McHale now serves as the president and chief executive officer of Cane Investments, LLC, a small family-owned fund where her son Brian O'Halloran is the managing director.

During these formative years, McHale's family home was said to be constantly under police surveillance and was wire-tapped; family friends were detained and mistreated; and she became close with key anti-apartheid activists, including Felicia Kentridge, who founded South Africa's Legal Resource Centre, and her husband Sydney Kentridge, the noted civil rights lawyer who went on to represent slain anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko.

Discovery, nearly alone among American media companies that expanded internationally, put respect for cultural context and local voices at the heart of its business and creative strategies.

McHale helped forge strategic partnerships, including an alliance in 1998 with the BBC that enabled a marriage of high-quality content and global distribution strength.

In 2006, after nearly 20 years at Discovery, McHale moved to Global Environment Fund, a private equity firm based in Chevy Chase, MD.

McHale worked to launch the GEF/Africa Growth Fund, an investment vehicle intending to focus on supplying expansion capital to small and medium-sized enterprises that provide consumer goods and services in emerging African markets.

In September, 2013 McHale was appointed by Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, as chair of the President's Advisory Council on Wildlife Trafficking.