Features May 2018

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve met a CEO or two. The same goes for general counsels. Even if you haven’t met any, you know about them. Seeing someone wear both hats at once? You might’ve just found a corporate unicorn. Only, you needn’t scour some ethereal forest to find Alvaro Martinez. He’s out […]

It’s a not-for-profit company based in central Indiana with the most public of responsibilities and a membership of organizations with varied sizes and business models. Known as the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), it operates energy markets and runs the electric grid in the middle swath of North America that comprises 15 states from the […]

The J.D. was essential. Without it, he wouldn’t have gotten the job. His experience in the tech sector likewise proved crucial. But it was the psychology degree that allowed Bryan Rowland to navigate what, to him, was always the hardest variable to account for: the people he’d be working with. “So much of the information […]

Even now, more than 20 years later, the memories are vivid and transporting. The overnight shifts that sap you to the core. The frightened families similarly weathered by lack of sleep. Those immense feelings of satisfaction and joy when the miracles of medicine are summoned. Cathy Mikus knows what it means to be a nurse. […]

When David O’Connor talks about his career as an in-house lawyer, it’s only a matter of time before one of his favorite sayings comes to the fore: Leaders eat last. That said, he’s helped put plenty on the table for all to enjoy, in his capacity as a vice president and U.S. general counsel of […]

By all accounts, David Wheeler had it made. Five years after being named senior counsel for General Electric’s (GE) Cincinnati-based aviation division, Wheeler was in a job he loved, working with people he respected, for a company imbued with influence and pride. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling something was amiss. That for all the […]

It was everything Fred Frankel could’ve hoped for: a well-paying job helping people, in a business he’d one day inherit—a group of Illinois nursing homes operated by his father, Charles Frankel, during the ‘80s and ‘90s. But when the elder Frankel passed away suddenly in 1997, complications with the business left Fred feeling disillusioned. Having […]

Whenever Jaime Orvañanos visits one of his company’s far-flung offices, he always takes time to look around. Throughout the space, he sees architects and graphic designers, writers and engineers. Some work collaboratively; others on their own. The verve seems contagious; the air alive with ideas. Then it’s off to the next city, to Buenos Aires […]

Jason Maxwell wasn’t necessarily an expert at global real estate when he became general counsel at Hines Advisors in 2006, but he’s nothing if not adaptable. Especially when there’s an opportunity to advance his employer as well as himself. “The world is an unpredictable place and you have to be proactive in managing that change,” […]

Ideally located in East Harlem near the soon-to-be-opened Second Avenue subway stop, it was the right size, the right price, the right market—a place bound to sell in this up-and-coming neighborhood, Keyvan Ghaytanchi recalls about the property the company’s broker told him about on a Monday afternoon in 2017. Within hours, Ghaytanchi was sitting down […]