Ethics

Leadership

Steven I. Berlin
Executive Director

Steve Berlin, 53, has been the Executive Director of the Board of Ethics since December 2008. Before that appointment, he served as the Board’s Acting Executive Director, from October 2006, and began his City career in September 1993 as the Board’s Deputy Director. In his many years with the City, he has implemented several changes to the City’s ethics and campaign financing laws, including a recent major overhaul, under Mayor Emanuel, and has advised thousands of City employees, officials, lobbyists and contractors on complying with the letter and spirit of the City’s ethics laws.

Steve appears regularly at conferences and panels as an expert on ethics in government, has authored several articles, and is an active member of COGEL (the Council on Government Ethics Laws), and served as an adviser to the Lt. Governor's committee to rewrite the Illinois Governmental Ethics Act. He is an adjunct member of the American Law Institute's Principles of Government Ethics project.

He is a 1984 graduate of Northwestern University School of Law, and received his B.A. in history, cum laude, from Amherst College in 1980. In 1991, he earned an M.A. in Ethics from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. He began his legal career with Altheimer & Gray in 1984 and then worked for Rudnick & Wolfe (now DLA Piper), both in Chicago. He also worked a Research Attorney for the American Judicature Society, and was a Fellow with the Park Ridge Center for Health, Faith and Ethics, both in Chicago. Since 1991, he has taught Business Ethics and the Arts and Legal Aspects of the Arts Business as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia College Chicago. A third-generation Chicagoan, Steve grew up in Wilmette and graduated from New Trier High School (West campus) in 1976. He lives in the South Loop, and is the proud father of two teenage daughters.