Features Region: Midwest

It started out as a favor for a colleague in academia. R. Mark McCareins certainly wasn’t seeking out the opportunity to instruct a law course at one of the world’s leading graduate business schools; he’d had one previous stint standing up in front of a class full of law students—and, well, let’s say it wasn’t […]

For years, every time Karla Jones-Wilson visited the 19,500-seat Kemper Arena, whether for a college basketball game or Disney On Ice with her kids, she couldn’t help but think she was enjoying the Kansas City landmark for the last time. By 2015, the arena—like many built in the 1970s—had fallen on hard times, precipitated by […]

Commute to campus, attend class, commute back home, put in eight hours at work, find time to study—repeat. In the simplest of terms, this was Julie Elliott’s undergraduate college experience. And it’s not unlike that of many degree-seekers. With more people of all ages and a diversity of backgrounds attending college, the so-called “non-traditional” student […]

When Kurt Stepaniak came aboard as senior vice president and general counsel of KONE Inc.’s North American operations in 1997, the company was still very much about products. They were impressive, as well as highly regulated products, to be sure— the elevators, escalators and people movers so necessary in shopping malls, public and private office […]

He’s no engineer by training, but Mike Benza has to be able to converse with them, given his role as the young one-man legal department at Ellison Surface Technologies in Mason, Ohio, a 20-mile drive northeast of Cincinnati. Equally important may be his knack for conversing with folks not so technologically inclined. For Ellison is […]

Eureka moments are typically talked about in revelatory terms—those lightbulb flashes when clarity and creativity combine to illuminate the path ahead. Dante Benedettini only remembers the mild panic. As he sat in a boardroom meeting, listening to a group of senior management clients wield high-level business terms he didn’t understand, the realization hit him like […]

Tough competition notwithstanding, Philip Kirkpatrick can make a strong case as to why the company he now serves as regional general counsel may deserve a much coveted award this spring. For the Association of Corporate Counsel annually fields nominations from company legal departments that have distinguished themselves by smarts and innovation. Lawyers being a very […]

For Sarah Fisher, the law was a calling she heard from an early age. In the second grade, she dressed in a suit and carried a briefcase to Career Day. By the fifth grade, she was passing out handmade business cards for the “law firm” she had started. Sure, her aspirations had a lot to […]

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 […]

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 […]