Stephen Beard was appointed Chief Operating Officer, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Adtalem Global Education in 2019.

In his role as Chief Operating Officer, Stephen leads the company’s strategy, innovation, corporate development and investor relations activities, and mobilizes a variety of operational and corporate initiatives to accelerate Adtalem’s performance and advance its global education mission. As General Counsel, Stephen also leads the legal organization, which includes the legal, risk, ethics, information security and corporate security teams providing strategic counsel to the CEO, senior management team and board of directors.

Stephen joined the organization in 2018 as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary before taking on his current role. Prior to Adtalem, Stephen was Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel of Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc. (NASDAQ: HSII), where he directed global legal operations for the company and oversaw a variety of enterprise-level  functions including strategy and corporate development. After joining Heidrick & Struggles in 2003 as Assistant General Counsel, Stephen held positions of increasing responsibility including Deputy General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer.

Prior to joining Heidrick & Struggles, Stephen was in private practice with Schiff Hardin, LLP in Chicago, where he was a member of the firm’s corporate and securities group, representing public and private companies in mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, securities and corporate governance matters.

Stephen began his legal career as a law clerk for the Honorable Frank Sullivan, Jr. (ret.), Associate Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court.

Stephen is active in a variety of community and civic matters and currently serves on the boards of venture philanthropy fund A Better Chicago and the Ann & Robert Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

Stephen received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a juris doctor degree from the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University – Bloomington and completed the Advanced Management Program at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.