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
Q&A: James Holtkamp
Before cap-and-trade, clean coal and carbon footprint were buzzwords, James Holtkamp was advising clients on alternative energy. A decade later, in 2007, he launched Holland & Hart's global climate change practice in Salt Lake City, which became the first of its kind in the region. Super Lawyers: What led you to form your firm's global climate change practice group? James Holtkamp: A huge part of our practice is energy—oil and gas companies, coal companies, wind power, solar power, …
Q&A: Morris Dees
Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, has squared off against Klansmen, neo-Nazis and militant organizations. He has won millions for his clients and disbanded hate groups across the nation. At 72, he could retire today—but he chooses to continue the fight.Super Lawyers: You were a self-made millionaire by age 29. Morris Dees: I had the great fortune of running into [the late] Millard Fuller, who later went on to found Habitat for Humanity. He, like myself, grew up in a rural area of Alabama, and so at the University of Alabama Law School, we joined forces and started several small financial ventures that later blossomed into a major national corporation, Fuller & Dees Marketing Group, with offices in Chicago and Montgomery. I purchased him …
Dirty Harry Holly
How Holly Hempel trained with the Maryland Police AcademyThe pepper spray in the eyes was the worst. By the time she ran over to the sink, the pool of water there was already slick with chemicals from other trainees and offered little relief. "It was really, really terrible," Holly Hempel, now a partner at Nelson Mullins in Atlanta, says of that experience a decade ago while at the Maryland Police Academy. Hempel landed in law-enforcement training in Ocean City, Md., because she was interested in the FBI. "A family friend at the time was with the FBI …
Saper Lawyer
Daliah Saper arrived from Iran at age 6 and hasn't slowed downEither life moves fast for Daliah Saper or Daliah Saper moves fast for life. In 1986, at the age of 6, she emigrated from Iran to Texas with her parents and brother. "I went from wearing hijab to a place where everyone wears cowboy boots," she says. A few years later, the family moved to northern Illinois, where her mother—half Iranian, half English—worked as an accountant, and her father as a physician. "Once we got to Chicago, I lived the good life," she says. "[Overall] the experience …
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 …
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