Lewis Kinard

Lewis Kinard is General Counsel of the nation’s oldest and largest voluntary health organization, the American Heart Association. Lewis leads a department handling a range of domestic and international agreements, compliance programs, IP licensing, employment, and product development and sales matters. The AHA’s increasingly broad and dynamic activities that require agile legal support span from research funding, tools to support researchers, scientific publications, professional education and training, scientific meetings, improving healthcare quality, global product distribution, cause-related marketing and fundraising.

Lewis joined the American Heart Association in 2013 as a Senior Attorney, was promoted to Assistant General Counsel in 2014 and VP/Deputy General Counsel in 2016. Prior to joining AHA, Lewis spent over 20 years in various law firms, non-profit organizations and technology companies, gaining experience in a broad range of legal areas from commercial, bankruptcy and consumer protection litigation to international business transactions and HR & employment law. He earned an undergraduate degree in Communication at the University of Arkansas and a law degree at SMU’s Dedman School of Law. Lewis’ non-legal experience includes business process improvement and software configuration consulting as well as leadership of federal forensic program fraud investigations.