Features Region: Midwest

A pivotal year 2020 was indeed. One marked by, among other happenings, so many companies playing catch-up on the diversity and inclusion fronts. It’s long overdue, Kamau Coar observes from his office at Heidrick & Struggles in downtown Chicago. But as this general counsel and corporate secretary for a global executive search and leadership advisory […]

Scrumptious truffle ravioli served on a spoon and meant to be eaten in one bite. Cold fish stew boiling over with dry ice vapor. Rabbit, honeycomb morel fungi, leafy sorrel and fiddleheads arranged on glass rectangles atop redwood pieces to make it seem as if you’re foraging a whimsical forest. And a Jackson Pollock-esque dessert, […]

It’s a role where David Murgio doesn’t often need to consult his law books, working for an Ohio-based global manufacturing company that specializes in protective paper-based packaging. Chief sustainability officer and corporate secretary of Ranpak since last year, Murgio was general counsel and chief operating officer of One Madison Group, the acquisitions firm that purchased […]

Kevin Kuznicki’s legal career was routinely forged through trial-by-fire episodes from the start. But in living to tell the tale, he gained experience, valuable lessons and confidence while working for Fortune 500 companies and weathering a slew of unusual circumstances over 28 years Following that first year, he supported the company as its only in-house […]

It was such a promising beginning, being a young, newly married woman with a baby on the way and being accepted into Mitchell Hamline School of Law back in 1998, Karen Wilkinson remembers. But then life took a dramatic turn—for the worse. Having delayed her enrollment in law school for two years to take care […]

Scrolling through the social media postings on the Veterans United Home Loans page makes Brock Cooper feel good. There, this former member of the Missouri National Guard sees photos of fellow veterans who have become first-time homeowners, including a Navy veteran who finished cancer treatment, a woman in the Air Force and an Army veteran […]

He’s a long way from public housing in Queens, New York, where he grew up, but Alexander Long has never allowed fear to stop him from reaching in his career. To protect GE Aviation’s intellectual property interests, he’s built its IP legal team over the last five years by applying basic principles of diversity and […]

Not that long ago, Jim Joslin remembers an age of high-powered corporate meetings, when executives would fly into a city multiple times to sort things out. Often it was a slow—not to mention expensive—way to get things done. These days of COVID-19, however, are certainly breaking that mold. But back before the pandemic even hit, […]

From a young age DeeDee Drays has always followed her sense of adventure, be it to the jungles of Sumatra or the mountains of Tibet. While a law student at the University of Texas, she even considered joining the Peace Corps after graduation. So it comes as no surprise that her legal career became just […]

For a general counsel operating in one of the country’s most demanding industries, the work was about as high stakes as it gets: a protracted legal battle between two Colorado fintech companies (and their respective banking partners) and the state’s attorney general. At the heart of the dispute was whether the plaintiffs, Avant and Marlette […]