Beard has been at Micron for more than seven years, most recently as vice president for legal, corporate and global operations. He previously worked for law firms Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Shearman & Sterling.
He succeeds Joel Poppen, who is retiring from the Boise, Idaho-based company. Poppen has served as senior vice president of legal affairs, general counsel and corporate secretary since 2013.
The job-change announcement follows a Dec. 20 statement by Micron that sales for the current quarter ending in February will be about $7.5 billion. That compared with analyst estimates of $7.32 billion, Bloomberg News reported.
Beard, who will also have the titles of senior vice president and corporate secretary, was the company’s legal chief of staff from 2017 to 2019 and, prior to that, its associate general counsel for three years.
In his new job, he will lead the company’s legal, intellectual property, and compliance and ethics functions. Micron employs some 40,000 people in 17 countries, according to the company.
Before joining Micron, Beard was an associate at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, working in capital markets and mergers and acquisitions. Earlier, he was an associate at Shearman & Sterling, where he worked on M&A and European corporate matters.
Micron Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra touted in a statement Beard’s “deep expertise, legal acumen and outstanding track record.”
Poppen will remain with Micron as a special adviser until his official retirement in mid-2022, the company said.