Dennis J. Keller is co-founder and retired Chairman and CEO of Adtalem Global Education Inc. (formerly DeVry Inc.). He is currently the Chairman of TK Capital, LLC, a business he co-founded with his three sons, which owns and operates several manufacturing companies.
Keller co-founded Keller Graduate School of Management in 1973 and served as Chairman and CEO until 2004 and Chairman until he retired in 2008. In 1987, Keller Graduate School of Management acquired from Bell & Howell the assets of the DeVry Institutes of Technology. Renamed DeVry Inc., the combined company completed an initial public offering in 1991. In 2017, Adtalem sold the DeVry and Keller divisions. For his years of service and contribution to DeVry University and its Keller Graduate School of Management, Keller was given the distinction of being named an Honorary Lifetime Trustee in 2022.
He is the chair of the national board of the Smithsonian Institution, trustee and former chair of the Mpala Wildlife Foundation, and a member of The Nature Conservancy’s Africa Council. He also serves on the governing boards of the TK Capital companies.
Keller is a former vice-chairman of the board of trustees at Princeton University and a former vice chairman of the board of trustees of the University of Chicago. He is a former director of Nicor Inc. and Ryerson Inc., former vice chairman of the Chicago Zoological Society (Brookfield Zoo), and former chairman of the board of trustees of the African Wildlife Foundation. On two occasions, he has been an executive in residence, co-teaching a one block economics course at Colorado College.
In 1963, Keller received his undergraduate degree in economics from Princeton University, where he was a National Merit Scholar. His MBA was received in 1968 from the University of Chicago, where he was a Graduate School of Business Fellow. Keller, a resident of Oak Brook, Illinois, is married and has three sons and 10 grandchildren.
