NALI Annual Conference 2025

Adam Zoll

Title: OSINT 1.0

While others run from complexity, Adam races toward it. In a career spent in corporate investigations and journalism, he has always embraced the challenge of understanding and communicating the deeper causes and dynamics at play in any given situation.

This natural curiosity and drive to understand has served him well during his seven years as a professional investigator, first with Chicago-based Hillard Heintze, where he worked under Jennifer Mackovjak, and now with 221B Partners. As a Director in its Investigations practice, Adam managed and conducted litigation support, pre-transaction due diligence, background, threat, business intelligence and internal investigations for clients that included private equity firms, law firms, corporations, faith-based organizations and high-net-worth families. Cases ranged from quick-turn investigations taking just a few days to multi-year litigation support and everything in between.

Prior to joining the world of corporate investigations, Adam spent more than two decades in journalism, writing and reporting for newspapers, news magazines, websites and documentary television. He spent nine years as an informational graphics reporter at the Chicago Tribune, analyzing and presenting data and research in support of some of the paper’s highest-profile investigative and national news stories. He also taught journalism as an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. After leaving newspapers, Adam spent nearly four years as a financial writer for investment research firm Morningstar.

Adam holds a master’s of journalism degree from Boston University and a bachelor’s in political science and philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

When not investigating for 221B Partners, Adam can be found spending time with his family, strumming on a guitar, and cheering on his beloved White Sox.