Joan Steel is an independent director and audit committee chair of the Mercer Funds, an institutional multiple manager mutual funds complex and public company. She is a former independent director of the Hershey Trust Company, a private trust company and controlling shareholder of The Hershey Company (NYSE: HSY.) Her current nonprofit board work includes serving as chair of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Chicago Chapter, Rush University Medical Center trustee and vice chair of the Investment Committee. She was formerly a trustee and endowment chair of Loyola University Chicago and served on the boards of The Economic Club, Chicago Council of Global Affairs, McDonough School of Business at Georgetown and Chicago Booth.

In addition to her board work, Ms. Steel is Chair and CEO of Alpha Wealth Advisors, LLC, a financial consulting firm, she advises family offices and private foundations in the U.S. and South America. Prior to founding her own firm, she was a senior investment advisor with the global asset manager, The Capital Group. Ms. Steel has also been a senior executive with Aon Corporation leading global investor relations and serving as chief marketing officer. Prior to Aon, she was senior executive at K.A. Steel Chemicals Inc., her family’s privately held water treatment chemical manufacturing and distribution business that was sold to Olin Corporation (NYSE: OLN.)

She launched her career at Salomon Brothers as an institutional fixed income broker and one of the first professional women on Wall Street. Following  Salomon, she co-founded and headed institutional fixed income sales and trading for E.F. Hutton in Chicago. Ms. Steel holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BS from Georgetown University and has completed director education programs at Harvard Business School and Stanford Directors’ College.