Adlai Stevenson IV

Stevenson was born on November 4, 1956, the son of Senator Adlai Stevenson III, grandson of UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson II and the great-great-grandson of Vice President Adlai E. Stevenson I.[1]

Stevenson attended Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts.[2] He earned a bachelor's degree in communications, in 1978,[3] and then an MBA,[4] both from Northwestern University.

Stevenson was a print reporter at the City News Bureau of Chicago, and then a television reporter at WTNH, New Haven; WMBD, Peoria; KARE, Minneapolis; and WMAQ, Chicago.[5] In 1990, he founded radio station WHZT-FM (now WGKC) in Champaign, Illinois.[4]

Between 1994 and 2006, Stevenson worked as an acquisition specialist for media companies Lee Enterprises and Schurz Communications, and served as vice president and chief operations officer at the Evanston-based start-up Stonewater Control Systems.[4]

Stevenson was a Managing Director, Mergers & Acquisitions at HuaMei Capital, the first U.S.-Chinese financial services joint venture, beginning in 2006.[4] In 2012, he began work as a financial services professional at Water Tower Financial Partners, LLC, in Chicago.[4]

Stevenson's son, Adlai Ewing Stevenson V, was born in 1994.[6] Stevenson was ambivalent about passing on his name, having joked that he would be "Adlai the Last".[7] He later recounted that "[w]hen my own kid was about to be born...the big debate began—were we going to continue this name thing? I was basically against it, needless to say fully aware of how being named Adlai E. Stevenson can be a Boy-Named-Sue-like albatross. But my dad and my wife felt strongly this was something we should do."[5]