San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, has appointed former McKinsey Partner Kunal Modi, a 13-year veteran of the firm, as chief of health, homelessness and family services—topics he has worked extensively on at McKinsey.
He will coordinate efforts across departments, including Public Health, Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Disability and Aging Services, and the Human Services Agency. He will also work with the Department of Early Childhood, Child Support Services, and the Human Rights Commission, while serving as the city’s liaison to the San Francisco Unified School District and City College.
At McKinsey, Kunal advised federal, state, and local governments on improving public health and homelessness services. He also led McKinsey’s public sector customer experience work, conducting groundbreaking research on how governments can better serve residents. And, as the partner sponsor for the Bay Area Office Community Service Initiative, he developed a sense of how to help government deliver on its promise.
Here he discusses his work, inspiration, and hopes for his appointment to city government.
What made you passionate about the issue of homelessness?
My hope is that our work in San Francisco becomes a model—restoring trust by proving that government can drive real, lasting change.
Right out of college, I joined AmeriCorps and I worked in a drop-in resource center where anyone facing any challenge could come in and we'd try to help them get to the other side. Many were housing insecure. I saw a change when programs, services, and policies came together in a human-centered way. But I also saw that, too often, the social safety net could be like Swiss cheese. Homelessness happens when every other system and support has failed. This really informed the way I thought about the rest of my career: how do you make public programs and services deliver for people?
What are the main insights you’ll take from your work at the firm to City Hall?
One key insight: homelessness isn’t monolithic. Some experience it due to financial hardship, others due to mental health challenges. Young people, veterans, and the elderly each require different solutions.
Each journey out of homelessness is unique and will require several interventions, like short-term shelter, health care services, legal support, or income support. But today, most response systems aren’t coordinated. So, we spend an extraordinary amount of money, but silos keep us from reaching the needed outcomes. We must align how different departments, programs, health care providers, and funders come together over the 12-to-18 month period that may be necessary to support someone.
The focus has to be on transformation, not treading water. How do we change their trajectory? Is it a drug treatment recovery program, job training, health interventions, reunification with families, or support finding stable housing? The goal should be helping people thrive and lead lives of dignity.
What made you decide to take on this role in city government?
To me, it's one of the most important and urgent public problems today. The opportunity to work on it and try and make a difference on something that has been so hard and so intractable for so long almost felt like an obligation.
San Francisco, one of the most innovative and well-to-do cities in the world, has become known for its homelessness crisis. I really hope that the work we’ll do here can be a blueprint for what it looks like for government to serve people effectively—and can be scaled across the country. Many have lost faith in the government’s ability to tackle big challenges. My hope is that our work in San Francisco becomes a model—restoring trust by proving that government can drive real, lasting change.