Jonathan Spector

Jonathan Spector is the former president and CEO of The Conference Board, Inc., and is currently a senior advisor to the organization.

Spector joined The Conference Board after serving as Vice Dean of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He was responsible during his tenure for the significant growth and strategic repositioning of the school’s executive education activities and for strengthening Wharton’s involvement in book publishing, globalization, and collaborations across the university.

Spector began his career at McKinsey & Company, where he spent 20 years and was elected a senior partner. He founded and managed the firm’s Taipei office, and helped lead McKinsey’s North American electronics practice. He subsequently served as the chief executive of two startup technology companies.

Spector is the co-author of We Are Smarter Than Me (2007), which highlights the ways in which businesses can harness the power of collective intelligence. The book resulted from an experiment in which thousands of participants attempted to pool their knowledge and create a book manuscript.

Spector serves on the board of directors of The Conference Board of Canada, the March of Dimes Foundation, The Demand Institute^®, and The Echo Design Group and is a member of the Business Committee for the Arts (BCA) Executive Board. He is a Trustee Emeritus of Wesleyan University where he earned his BA in math/economics with honors and received his MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.