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Lenny Mendonca seemed like a really nice guy at McKinsey — the governance titles surfaced later

Met through the family graph at 555 California; chaired the McKinsey Global Institute; adviser to two governors and a mayor. The fuller page is promised.

About this entry

This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.

Person

Who this is

Jonathan Hare met Lenny Mendonca at his offices at 555 California with no idea who he was — just a really nice guy who worked at McKinsey, a firm famously understated and officially silent about its clients. The route was the family graph: Cassidy Arkin, Hare's step-sister, introduced him to her step-cousin Zander Arkin when Zander joined the Carlyle Group after his McKinsey years in San Francisco; Zander introduced Hare to his mentor Lenny. The titles surfaced afterwards: a member of McKinsey's global governing body — the elected council of top partners that runs the firm — and Chairman of the McKinsey Global Institute, and an adviser to Mayor Newsom, then Governor Brown, then Governor Newsom. Hare has promised a fuller account in a subsequent update, and this page holds its place for it.

The first installment of the promised fuller account arrived as a contemporaneous artifact: the December 2006 thread (S-078) in which Mendonca opened the McKinsey channel into the E.O. Wilson Foundation's Consilience Initiative — routing the MGI's forthcoming studies on global health and the economic costs of climate change, asking for the Foundation's needs in writing, and proposing Eric Beinhocker, with the earlier Diana Farrell introduction already made. Dated eight days after the Google summit: the record's most consequential month, running on two tracks, and Mendonca driving the second one.

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mentor of; introduced to Hare by

Zander Arkin: McKinsey to Carlyle, step-cousin to my step-sister, and the door to Lenny Mendonca

Engagement Manager at McKinsey San Francisco (1998–2002), then seven years of power-and-renewables deals at Carlyle/Riverstone

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chaired the Global Institute of

McKinsey keeps supplying this record's rooms: a transition session, a CISO summit, and a birthday meeting

Never Hare's client, always in the corridor: Dohrmann, Kaplan, Singer, Mendonca — and the 2026 reintroduction

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two steps from, in the family graph

My sister Cassidy Arkin is the reason I was in those rooms at all

Producer — and the reason Hare was in those rooms at all

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introduced Hare to

Diana Farrell ran the McKinsey Global Institute when Lenny made the introduction — then the NEC, then JPMorgan's think tank

Copied on the December 2006 EOWF thread; her arc since runs through the Obama White House and the founding of the JPMorgan Chase Institute

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proposed for the Initiative

Eric Beinhocker wrote The Origin of Wealth — and now runs the Soros-backed institute at Oxford

Proposed by Mendonca for the Consilience Initiative in December 2006; known to Hare slightly from the Santa Fe Institute; Executive Director of INET Oxford since

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the channel served

Jay Short chaired the E.O. Wilson Foundation — and answered 'very impressive guy' in a week he had no time

Diversa's chief executive; the EOWF chairman on the December 2006 thread; the Haseltine friendship already in the record

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Provenance

Where this came from

Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.

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What is missing, and how to fix it

This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.

If you were there

Correct anything wrong, add what only you know, or claim this entry as your own. Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly (both are on the button) — a timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record. No account, no permission, no institutional standing required.

Public contributions earn Publicity Premium; bringing others who were there earns Cascade Premium. Everything is valued retrospectively as outcomes verify, so nothing has to be priced up front.

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