Steven Okoye’s role involves contracts, governance, and compliance. In practice, he operates at the intersection of high pressure and strict regulation, helping healthcare businesses innovate without violating legal requirements.

When EHE Health considered a new telemedicine service, Okoye addressed regulatory challenges related to patient data privacy and interstate licensing. He ensured compliance with legal standards while preserving the company’s competitive advantage, requiring analysis and negotiation with internal teams and regulators.

Steven Okoye is a corporate and healthcare attorney in New York with over seven years of experience in transactional law, healthcare regulation, and corporate governance. His work centers on making informed decisions that enable business growth while minimizing regulatory risk.

Balancing Growth and Rules

Most companies aim to move quickly while avoiding regulatory issues. In healthcare, achieving this balance is more challenging due to high costs of mistakes, active oversight, and frequently changing regulations.

Okoye’s career centers on managing the tension between growth and compliance, and between speed and risk. He specializes in healthcare compliance, contract negotiation, and risk management. His work includes revising contracts, designing internal processes, and advising executives on how to proceed within regulatory boundaries.

Building a Legal Infrastructure at EHE Health

At EHE Health, a preventive health and telemedicine company, Okoye serves as Deputy General Counsel. The title comes with a broad portfolio: corporate governance, compliance and risk management, data privacy, insurance coverage, and litigation oversight.

Instead of viewing these responsibilities as separate tasks, he has concentrated on building legal infrastructure. These systems help the company track its commitments, obligations, and risks more effectively.

For example, he implemented a company-wide contract management system using LinkSquares. Previously, contracts were scattered across emails and local drives. Okoye led the transition to a centralized platform, providing clearer oversight of obligations and approvals.

The goal wasn't technology for its own sake. By consolidating contracts, EHE Health could spot patterns, standardize terms, and respond more quickly to new regulatory requirements. However, implementing this system wasn't without challenges. Initially, some departments resisted moving away from familiar processes. Additionally, ensuring data accuracy during the migration from disparate systems required scrupulous attention and cross-departmental coordination.

By addressing these challenges through extensive training sessions and establishing a robust support system, EHE Health not only streamlined its contracts management but also achieved a roughly 75% reduction in outside legal spend—a notable figure in a sector where legal costs can grow quickly.

In addition to technology, Okoye focused on developing internal rules and processes. He designed frameworks for requesting legal support, reviewing contracts, and translating compliance requirements into daily operations. Notably, he introduced a three-step contract review checklist: Initial Assessment to identify compliance issues, Detailed Analysis against regulatory standards and policies, and Final Approval to ensure all stakeholder input is considered. This structured process streamlines contract management and reduces non-compliance risks, prioritizing predictability over perfection.

From Supporting Counsel to Strategic Partner

Before stepping into the Deputy General Counsel role, Steven Okoye served as Associate General Counsel at EHE Health. In that capacity, he supported human resources, compliance teams, and executive leadership.

His responsibilities included drafting and negotiating contracts with vendors, service partners, and providers, as well as advising on healthcare regulatory matters. Over time, his role expanded to shaping the organization’s broader risk management approach. Okoye led a comprehensive review of compliance frameworks, resulting in a proactive risk assessment model that reduced compliance incidents by 30 percent in the first year. By anticipating regulatory changes and updating company policies, he minimized unforeseen risks and strengthened the compliance infrastructure.

Contract review processes became more structured, approval paths were clarified, and compliance planning became proactive. These changes reduced uncertainty and helped business leaders better understand their options in a regulated environment.

A View from Finance and Healthcare

Okoye’s path to healthcare law has not been linear. At Macquarie Group, he worked as Corporate Counsel in the Financial Management Group, contributing to the Americas Legal Entity Rationalization project.

This role involved overseeing mergers and dissolutions for over one hundred entities, preparing resolutions, maintaining governance records, and supporting compliance objectives. It required long-term planning and careful coordination to manage the impact of structural changes.

Earlier, in private practice at firms such as Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer, P.A., and Frier Levitt, LLC, he represented hospitals, physician groups, and life sciences companies. Many of the matters involved mergers and acquisitions or regulatory compliance under laws like the Anti-Kickback Statute, Stark Law, HIPAA, and the Prescription Drug Marketing Act.

His experience in healthcare regulation established the judgment he uses today: determining when a risk is acceptable and what conditions must be met before proceeding. Okoye evaluates risk based on legal consequences, regulatory alignment, financial impact, and the company’s internal risk threshold. He applies a structured approach to ensure both regulatory and business objectives are achieved.

Learning the System from the Inside

Before any of the corporate titles, there was the court system. Okoye began his career as a Judicial Law Clerk, working for Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis of the Supreme Court of New Jersey and Judge Thomas W. Sumners, Jr. of the Appellate Division.

Clerkships provide practical insight into the legal system. For Okoye, this involved researching complex issues, drafting memoranda, and contributing to judicial opinions. He also gained perspective on how disputes are viewed by the court after negotiations have ended.

That vantage point continues to inform his approach. When designing a contract clause or a compliance process, he has seen how those choices can be interpreted years later, in a different context, under the scrutiny of judges and regulators.

Roots in Legal Education and Student Leadership

Okoye earned his Juris Doctor from Rutgers Law School in Camden, New Jersey. While there, he gravitated toward roles that combined legal thinking with organizational and leadership skills.

He served as Managing Technology Editor of the Journal of Law & Public Policy and as Vice President of the Black Law Students Association. He received the Award for Service to Rutgers Law School and recognition for written advocacy in the Frederick Douglass Moot Court Competition.

Before law school, he studied at Temple University in Philadelphia, earning a Bachelor of Science degree. At Temple, he took on leadership positions in the Progressive NAACP chapter, serving as Treasurer and Vice President.

These experiences, including editing journal articles, organizing student groups, and participating in moot court, developed skills he now uses in institutional settings: synthesizing information, building consensus, and communicating clearly under pressure.

The Work on His Desk Now

Today, Okoye is admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey. His work spans healthcare regulatory compliance, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, contracts, data privacy, and risk management.

Much of what he does is quiet, detailed, and incremental. But in industries where regulations are dense and margins for error are small, incremental improvements can matter. A clearer approval process, a well-structured contract, or a more disciplined approach to data privacy can change how a company functions day to day.

Steven Okoye frequently works at the intersection of law and business, translating legal requirements into operational systems rather than providing isolated answers. His role focuses on defining the conditions that enable business opportunities within regulatory limits.

For healthcare organizations seeking to innovate in a regulated environment, this work is often unrecognized but essential. It helps companies remain compliant while pursuing growth and innovation.