Senior Director, Insights & Innovation
Kaleen grew up in a village in West Java, Indonesia, where she learned firsthand the need for social and economic development. This drove her to an early academic career studying International Development at the University of Oxford, where she earned both her Masters and her DPhil (PhD), leaning heavily on the disciplines of anthropology and sociology. The focus of much of her research was gender equality and women’s empowerment, which implied and required large-scale social change. During this time she also worked for many social and public sector agencies around the globe, including for Maternal and Child Health clinics in Nouakchott, Mauritania, a women’s non-profit in Calcutta, India, the UNFPA in Jakarta, Indonesia, and a large NGO in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
When consulting for an Indonesian government minister in Jakarta, she realized she needed a different toolkit and more private sector experience. This kicked off her second career at McKinsey in New York City, where as a management consultant she served many large financial services organizations, focusing on commercial and personal P&C insurance, retail banking, and public finance. She led multiple large-scale transformations, focusing on the intersection of organizational and operational change, and was a leader in McKinsey’s Organization Practice.
Finally, while an Associate Partner in the Washington DC office, Kaleen decided she wanted fewer airplanes and more time at home, and so commenced a third chapter at Capital One’s headquarters in McLean, VA. She now leads Capital One Bank’s “Insight to Incite” team, a customer-back, Bank-wide innovation engine whose mission is to place consumer insights at the heart of decision-making. Her role requires her to effectively blend strategic problem-solving, deep customer analytics and quantitative modelling, and multiple forms of qualitative insights.
Kaleen and her wife, an active duty Army officer, now have three cats and three dogs and live in Washington DC, where they participate in adventure races, triathlons, and other forms of outdoor challenges!