About Nancy Henderson
Nancy Henderson is an award-winning journalist who has published hundreds of articles in Smithsonian, The New York Times, Parade, The Wall Street Journal and other publications. The author of Sewing Hope and Able! How One Company’s Extraordinary Workforce Changed the Way We Look at Disability Today, she enjoys breaking stereotypes and often writes about people who are making a difference through their work. Over the years, she’s enjoyed listening to family stories about her grandfather, who prosecuted cases as a solicitor general in North Carolina long before she was born.
Articles written by Nancy Henderson
Repairing the World
David Inlander builds bridges between world religionsOn an unseasonably cold September day in 1986, David Inlander found himself in the middle of a contentious 45-minute debate with his fellow Chicago condominium board members about whether to turn on the heat before Oct. 1. When the final vote split 3-3, says Inlander, a family law attorney, mediator and managing partner at Chicago’s Fischel Kahn, “I started to pound my head into the table out of frustration. And the woman next to me, Marcia Lazar, put her hand on my shoulder and said, …
The Play’s the Thing
Foster care advocate Jay Paul Deratany fights injustice in the courtroom and on the stageJay Paul Deratany always loved writing and acting. “I just thought I should do the law thing because it’s more practical,” he says. Drawn to human rights issues, Deratany, the founder of The Deratany Firm in Chicago, carved a name for himself with high-profile wins in medical malpractice and personal injury cases. A focus on foster care negligence was jump-started by a suit Deratany filed in the early 2000s: a for-profit foster care services company failed to disclose the history of a …
The Fighter
Trip Walton’s battles in the ring, in the courtroom, and now with Parkinson’sBy the time he entered first grade, Will O. “Trip” Walton III knew his family’s motto by heart. “My daddy always told me, ‘We don’t start the fight, we finish it,’” says Walton, 61, a former prosecutor who founded Walton Law Firm in Auburn, Alabama, in 2001. “I would always step in and take up for somebody who was made fun of. I just couldn’t stand that. It riles me up.” Today, 6-foot-3-inch, 230-pound Walton is widely known as “The Fighter” for his relentless …
Collective Wisdom
John Kenney knows how to speak to juries—and country music fans, tooOne afternoon early in his career, John Kenney decided to drive to an accident scene where a plaintiff claimed a broken tire rod had caused him to crash into a tree. The case against Kenney’s client, a large auto manufacturer, didn’t seem particularly winnable, especially since it had been tried and lost before by another attorney—and then had the verdict set aside. For two hours, Kenney walked around the neighborhood, and left without noticing anything that might bolster his argument. …
WhatNow?
How #MeToo is impacting gender-discrimination casesOn March 27, 2015, one week after Jason Lohr sued Twitter for gender discrimination on behalf of client Tina Huang, a jury in a downtown San Francisco courthouse ruled against another plaintiff in one of the most highly publicized tech-industry gender bias trials. In that case, Ellen Pao claimed that her former employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, had discriminated against her and retaliated when she complained. A lot was riding on the Pao verdict, says Lohr, …
How Deborah Greene Colors Her World
The Jacksonville family law attorney draws from her artistic backgroundWhen she was little, Deborah Greene received a large set of soft-core Prismacolor pencils in shades like Peacock Blue and Crimson Lake. “I still sometimes think of colors by what they were called in the Prismacolor pencil series,” says Greene, 55, a shareholder at Combs Greene in Jacksonville, where she practices family law. Fascinated by fonts and her grandmother’s art books, Greene grew up sketching and coloring. In junior high and high school, she served as yearbook editor, learning …
For Love of Horses
Daryl Buffenstein spends his downtime on the farmOne of Daryl Buffenstein’s most cherished keepsakes is a photo of himself as a baby being lifted onto the back of a pony. “I’ve been on horses for big chunks of my life,” says Buffenstein, 66, a partner at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy in Atlanta. “I love the feeling of space and land and creeks and rivers and hills and pastures and meadows.” He grew up on a farm in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he helped his father tend corn and tobacco fields, herd cattle and raise …
The Comeback
Business litigator Tammy Meyer rebuilds her career after a devastating illnessLess than a year after launching her firm with husband Gary Miller in 2009, “we had more business than we knew what to do with,” says litigation attorney Tammy Meyer. “We had a great staff. We had just hired a law clerk and were thinking about hiring associates because we had so much business. Things were the best that they could have ever been for the both of us.” Then Meyer discovered a pea-sized lump in her breast. She was 44. “Immediately, my doctor who I’d been with for 20-some …
Advocatus Quod Auctor
How Anthony Licata’s Hannibal’s Niece finally saw the light of dayTwo years ago, when a longtime client mentioned over lunch that he was seeking book submissions for his new publishing company, Anthony Licata casually replied, “Well, I have one you ought to read. It’s been sitting in my closet for 20 years.” A commercial real estate attorney and partner-in-charge at Chicago’s Taft Stettinius & Hollister, Licata, 63, had some experience with the written word. He’d worked his way through high school and college as a reporter for a daily newspaper …
Bass Ace
Peter Strand earned his rock ‘n roll stripes in Yipes!As a kid, it took a while for Peter Strand to find the right instrument. Piano didn’t enthrall him, too many classmates played drums, and cornet just didn’t cut it. In the late 1960s, when he formed a garage band with his brother and best friends in their Milwaukee suburb, he went with guitar, but it wasn’t a perfect fit. Then one day, he hit a literal lucky break. “I happened to break the two strings that aren’t on a bass, so I started playing bass notes on a regular guitar,” …
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