Steven Tallman

In a world where people increasingly jump from company to company, Steven has spent his entire career helping to build Bain & Company, the international management consultancy. Since joining the firm in 1986, Steven has lived and worked in San Francisco, Tokyo, Warsaw, Moscow, Boston, London, Delhi, Brussels and Amsterdam. He worked first on the consulting staff before becoming Head of Training in 1996, and then from 2000 to 2019 serving as the Global Chief Operations and Sustainability Officer, overseeing over 1000 staff and five distinct functions:

• Expert Consultants (Digital Innovation, Customer Insights, Advanced & Big Data Analytics)
• Technology (Oversaw all internal IT capabilities & Next-Gen product development for clients)
• Knowledge Services (Built Bain’s Global Training, Knowledge Management, & Research & Information teams)
• Shared Services (Established low-cost administrative centers in India and Poland)
• Diversity and Sustainability (Started Bain’s LGBTQ+ organization & pushed Bain to become carbon neutral in 2012)
• While in this role, Bain grew 5x and expanded from 20 to 67 offices globally. In 2020, Steven became an Advisory Partner (like an Emeritus professor) responsible for the firm’s global footprint of offices.

Steven graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Davis. In 2013 he was named by the UK Financial Times as one of the top 25 most influential LGBT business executives. He is passionate about the arts, environment & global development and has served on boards or provided pro bono work to diverse organizations ranging from the San Francisco Opera to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. He lives with his husband Yuri in Maastricht and is currently following the Executive Master in Cultural Leadership, a joint programme between Maastricht University and the Royal Academy of Arts London.