Consultants
Full-Spectrum Leadership
Chris Lowney
Board Member
New York NY USA
Get in TouchChris Lowney serves on WittKieffer’s Board of Directors, providing governance advice and strategic counsel to the firm. He brings a unique blend of financial acumen, ethical leadership, and extensive experience in organizational development to board proceedings.
Chris has gained notoriety throughout his career as a successful and inspirational executive, governance expert, author, and speaker. Until July of 2025, he served as Chair of the Board of CommonSpirit Health, the largest nonprofit Catholic health system in the U.S. with more than 150,000 employees committed to a mission that includes serving vulnerable populations and advancing social justice. In this role he also led the Board’s Finance Committee and served on its Investment, Governance, and HR/Compensation committees, while also helping to lead the complex merger negotiation that formed CommonSpirit in 2019. Chris’s executive experience includes 17 years at J.P. Morgan, where he served as a Managing Director on three continents, holding senior roles in New York, Tokyo, Singapore, and London.
His global experience in high-stakes financial environments, following his years in formation as a Jesuit seminarian, contributed to shaping a profound understanding of leadership, integrity, and corporate culture. He is widely recognized for developing principled leadership approaches that are relevant to today’s complex environments, as explored in his best-selling books, including “Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company That Changed the World” and “Pope Francis: Why He Leads the Way He Leads.” His writings and speaking engagements in two dozen countries on five continents have consistently emphasized the critical role of character, self-awareness, and ingenuity in effective leadership. Among his philanthropic pursuits, Chris founded Pilgrimage for Our Children’s Future, an organization funding education and healthcare projects in the developing world, and helped launch an innovative collaboration to offer online university-level education in refugee camps; he also conceived and helped launch Contemplative Leaders in Action, a young adult leadership formation program.
A New York City native, Chris is a summa cum laude graduate of Fordham University, where he earned both a B.A. in History and an M.A. in Philosophy and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He has been granted eleven honorary doctoral degrees.
Distinctions
Former Board Chair, CommonSpirit Health
Former Board Chair, Catholic Health Initiatives
Education
M.A., Philosophy, Fordham University, New York, New York
B.A., History, Fordham University, New York, New York