt to associate specific individuals with their individual characteristics and will not permit any entity or individual acting on McKinsey’s behalf to do so.
  • To the extent, if any, that McKinsey provides access to or otherwise discloses a deidentified data set to a non-McKinsey recipient, for example, a service provider or a client, it will require each such recipient to agree to maintain the deidentified data in its deidentified form and not attempt, or permit others to attempt, to identify or reidentify specific individuals within the deidentified data set or otherwise use deidentified data to attempt to associate specific individuals with their individual characteristics.

Data retention

Your personal data will be retained for the duration of your membership in the Alumni program.

Some of the data may be also retained beyond the termination of our contractual relationship with you, in accordance with the Firm data retention schedules, but in no event longer than the period required or permitted by applicable law.

Security

McKinsey protects and safeguards your personal data globally, in accordance with applicable law, our privacy and data security policies, and this Privacy Notice We use generally accepted standards of technical and operational security to protect your personal data against accidental or unlawful loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction, in consideration of the risks associated with the personal data and its processing, and we require the same level of protection and safeguarding from our subsidiaries and affiliates, our service providers, and third parties. Only authorized personnel of McKinsey and of our third-party service providers are permitted to access personal data, and these employees and third-party service providers are required to treat this information as confidential. Despite these precautions, we cannot guarantee that unauthorized persons will not obtain access to your personal data.

[1] In this Privacy Notice, the term “deidentified data” means personal data, that has been anonymized, pseudonymized, aggregated or otherwise transformed into data that can no longer be used to identify or reidentify a specific individual or associate specific individuals with their attributes using commercially reasonable efforts, technology and resources.

Your rights

We take reasonable steps that are designed to keep your personal data accurate, complete, and up-to-date for the purposes for which it is collected and used. We also have implemented measures that are designed to help ensure that our processing of your personal data complies with this Privacy Notice and applicable law.

Subject to applicable law, including exceptions, you may have the following rights with regard to the personal data we collect about you:

  • a right to request information about the personal data we hold about you, including the details of how we use that information and who we share it with;
  • a right to request a copy of the personal data that we hold about you;
  • a right to request that we amend or rectify your personal data if any of the information held about you is incorrect or otherwise not accurate for the purpose(s) for which we are using it;
  • a right to portability of your personal data
  • a right to request erasure of your personal data;
  • a right to request that we cease the processing of your personal data or that we restrict or limit the processing of your personal data;
  • a right to withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal data, to the extent our processing relies on your consent as the lawful basis for processing. This right may not apply if there are other legal grounds to continue processing or we need to retain certain personal data where required or permitted under applicable law;
  • a right to provide us with instructions as to the processing of your personal data in case of death;
  • a right to not be discriminated or retaliated against for exercising your individual rights regarding your personal data;
  • a right to request review by McKinsey’s Global Privacy Officer and, if applicable, McKinsey’s Data Protection Officer for your jurisdiction, of our response to your request to exercise your individual data protection rights; and/or
  • right to seek (at your own expense) additional legal remedies regarding our response to your request to exercise your individual data protection rights, including, depending upon your jurisdiction, by lodging a complaint with your data protection authority or initiating a legal proceeding.

If you would like to exercise your data protection rights regarding your personal data, you can do so by:

McKinsey & Company
Legal Department
711 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10017

To help protect your privacy and security, we may take reasonable steps to verify your identity before completing your request. We will make reasonable attempts to promptly investigate, comply with, or otherwise respond to your requests as may be required by applicable law. Depending upon the circumstances and the request, we may not be permitted to provide access to personal data or otherwise fully comply with your request; for example, where producing your information may reveal the identity of someone else or where the Firm´s legitimate business interests take precedence. In those cases, we will respond to your request to the extent we are able to do so, and we will provide an explanation of the basis for not complying wholly or partially with your request. We also reserve the right to deny your requests where, in the Firm’s discretion, they may be unfounded, excessive, or otherwise unacceptable under applicable law. Depending on the content of your request, we may not be able to properly manage your employment or otherwise contractual relationship with us or make available to you certain services.

Contacts

If you have any questions about Alumni Program Privacy Notice and about how we process your personal data, please contact the Alumni Team at mckinsey_alumni_relations@mckinsey.com. You may also contact any of our Data Protection Officers or the Data Privacy Team at privacy@mckinsey.com   

McKinsey reserves the right to modify this Alumni Program Privacy Notice at any time. We will post any changes to our  McKinsey Alumni website. Please check this page regularly to keep up-to-date.