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