Guru Sethupathy was Chief Economist and Director of Product Development at Opportunity@Work, a civic enterprise based at New America. Prior to joining Opportunity@Work, Guru was an engagement manager at McKinsey, serving clients on topics related to human capital. He advised several higher education institutions on strategies to improve job market outcomes for their students and has also advised public and private sector clients on their talent strategy, including new models for hiring and training employees. He also led an internal McKinsey team in the development of a machine learning tool to better predict hires for both McKinsey and its clients. Recently, Guru led McKinsey Global Institute's report, "Digitization in the US economy," which examines how digital technology is transforming industry dynamics and will be coming out in the fall of 2015.
Before McKinsey, Guru was an assistant professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University. His research agenda focused on how globalization and technology are changing labor markets, including productivity, employment, skills, wages, and inequality. One paper identifies specific mechanisms through which globalization has improved productivity in the US while increasing inequality. Another paper finds that after a job loss, workers with more general human capital are able to find a new job more quickly and at higher wages compared to workers with specific human capital. Prior to becoming an economist, Guru also spent some years in the hi-tech and investment banking worlds.
Guru has a B.S. in computer science from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.