Dominic Barton

Dominic Barton (born 1962), known as Bao Damin (Chinese: 鲍达民 ) in China, is a Ugandan-born Canadian management consultant and business executive. He was the Managing Director of McKinsey & Company from 2009 to 2018. He previously sat on the advisory board of the state-run China Development Bank and has served as the Canadian ambassador to China since September 5, 2019.

On 4 September 2019, Barton was hand picked by Trudeau advisors as Canada's Ambassador to China. The appointment raised concern about Barton's past ties with Chinese government institutions and interests.

On the 19th of June, 2018, Barton was named the 11th chancellor of the University of Waterloo, following his involvement in the HeForShe equity initiative.

He is a trustee of the Rhodes Trust and the Brookings Institution, and Chairman of the International Advisory Committee to the President of South Korea on National Future and Vision. He is a Commissioner for the Global Commission on Internet Governance. He is a member of the International Advisory Board at the University of Oxford Blavatnik School of Government and of the Board of Trustees of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. He is also a Strategic Advisor to FCLTGlobal, an organization that encourages a more long-term approach in business and investing, which he co-founded along with the CEOs of BlackRock, CPPIB, Dow and Tata in 2016.

He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Technology from the British Columbia Institute of Technology on the 24th of June 2016.

Barton, whose principal home is in London, was married to a Canadian and has two children. He divorced in 2014, later remarrying BlackRock senior managing director Geraldine Buckingham, an Australian and Rhodes scholar, and now has a one-year-old child.

In 2010, Barton was made an honorary fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. He is also on the board of the University of Oxford Saïd Business School.

In July 2009, he was elected to the position of Managing Director of McKinsey & Company, based on a vote of 400 senior partners. He was re-elected to a second three-year term in 2012 and a third term in 2015. He was replaced by Kevin Sneader in 2018.

He served as chairman for McKinsey in Asia from 2004 to 2009, operating out of Shanghai. He co-edited a book of interviews based on his experiences in Asia, China Vignettes – An Inside Look At China,

In 1997, Barton moved to the McKinsey office in Seoul. He enjoyed close relationships with the president and government of South Korea. He parlayed those relationships into a role running McKinsey in Korea from 2000 to 2004.

After graduating, Barton worked briefly as a currency analyst for N M Rothschild & Sons in London. In 1986, he was hired by McKinsey & Company to work in the company's Toronto office, and worked from that office as a management consultant for eleven years. He was nominated to be a partner earlier than normal, but was not promoted to that level until his third attempt.

Dominic Barton was born in Kampala, Uganda in 1962. Barton's father was an Anglican missionary who helped develop a theology college in Uganda; his mother was a nurse. In his childhood, his family's house was occupied by general and future dictator Idi Amin, who was rising to power in Uganda at the time. At age seven, his family moved from Uganda to the community of Sardis, in the Canadian province of British Columbia.