Features April 2018

A. Verona Dorch was 11 years old when her family moved from London to the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. The borough was a far rougher place back then, and for families from a faraway country—even an English-speaking one—the adjustment could be harrowing. As she would in so many trials and tribulations to come, Dorch […]

Angus Haig’s career has taken him all over the world and back again. And while he notes that landscapes and cultures vary dramatically from place to place, one thing remains the same: People. As a lawyer, particularly one working in an international capacity, they are your most important resource. “People are the greatest asset that […]

As general counsel for the North American operations of the global confectionery heavyweight Ferrero, Beth M. Kotran has literally achieved—well almost—what she had so aspired to after leaving private practice in 2002. “I was focused on one piece of a bigger pie,” she tells Vanguard from her office in Parsippany, New Jersey. “I wanted to […]

Ever wanted to own a private jet? Something top of the line like the Learjet 75, sleek and feature packed, a few used models on controller.com that will set you or your company back around $7 million? It might be too pricy for you to own exclusively, but maybe you’ve got a buddy, several or […]

While it’s common for a general counsel to wear legal and business hats, there’s another that Bryan Pechersky sports as he goes about his responsibilities for one of the biggest coal mining companies in the Powder River Basin region of Wyoming and Montana. It’s the hat for government affairs, a matter weighing heavy on the […]

“It all centers on endless capacity and zero waste,” Diankha Linear responds when asked how she approaches her new role as general counsel for the Seattle-based tech company Convoy Inc. Conveniently enough, those two ideals also encompass the raison d’être and mission of Convoy, best described as the unique and progressive disrupter of a national […]

Point to a time in the last 20 years where technology and media created a paradigm shift, from streaming music to YouTube to social media feeds. There’s a good chance Heather Mars was right in the thick of it. Along the way, Mars has come to embrace a change-or-perish approach in navigating the ever-fluctuating content […]

Heather McAllister grew up in Pittsburgh, about 250 miles west of the anthracite-rich borough of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, where a 19th-century newspaper publisher named Thomas J. Foster took a particular interest in the plight of the men—and their families—for whom coal was both their livelihood and the biggest threat to their survival. Foster’s newspaper having chronicled […]

Joe Rubbone has a saying. One he’d often heard from colleagues around the office, before adopting the maxim himself. A ready refrain for just about any stressor. Six syllables that say more than most legal soliloquys ever could. “It’s only coconuts.” Well, it is and it isn’t. Vita Coco, the company for which Rubbone serves […]

Jonathan Truppman has never slept so well since becoming legal boss of global sleep company Casper, but he couldn’t have predicted that in early 2015, when joining the Big Apple startup seemed the lesser of two career paths. The most appealing—at least for most young lawyers—would have led back to Miami, where the then 29-year-old […]