Features August 2020

When new Vice President and Chief Information Officer David Hakanson started at Southern Illinois Healthcare recently, General Counsel John Daly breathed a sigh of relief. It was great news. Having a new CIO who understood the benefits of—and was familiar with—the latest contract tracking database system was a boost to the legal department at the […]

February was the last time things felt normal for Lindsey LeClair. She had just started as general counsel for Valeyo, a business solutions provider for financial institutions, and was meeting coworkers while planning to establish the organization’s first in-house compliance, legal and risk department. Lindsey is based in British Columbia, and her plan was to […]

Think of the industries most battered by COVID-19 and hospitality comes to mind. Worldwide, hotels have been closing or suspending operations. Some of the luckier ones have been sustaining themselves on borrowed time with significantly reduced occupancy. Among those most vulnerable have been the smaller, independent hotels that cater to the budget-conscious tourist or businessperson, […]

It would be an overstatement to say this year has been the best and worst of times for the nation’s leading refinancer of auto loans. Suffice it to say there are opportunities and obstacles facing RateGenius, as COVID-19 puts twists and turns in what had been a fairly smooth road. The number of consumers interested […]

Melissa Bert’s new role requires leadership and perseverance through stormy seas—two values that have been fine-tuned throughout her career. As a U.S. Coast Guard rear admiral whose past posts include southeast Alaska, Miami and Washington, D.C., Bert has earned her sea legs. Even so, upon assuming her duties as judge advocate general and chief counsel, […]

It’s easy enough to advise people to expect the unexpected. Scott Laughlin put those words into action at Plaza Home Mortgage—even though the unexpected was beyond anything he’d ever imagined. As Plaza’s Senior Corporate Counsel and CISO Laughlin focused on security first, after joining the company in October 2015, merging his legal and technology expertise […]

Being a realtor during a pandemic can make for a tough sell with prospective homebuyers housebound, unemployed or afraid of getting sick. After all, it’s not exactly the best time to hop in a car and go to an open house and mingle with people you don’t know. But for Vidyard’s General Counsel Jonathan Dunlop, […]

There were three important business concepts Mark Katz learned sitting around the family dinner table with his father, a New York City deli owner: hard work and sacrifice; the importance of straight talk; and the value of transparency. Those early lessons have served Katz well. The result? Less than a year after transitioning from a […]

It’s a surprising number: about 25 percent of practicing physicians in the U.S. are foreign educated. And while graduates from American institutions have a built-in support system at their medical schools as they plan for training and licensure, international medical graduates (IMGs) often need support navigating this pathway, says Francine Halushka Katz, the first general […]

It was Angie Soety’s plan when she stepped in as general counsel: get American Management Services as digitized and automated as possible to meet the demands—and expectations—of the 21st century. And then, COVID-19 hit. “It put everything on fast forward,” she says. The pandemic forced the Orlando business management consulting firm to not only implement, but fully embrace, […]