STEPHEN CHU
Chief People and Legal Officer
InStride
At InStride, Stephen Chu has filled in for different leadership roles, from serving as interim head of sales to interim co-CEO while InStride searched for the right person to fill each role. These roles afforded him the opportunity to learn about the different sides of InStride’s business and people, knowledge that is invaluable to him as chief legal and people officer. Chu adheres to the doctrine of over-preparing, particularly when it comes to knowing the business, and believes that in order to be a successful executive leader, you need to know the business far beyond just the legal implications.
Chu’s ability to build strong teams has been critical to his success and the companies with which he’s worked. For his legal teams, he starts by looking for lawyers with broad-based corporate and commercial experience that have a desire to one day be General Counsels themselves, then mentors them so they can achieve that goal.
Contributing to InStride’s bottom line, Chu ushered in the use of Ironclad Clickwrap to provide a seamless sign-up experience for the 3,500+ delivery service providers who contract with Amazon to provide the so-called “last mile” service of delivering packages to customers. Amazon invites these independently owned businesses to join their Next Mile program, managed by InStride, wherein Amazon pays 100% tuition for thousands of online education options that delivery drivers can enroll in. InStride’s legal team had considered building their own contract lifecycle management tool to manage these and other contracts, but instead saved considerable time and money by implementing this third-party tool.
