Vijay Gerard D'Silva

Vijay D’Silva is a Senior Lecturer and Executive in Residence at the MIT Sloan School of Management, which he joined in 2022. He serves on the boards of Worldpay and Moneycorp, and previously on the board of Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. He is also an advisor to NYCA Partners, a venture capital firm.

At MIT Sloan, D’Silva teaches a course on leadership development, and regularly lectures on financial technology. His interests span corporate strategy, organizational effectiveness, and the intersection of finance and technology.

Before joining MIT Sloan, D’Silva was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, retiring in 2022 after a 28-year career. He held global leadership roles in McKinsey Digital (2016–2022), Sales & Marketing (2013–2016), Payments (2008–2012), and Risk Management (2000–2008). Over his career, he advised more than 100 clients worldwide on strategic and operational issues.  He also founded the McKinsey Talent Network in 2014, a program that by 2022 had connected over 9,000 executives with companies.

D’Silva’s work and research focus on four areas:

Strategy – Deep experience in growth, M&A, competitive positioning, and margin improvement. He developed the Strategic Control Map, a tool for assessing the impact of performance and scale on market capitalization and competitive standing.

Technology – With a background in computer science, D’Silva has led technology-driven transformations, from co-leading AI deployment research with MIT’s Machine Intelligence for Manufacturing and Operations program to pioneering deep learning applications in trading and advanced analytics in payments. He built McKinsey’s partnership with Google Cloud to accelerate cloud and AI adoption and has published extensively on technology and payments.

Talent – A long-standing leader in talent development, he served on McKinsey’s personnel committees for over 20 years, evaluating and electing partners and senior partners. He created TimeMatters, and holds a U.S. patent on the use of calendar analytics for productivity.  He currently supports MIT Sloan’s Career Development Office, and continues to mentor students and executives.

Risk Management – As co-founder of McKinsey’s Risk Management practice, he advised financial and non-financial firms on risk mitigation, regulatory response, and resilience—particularly during and following the global financial crisis.

D’Silva holds graduate degrees in Management from MIT Sloan and in Computer Studies from North Carolina State University, as well as an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, for which he ranked first in state and 13th nationally.

He began his career as a software engineer and later worked as a quantitative investment analyst, and in technology and risk management at UBS.

Outside of work, D’Silva has contributed to numerous pro bono initiatives, including the RED campaign to fight global AIDS, the September 11 Memorial and Museum, and the NYC Jobs CEO Council. He is an Executive Board Member of MIT Sloan and a Trustee of Catholic Charities of New York, where he is on the operating committee and co-chairs the Agency Relations Committee.