Speakers

Michael McKissack is Executive Vice President of Strategy at WTG Energy. He leads the 

company’s long-term strategy and growth across its natural gas and emerging 

power businesses, with responsibility for enterprise planning, capital allocation, and 

new platform development to meet durable demand for reliable, affordable energy. 

Previously, he was a Partner in the Energy Practice at Boston Consulting Group, 

advising utilities, power producers, oil & gas supermajors, and infrastructure 

investors on major strategic decisions and large-scale transformations. Over the 

course of that work, he has built a reputation as a long-horizon, detail-driven 

strategist who insists on seeing the world as it is and then acting decisively.

Michael’s academic and professional life has focused on how serious leaders use 

strategy to shape events over decades rather than news cycles. He graduated from 

The University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in Government and Liberal Arts Honors 

and later earned an M.B.A. from SMU’s Cox School of Business, concentrating in 

strategy and entrepreneurship. His study of American government, political 

leadership, and U.S. foreign policy, combined with his business training, led him early 

to Nixon as a case study in strategic realism. He is especially influenced by Nixon’s 

clear reading of the balance of power and his willingness to challenge orthodoxy 

through initiatives such as opening relations with China, pursuing détente and armscontrol with the Soviet Union, and redefining America’s role in the Cold War and the 

Middle East.

He also respects Nixon’s domestic record of practical governance—

building modern environmental and workplace protections, advancing school 

desegregation, and expanding revenue sharing with the states—using the machinery 

of government to deliver concrete results while anchored in federalism, institutions, 

and the rule of law, and in principles of order, responsibility, and strength. Michael 

shares Nixon’s view that leadership demands command of detail, a firm sense of the 

national interest, and the willingness to choose the hard, necessary course over the 

easy, popular one. That same outlook guides his current work on long-lived energy 

and infrastructure decisions that will shape national security, competitiveness, and 

local communities for years to come.

Outside his corporate role, Michael is active in civic life. He serves on the Advisory 

Council of The Kay Bailey Hutchison Energy Center at The University of Texas at 

Austin, participates in the Dallas Regional Chamber’s public policy and leadership 

initiatives, and is an active Deacon at Park Cities Baptist Church. He has invested in 

younger generations through youth sports coaching and other local involvement, 

reflecting a broader focus on stewardship, education, and service. Michael and his 

wife, Margaret Elizabeth, live in Dallas, TX, with their three young daughters.

As a potential member of the Board of the Nixon Foundation, Michael expects to 

contribute by bringing a strategist’s discipline to the Library’s long-term planning 

and positioning, connecting the Foundation with business, energy, and policy leaders 

who value serious, historically grounded leadership, and helping develop programs 

that highlight President Nixon’s achievements in foreign and domestic policy to 

encourage younger leaders to think in the same strategic, Nixonian tradition. He 

regards President Nixon as one of the most consequential strategic leaders in 

American history and is determined to help the Nixon Presidential Library and 

Museum continue to honor and extend that legacy for future generations