About Aimée Groth
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
Mr. Everything
A soldier, a cop, a deacon and a lawyer walk into a bar—and they're all Francis LawsFrancis Laws almost got kicked out of college. Given everything he's done since, that feels like a punch line. But it certainly wasn't funny back in 1971 when Laws, then 20, was a student at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. "I was one semester away from being asked to leave," he says. "And my draft number was 13." So, counterintuitively, he joined the Army toward the end of the Vietnam War, landing a lucky assignment after scoring high on an aptitude test. (His 1.9 college GPA clearly wasn't …
Confronting Our No. 1 Fear (And It’s Not Death)
Trial lawyer Brenda Sunby once dreaded public speakingAs a first-semester law student, Brenda Sunby was so afraid of public speaking that by the time she left class, her hands were bleeding. She would dig her fingernails into her skin out of anxiety. "I had terrible, terrible panic attacks," says Sunby, who grew up on a farm in Manitowoc County, and is now a shareholder in Habush Habush & Rottier's Stevens Point, Wausau and Rhinelander offices. "I had a fear of getting called on in class. If you've read the book One L, you know how terrible …
Not Your Average Dirt Lawyer
Bob Hughes uses real estate expertise to fight homelessnessIn the 1920s, Richmond's Edgeworth Building on East Cary Street was designed for Larus & Brother Tobacco Co., a fixture of Virginia's rich industrial past. The building subsequently housed WRVA, one of the state's first AM radio stations, and, after a recent renovation, is now anchored by the Hirschler Fleischer law firm. So it's an ideal place for commercial real estate attorney Robert Hughes to do business, encapsulating, as it does, Hughes' passions: real estate, property restoration and …
Crossing Borders and the Blue Line
Bob York has traveled around the world coaching hockeyIt was the middle of a cold night in the Soviet Union in 1990 when Bob York and his son’s hockey team were abruptly woken up—and told to leave. “We got on the bus and crossed the border from Russia into Finland,” he says. “Soldiers were all over. They inspected our bus from top to bottom, and held our interpreter. If I remember correctly, when I left, our interpreter didn’t come with us. Never understood why.” York knew there was potential for unrest when he took his team of …
Poetry in Motion
Tonya Evans-Walls has made careers out of law, tennis and verseGrowing up, Tonya Evans-Walls spent a lot of time alone. “I was an only child and writing was my best friend,” says Evans-Walls, founder of TME Law. “I just didn’t understand or appreciate the next level, the performance aspect, until I attended a poetry venue at the October Gallery, an African-American-owned art gallery. I connected with a group of like-minded spirits.” So at age 26, she started performing her poems at venues around Philadelphia; she has since published them in …
Numb3rs
When Alan Perry was in high school, his father told him to be a tax lawyer. Why? Because it was an easy way to make money. Without hesitation, Perry dropped his plan to become an engineer. “It was an ill-informed decision,” says Perry, now a corporate attorney at Forman Perry in Jackson. “As impressionable as I was, I had no idea what lawyers or accountants did until I began studying it in college.” He learned fast. Perry graduated first in his class from the University of …
A Novel Idea
The pseudonymous Will Nathan wrote a book about lawyers with no moral limitsUnder the pseudonym Will Nathan (rumored to be William McGrane) and the protection of Hustler v. Falwell, a San Francisco lawyer published Book of Business: A Novel of the Law, a glimpse into the dark world of high-stakes civil litigation. His book shines an unflattering light onto “vicious” attorneys whose careers are driven by money, sex and pride. To guard the author from those who sue best, his publisher, the Philadelphian Press, bought $3 million of MediaPro Insurance before the book …
Don't Vote for Pedro
Chris Gramiccioni and Deborah Goldklang bonded over their mutual disdain for the Red SoxChris Gramiccioni and Deborah Goldklang kept their inter-office relationship under wraps for weeks—until their boss, U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, saw them in The New York Times. “I invited Chris to game seven of the 2003 Yankees-Red Sox playoffs, and we had very good seats,” says Goldklang, whose father is a limited partner in the New York Yankees organization. “When Pedro Martinez was pulled, the Associated Press took a photo of us heckling him. It was picked up from The New York …
Ain't No Mountain High Enough
Jeff McKenzie conquers Kilimanjaro for charityJeff McKenzie has a thirst for adventure. He’s always looking for a new experience––“something completely different from the practice of law.” Well, you can’t get much farther away from a law office than the majestic 19,000-foot peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. Three years ago, the Louisville corporate attorney was one of approximately 15,000 climbers to challenge the world’s tallest freestanding mountain—and one of only about 6,000 to reach the summit. To prepare for the expedition, …
Man on a Mission
Three years ago, interim U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman didn’t know that human trafficking existed in the United States. Now he is one of the country’s most ambitious federal prosecutors for labor and sex trafficking crimes. “It’s a form of modern-day slavery,” Schlozman says. “The idea that it happens in the 21st century is outrageous.” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appointed Schlozman, 35, to U.S. Attorney of the Western District of Missouri on March 25, 2006. Just …
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