About Aimée Groth

Aimée Groth Articles written 62

Former Super Lawyers associate editor Aimée Groth is currently a partner at HolacracyOne, an organizational design firm that helps companies become more agile and human-centered. A one-time technology journalist who covered Silicon Valley culture for Quartz, she also served as a senior editor at Business Insider. In 2017, Simon & Schuster published her book The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, which Kirkus Reviews called “An intriguing business/sociological chronicle with wider implications for modern corporate practices.”

Articles written by Aimée Groth

A Solid Foundation

Affordable housing attorney Angela Christy opens doors for the underprivileged

There’s something to be said for tangible results. From Faegre & Benson’s 32nd floor conference room in downtown Minneapolis, Angela Christy points out the North Star Lofts along the Mississippi River, the East Village apartments in Elliot Park, and Riverside Plaza, with its definitive multicolored panels, near the University of Minnesota’s West Bank. She’s had a hand in all of them. When she looks at these buildings, she doesn’t just see bricks and mortar. She sees multiple …

Handing in Her Press Pass

How Carey Matovich’s early career as a journalist led her to law

In the late 1970s, as a young journalist in Billings, Carey Matovich attended back-to-back murder trials, calling in her stories to The Associated Press as a stringer. One trial involved the murder of a young store clerk; another, the murder of a young woman who was lured to the side of a rural highway by two men who claimed they had car trouble. It was in these moments that the recent college graduate decided she was destined to be on the other side of courtroom. “It seemed like every story …

Ahead of the Curve

How Rachel May Zysk landed a major terrorism case before even landing her J.D.

Rachel May Zysk was a third-year Stetson Law School student when she got pulled into one of the nation’s most publicized terrorism cases, U.S. v. Al-Arian, et al. The case centered on Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer engineering professor known for his outspoken political beliefs, and three co-defendants, including Hatem Fariz. All were charged with supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In the fall of 2004, while working as an intern in the Middle District Public …

After Disaster Strikes

Keith Griffin helps victims of tragedy piece their lives back together

Last December, on the anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Keith Griffin went to court on behalf of a Northridge doctor who lost his wife and daughter in that disaster. “It was a bad faith insurance case, where a doctor and his wife purchased $500,000 life insurance policies on each other,” says the member of Girardi|Keese. “They had a daughter who was a violinist. She had started a charity in L.A. called Strings by the Sea and had gone to her hometown in Sri Lanka to open …

Thou Shalt Not

Deputy District Attorney Wendy Patrick, M. Div., reconciles man’s law and God’s law

Who does Wendy Patrick get to spend her day with? Well, there’s the man who decapitated a stranger in Balboa Park—an act so gruesome that the judge withheld most crime scene photos in court. How about the two men charged with hunting down an illegal immigrant who was hiding from the Border Patrol, luring him to a secluded spot and attempting to “curb” him—i.e., placing his mouth against the curb and stomping on his head? And that was before she switched divisions. “My current …

The Record Setter

Alabama v. ExxonMobil was a defining moment in Robert Cunningham’s career, but he’d rather talk about what he’s doing today, such as fishing for the 200-pound tarpon

Robert Cunningham’s name will forever be tied to ExxonMobil. But for him, “that horse has been beaten to death.” Here, the Mobile-based Cunningham Bounds attorney expounds on his legal philosophy, the value of the jury system and what it was like representing the “Idea Man.”   Why law? My father was a trial lawyer. I went to court as a kid and watched trials in police court on Saturdays. It was great entertainment. I always knew when a jury was out, when a case was going on, and …

All Things Chapters 7 and 11

Lewis & Roca’s Susan Freeman climbs mountains and bankruptcy ranks

In 1973, the U.S. National Bank, led by financier C. Arnholt Smith, who had made a series of ill-advised financial decisions, collapsed in what was then the largest-ever U.S. bank failure. The aftershocks were felt widely, and one of the casualties was the Westgate-California Corporation. And that’s where Susan Freeman of Lewis & Roca comes in. She was in her third year of practice when Westgate California Corp. v. Valley National Bank of Arizona landed on her desk. “The case came to …

The Universal Education of Andrew Savage

Where did the South Carolina criminal defense attorney learn his most valuable lessons? Inside a New York City taxicab

When Andrew J. Savage, a former New York City cab driver “with a strong Yankee accent,” moved to South Carolina in the 1970s, he was one of few attorneys who didn’t spit in the courthouse spittoon. After a few years with the solicitor’s and attorney general’s offices, he opened Charleston’s Savage & Savage (his firm partner David Savage is of no relation). Meanwhile, he served nearly three decades as a judge advocate general with the U.S. Air Force Reserves, retiring in 1996 as …

Meet the Parents

Special education attorney Robin Ballard does and doesn’t always agree with them

There are six words no parents want to hear from a teacher or a school administrator: “Your child belongs in special education.” They don’t like it. Some really don’t like it. Some sue. That’s when Robin Ballard of Schwartz Simon & Edelstein steps in. It’s her job to represent and advise school districts on how to be legally compliant in such situations. “It’s hard dealing with parents of disabled children because I feel for them,” she says, “but at the same time, …

Baghdad Clarity

Bart Newman grappled with existential questions in Iraq, then published the answers

While serving a year-long tour in Iraq, Bart Newman learned that nothing brings more clarity to life than looking death in the eye. In his book, Because of Baghdad: What a father would say about life, if he didn’t come home to say it, he answers a question that weighed on his mind while on the frontlines: What really matters? “It’s easy in life to get pulled by so many people in different directions that you look around and think, ‘Why am I doing this?’” says Newman, an in-house …

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