Features Region: Midwest

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 […]

Given how many of our most iconic computer technology brands came of age during the ‘80s and ‘90s, it’s easy to view those bygone times through an almost mythological lens. Steve Hartmann sees things a bit differently. For him, the transformative changes these companies usher in belie the enormous challenges they face—figuring out what they […]

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 […]

Responsible gaming is not an oxymoron So reminds Kevin P. Mullally, vice president of government affairs and general counsel for a global company that won’t just echo that sentiment, but backs it up with the means to better the odds of everyone playing fairly and responsibly. Gaming Laboratories International provides an array of high-tech testing, […]