Born in Bombay, India, Atul Kanagat attended the Indian Institute of Technology where he earned a Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering. He later attended the Harvard Business School where he earned an MBA with honors. He began his career in Calcutta as a commercial manager at Unilever, and subsequently moved to the United States where he spent the next 22 years with McKinsey & Company, Inc., first in Chicago as an Associate and then as a Principal, and finally as a Director. As a Principal, he led the firm’s North American practice in rapid performance improvement processes, and led teams that conducted extensive internal and external research and analysis on a variety of topics for clients. After 12 years in Chicago Kanagat was promoted to Director and proceeded to found the firm’s Seattle office. For the next ten years, he built and led the McKinsey Seattle team, serving senior managements of companies in multiple sectors of the economy of the Pacific Northwest on matters of business strategy, marketing, and organization. Kanagat was Vice Chairman of the board of the Seattle Symphony on which he served from 1996-2002, where he created and led the long range planning committee and led multiple pro bono business management and organizational projects involving independent research and analysis. He was also active on a number of other Seattle boards.