Features Region: Southwest

By the time a business jet reaches a cruising altitude of 41,000 feet, many passengers are counting down to two things: landing at their destinations and the arrival of their in-flight catering. While Lara Hajjar Ayoub has little control over how quickly the pilots go “wheels down,” she does play a major role in appeasing […]

As the vice president and associate general counsel in charge of litigation for Mr. Cooper, LeAllen Frost has the dual role of managing the outside counsel that argues cases for the company and addressing important internal company matters. “In my role, I get to manage significant litigation, which has always been enticing, but I also […]

There’s something about that Texas Panhandle lifestyle, Lance E. Purcell says. When not attired for his role at FirstBank Southwest in Amarillo, you might find him in boots and jeans, roping calves at a rodeo or mentoring at-risk youngsters at Cal Farley’s Boy Ranch, a residential community that helps boys and girls overcome troubled situations. […]

For Leisa Talbert Peschel and Wasif Qureshi, partners at the Texas-based law firm Jackson Walker, no two cases are ever the same. Then again, there aren’t many massive lawsuits between two, multibillion-dollar companies. In February of 2019, ESW Holdings, a private equity company, filed a lawsuit against digital streaming giant Roku for allegedly infringing on […]

It’s the 1960s. You’re a teenager hanging out with friends on a stoop in an Italian neighborhood in Queens. Your father tells you he’s going to the hardware store to pick up some new tools. Or he’s going to buy the family’s first color TV. Did he go to Home Depot, Lowe’s or Best Buy? Walmart or Target? No, he went to a local small business—the kind of business that served […]

There they were, six companies spun off by Capital Southwest Corp., in the fall of 2015 and coming together under a new standalone called CSW Industrials (CSWI). Though all industrially focused, they had operated independently with little, if any, interaction among their leadership teams. Now they were to comprise the main pillars of a new, […]

These are things that should be learned early, says Linda Ellis. Opening a savings or checking account, building credit and understanding a credit report, and borrowing money—all are essential lessons that should be taught as early as middle school, long before any financial decisions students make as young adults. “It was something that was greatly […]

Lisa Gressel knew what a big fire looked like. Truth be told, during her 30 years as a general counsel, she’d put out more than a few. Fires so big she can’t even talk about them. These were smaller than that—much smaller. A manager who left without telling his replacement about the patio furniture in […]

A man of high spirits, Lias J. “Jeff” Steen laughs when remembering how, upon being hired as an assistant general counsel at Houston-based Camco International Inc. in 1988, a graduating classmate at South Texas College of Law told him, “too bad you couldn’t get a real job.” That may have been what passed for conventional […]

Lance Balk thought he might be done with the general counsel world. After retiring from diagnostics equipment maker Siemens Healthcare two years after its acquisition of Dade Berhring, the attorney was wavering between finishing out his professional career in private practice and/or serving on company boards when Siemens Healthcare’s former chief executive officer James “Jim” […]