After completing his undergraduate studies, Maceda got a job at a large corporation, then went to business school, after which he secured a 10-week internship at Bain, where he’s worked for the past 35 years and where he assumed the position of worldwide managing partner in March of 2018.
But there’s more to his journey than might immediately meet the eye.
“I was a nontraditional selection for the managing partner job,” Maceda acknowledges in a recent conversation with Columbia Business School Dean Costis Maglaras. “Not because I was Filipino and the first global managing partner who wasn't a straight white American male, but because I didn't come from the traditional management ranks inside the company.”
Maceda explains that inside many organizations, including management consultancies like Bain, there are different paths you can follow in order to climb the ranks of seniority. You can do the core work of the company—engage in creating the service or product that the company offers or sells—or you can be a brilliant manager who leads the teams that are made up of those operatives.
He, Maceda admits, always fell into that former group. Up until that promotion to the very top job, he had spent his entire career on the front line of client service, meaning that when he took on the new role it was a pivotal moment in his professional journey and an inflection point for Bain, too.
Maceda, aware of what was at stake, embraced the challenge the only way he knew how: he treated his new mandate with the same acumen, humility and sensibility with which he had always treated his own clients. In other words, he considered this to be one of his most important consulting jobs yet.
“And it turns out, that because I knew the organization pretty well, and because I'd had reasonable experience doing it for other organizations, it kind of worked out okay,” he notes, humbly. “And I think I've made a difference in what's happened with my firm over the last six and a half years. And I've been privileged to do that.”
A New World of Challenges
Indeed, there’s plenty of evidence that Maceda’s term at the top has been successful despite the fact that his ascent was unlike many of his predecessors’. But to assume it’s been an easy ride would be wrong. Especially in recent years, headwinds have manifested in all different ways—both for Bain itself and for its many clients around the globe. They continue to do so, and many are of an unprecedented nature.
Generative AI is challenging the way we live, work, communicate and interact, and therefore it is fundamentally changing the types of risks and opportunities that businesses must be attuned to, Maceda says. But there are other forces that are keeping business leaders—including himself—up at night: geopolitical tensions, wars and conflicts, of course, but also the critical need to collectively combat the severe and growing climate crisis.
And finally, one big development that is challenging large companies to think on their toes and be agile: an evolving macroeconomic backdrop in which the cost of capital is not what it once was.
“There was a long, long period of an abundance of capital,” he says. “Not that long ago in Japan, you still paid money to put your money in the bank.” Today, however, we’re in a world in which you have to be more disciplined,” Maceda notes. “And all of that is playing out in companies' choices, in business models, and in valuations.”
The Power of Diversity
Often, when Manny Maceda is described—at least in the mainstream press—some attention is paid to the fact that he’s not a white American. In this respect, his leadership of a major global consultancy is somewhat anomalous.
But asked about his heritage, Maceda emphasizes that he always approaches the conversation about his own identity with positivity rather than defensiveness. And ultimately, he considers the features that define who he is to be a strength rather than a barrier.
“I’m Filipino, so yes, I'm Southeast Asian. But I'm also of Spanish heritage because,” he notes, nodding to the history of the Philippines. “The Philippines was also an American colony. So yes, I can come to this country as an immigrant but I can and integrate relatively fast.”
Maceda says he’s also profoundly aware of how the opportunities afforded to him early on helped him to pave a path to the highest echelons of business. He acknowledges that he’s part of the “elite” even just as a result of having gone to an Ivy league business school, and that in his current position of privilege—“as a leader and as a role model”—one of his missions is to do his utmost to create a culture of inclusion and acceptance where everyone can reach their full potential.
And generally—despite all of the collective challenges we face, despite wars and polarization, and despite the division that keeps us apart—he’s inspired to be hopeful when he sees organizations that are as diverse as Bain, and indeed, as diverse as Columbia Business School.
“This is a global population of people who can try to make a difference—all from different countries, races, genders—and to try to help the world to succeed and survive and thrive,” he says. “Places like Columbia and hopefully Bain can be the glue that keeps us together,” he notes. “And that is very, very important.”