Michael Norkus was born in Germany and grew up in the postwar Ruhr Valley. He received law degrees from the University of Paris and the University of Bonn, and a doctorate from the University of Hamburg. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1975 and went on to become a partner at BCG in Boston and Munich. In 1986, he founded Alliance Consulting Group, a strategy consultancy whose clients have included Coca-Cola, Disney, Hyatt, and Harley-Davidson. He and his wife, Andrea — whom he met at a Cambridge café in September 1973 — have two children, Tyler and Vanessa, and live in Boston and on Martha's Vineyard.