Features Region: Midwest

On a Tuesday morning not long ago, Meredith Ritchie sat down with her legal and audit teams to review quarterly results unrelated to case files or compliance filings. The number in front of them was an employee engagement score, and it was the highest in the entire organization. For a group of lawyers and auditors, […]

Kristina Magolis has built a legal career not by chasing titles for their own sake, but by putting herself where the work was hardest, the learning curve was steepest, and the opportunity was real. Her rise to general counsel has come through deliberate moves, each rooted in curiosity about how businesses work and taking her […]

Long before she negotiated acquisitions, Julie Lickstein negotiated an apartment lease. When she and her husband moved in together, she pushed back on the rent, then did the same with their wedding vendors, chasing better terms on everything from flowers to catering. These days, her oldest son has picked up the habit too, negotiating the […]

In the summer of 2002, a college student spent his nights on the third-shift ramp at Airborne Express in Wilmington, Ohio, sorting boxes and supporting flight operations for an hourly wage and thinking little about where the job might lead. More than two decades later, that same person walked back through the doors of Air […]

A courtroom can feel a lot like a machine shop to Jordan Slusher. Both environments demand precision, discipline, and the ability to make sense of complicated moving parts under pressure. Long before he represented manufacturers in product liability disputes, Slusher was a high school student sitting quietly in a courthouse in northern Indiana, watching hearings […]

Jennifer Crutchfield did not set out to become a lawyer. She did not map out a career trajectory or arrive at law school with a clear destination in mind. What she had was a sense of purpose that sharpened unexpectedly while volunteering at a transition shelter for survivors of domestic violence in Los Angeles, where […]

Many lawyers will spend an entire career without ever experiencing the intensity of an adversarial courtroom, but for Sapna Lalmalani, it has become an essential part of her practice and how she navigates one of the most demanding arenas in the legal profession. As a partner at Hall Prangle, she has built a reputation as […]

Manda Ghaferi did not step into her role as general counsel for AuguStar Retirement with the intention of simply maintaining the status quo. She joined a leadership team determined to reinvent a century-old company and position it for a rapidly evolving financial landscape. In an industry often characterized by tradition and caution, Ghaferi and her […]

Transformation inside a global CPG company is seldom linear. For Chris Hamway, associate general counsel supporting supply chain, operations, procurement, environmental health and safety, and real estate at Kraft Heinz, the past year has been defined by strategic acceleration followed by recalibration. The company’s September 2025 announcement that it intended to pursue a separation triggered […]

Desiree DeSalle-Baron has built a legal career defined by momentum, adaptability, and an instinct for seeing opportunity where others might hesitate. As general counsel for ElectronX, she is now at the center of an ambitious effort to launch a regulated energy exchange to address short-term volatility in electricity markets. It is a role that draws […]