Months after viral video backlash, McDonald’s CEO joins Duke Board of Trustees

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The Board of Trustees at Duke University is replete with big names. There’s the chair, Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA. There’s Tim Cook, CEO of Apple. There’s J.B. Pritzker, governor of Illinois.

Now, they’re joined by the man in charge of America’s famous golden arches: CEO of McDonald’s Corporation, Chris Kempczinski.

On Wednesday, Duke announced that Kempczinski has joined the governing board responsible for the university’s educational mission and fiscal policies. Kempczinski earned his bachelor’s degree at Duke in public policy and economics back in 1991.

The executive now oversees almost 50,000 McDonald’s locations generating approximately $150 billion in sales, according to Duke.

Kempczinski’s name has gained dubious fame in recent months after he recorded and shared a video of himself eating one of his own burgers — the new ‘Big Arch’ burger, in fact.

“I love this product. It is so good. I’m going to do a tasting right now, but I’m going to eat this for my lunch, just so you know,” he said in the video. “So, here we go. First: Holy cow! God, that is a big burger.”

It went viral. His bite, some viewers said, was too small, his reaction too muted, the entire video too awkward. While his words said otherwise, his true enthusiasm over the burger appeared to fall short of company tagline “I’m lovin’ it.”

The Wall Street Journal did a video interview with Kempczinski in April where he addressed the “tempest” around the video and again attempted to eat on camera, which in turn produced a fresh wave of backlash around his timid biting style.

After his time at Duke, Kempczinski went onto Harvard Business School. He held senior roles at PepsiCo and Kraft Heinz before joining McDonald’s as an executive vice president in 2015. At Duke, he already serves on the counsel for the university’s “Made For This” fundraising campaign and as an emeritus member of the Trinity Board of Visitors, a volunteer group that helps to advance the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.

The News & Observer found a letter Kempczinski wrote to The Duke Chronicle in 1988 during his time as an undergraduate. In it, he defends the university’s fraternities in the face of “parochial and insecure” attacks from “certain faculty.”

“Fraternities are an important variable in the equation, providing a place not merely for drinking, but for interacting with the disparate elements of Duke and Durham,” he wrote. “As a Kappa Sigma, our mixer with the Omega Psi Phi fraternity provided an opportunity to talk with [B]lack students whom I previously had little contact with. Did I learn? Yes.”

Kempczinski will serve as a trustee at Duke from 2026 until 2032.

The News & Observer reached out to McDonald’s for comment but did not receive a response by time of publication. Duke did not have a comment beyond its announcement.

This story was originally published July 2, 2026 at 6:00 PM with the headline “Months after viral video backlash, McDonald’s CEO joins Duke Board of Trustees.”