Richard Cavanagh wears his humor as only an Irishman can.

“To have a sense of the absurd, to look at the lighter side of life, to lighten others’ burdens by making them laugh: I get great satisfaction out of that,” the president and CEO of the Conference Board said.

“My humor springs from observing what people are sensitive about, what they’re embarrassed about, what they find ironic. What I find most fruitful is conducting myself in a happy and nice way. I avoid being mean-spirited,” he said.

A man who makes no bones about being emotional at the drop of a shamrock, Mr. Cavanagh is a scion of four grandparents who came to America because they were “persnickety,” he said. He is a dutiful son who helped his widowed mother look after his older brother, Joey, who died two years ago at 62 after suffering all his life with cerebral palsy.

Mr. Cavanagh is also shrewd. He’s a superb judge of individuals and institutions. He’s capable of sizing up situations and offering practical solutions to problems. He’s able to deal with mandarins and mountebanks alike without losing the common touch, as he puts it.

Those qualities won him important assignments during 17 years with McKinsey & Co.

They included the rehabilitation of America’s railroads, after most of them went bankrupt in the 1970s; the reorganization of New York City’s municipal finances, also in the 1970s, and the rebuilding of the federal air traffic controller system, after President Reagan fired controllers who went on an illegal strike.

Those assignments were all the more impressive because Mr. Cavanagh once was turned down for an internship by McKinsey. (He framed the rejection letter, and it still hangs on his wall.)

“For a long time after I was hired by them, upon getting my degree from Harvard Business School, I lived in fear that someone at McKinsey would discover I’d been rejected once, and that I’d have to leave the company,” Mr. Cavanagh said with a laugh.

There had never been any danger of his being booted out, of course. The longtime managing director of McKinsey had adopted him as a protégé.

“Even though I wore my hair long at that time, and was the only Democrat in the place, Marvin Bower took an interest in me,” Mr. Cavanagh said of the managing director. “Marvin was the soul of the company. He’d been its guiding influence since he joined the company in 1933.He was also the founder of professional management consulting.”

Mr. Cavanagh smiled, as if at a sweet thought.

“He liked me. He made me self-confident. He taught me to be independent. Marvin also taught me how to deal with important people. … He taught me to understand that even important people — CEOs, political leaders, business barons — are just human beings. They have the same hopes, ambitions, fears, and insecurities as the rest of us,” Mr. Cavanagh said.

Important people like Bower — who died in 2003 at 99 — and the management guru Peter Drucker, mentored Mr. Cavanagh after his undergraduate days at Wesleyan University in Connecticut (where he majored in philosophy, political science, and economics); at Harvard Business School; in Washington during the Carter administration (where he served as director of cash management in the Office of Management and Budget), and at the Kennedy School of Government, where Mr. Cavanagh was executive dean.

He emphasizes the importance of making friends and sustaining friendships.

“If I look at all the good things that happened in my life — all had to do with friends,” Mr. Cavanagh said. “It’s really important in life to have friends who care about you, and about whom you care. Friends and family should matter most. That’s the first lesson I would draw from my own life.”

The second lesson?

“Take advantage of good luck,” Mr. Cavanagh said.

Good luck in his case came early in the form of two high school teachers in New Jersey (he grew up in Metuchen) who exhorted him to aim for elite colleges. One actually drove him to schools like Yale, Wesleyan, and the University of Pennsylvania. The other relentlessly drove home the necessity of acquiring a full education.

Good luck also came in the form of advice offered by a professor at Harvard Business School at a time when Mr. Cavanagh seemed uncertain of what to do after his MBA.

He suggested Mr. Cavanagh work for McKinsey and embellished his advice by making discreet calls that ensured an interview for his student.

“McKinsey allowed me to reinvent myself as often as I wished,” Mr. Cavanagh said. “But I’d never have gotten in had it not been for that professor. That was good luck, and I took advantage of it.To be a successful consultant, you have to have incredible passion and stamina for solving other people’s problem on their own deadline.”

The next lesson of his life?

“Be independent: Tell it like it is, but do it in a friendly, nonthreatening way,” Mr. Cavanagh said.

He took that axiom with him to Washington. When he arrived there to join the Carter administration, Mr. Cavanagh found that cash flow management in government was poor. He spoke out for reform in a town that valued the status quo, but he succeeded in instituting better systems control — and he saved the government more than $12 billion.

His accomplishments eventually fetched him the presidency of the Conference Board, a membership organization of 2,400 top American companies. It flourished under Mr. Cavanagh’s stewardship, as he expanded the institutional menu to include publication of influential economic indicators and widened the organization’s global presence. He also helped craft improved standards of corporate governance for America’s business community.

Eleven years later, it’s time for Mr. Cavanagh to move on.

What’s next?

“My wife Patricia says she’s too young to be married to a pensioner,” Mr. Cavanagh, who’s also chairman of the Educational Testing Service, said. “So maybe there’s a leadership position somewhere in the foundation world. Or something in higher education. The issues of class, race, merit, and access to opportunity, these all interest me.

“Well, I’ve been a lucky guy. It’s been said that I’m the king of networkers. Something good will come along. I’m Irish.”

What is it they say about the luck of the Irish?