Gregory Beard was appointed by the President in April 2025 to serve as a Senior Advisor to the Loan Programs Office (LPO) at the U.S. Department of Energy. He is a senior executive with extensive experience in natural resources investment, private equity, and capital markets, having sourced and led more than 25 energy investments over more than 30 years.
Before entering government service, Mr. Beard was previously a senior partner on the management committee at Apollo Global Management, leading natural resources investing for 10 years, as well as in a senior energy investment role at Riverstone Holdings LLC. Additionally, as the Co-Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Stronghold Digital Mining, Inc., Mr. Beard launched the first company to integrate waste-to-power generation within co-located data centers to mine Bitcoin. He simultaneously founded and served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Beard Energy Acquisition Corp., where he raised a $200 million special purpose acquisition corporation and evaluated more than 200 potential transactions in the energy transition space. Mr. Beard began his career as a Financial Analyst at the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.