About Nancy Henderson

Nancy Henderson Articles written 169

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

From Cop Car to Courtroom

Tim Brooks traded a law enforcement career for a legal one 

An old maxim attributed to baseball player Yogi Berra states, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” For Hamburg criminal defense attorney Tim Brooks, life has been all about taking those forks. It started when Brooks’ dad, chief of detectives at the Lackawanna Police Department, encouraged his son to take the civil service exam. Brooks, then 21, was studying business administration and marketing at the University at Buffalo when the opportunity arose. “Consumer product …

First Amendment Defender

David Reymann protects his clients’ right to free speech

Late at night, three weeks into a defamation trial, commercial litigator David Reymann argued a directed verdict motion in a nearly empty Provo courtroom. Such after-hours proceedings were standard, and his law partners were already back at the hotel across the street, preparing witnesses for the next day.The outcome, too, seemed inevitable. “Dave, just handle this,” his colleagues at Salt Lake City’s Parr Brown Gee & Loveless had urged. “The judge isn’t going to grant it, so when …

Their Own Way

Four attorneys on what it’s like to start, and manage, a solo practice

For some attorneys, the prospect of sacrificing a steady paycheck at an established firm and going it alone sounds like a recipe for loneliness and financial ruin. But, as these four lawyers point out, it doesn’t have to be that way. “I am in solo practice, but it’s not a solitary thing,” says Alanna Coopersmith, a criminal defense attorney in Oakland. “I’m really grateful for the community of lawyers that I have—whether it’s covering a case, discussing a case or mentoring. …

The Long Haul: Hiring International Employees

What U.S. employers can do when they’re committed to a foreign worker

When attorney Ashley Cruz advises professionals from India who’ve been hired to work in the U.S., they are often taken aback when she tells them their residence process may take two years or more. “They say, ‘Well, I saw on TV that I can get my green card in six months,’” says Cruz, who practices immigration law at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy in Boston. “While that might be true for some green card paths—every path is unique—for the ones that I work in, that’s not …

Holding Enablers Accountable

Brenda Harkavy pursues institutional justice for victims of abuse

Brenda Harkavy was still in high school when she saw the news reports about young female factory workers murdered in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Authorities had failed to protect them, or even investigate the crimes. “It just somehow hit a chord with me,” says Brenda Harkavy, a civil litigator at Raynes & Lawn in Philadelphia. As a student at the University of Pennsylvania, she raised funds to help protect the victims from further violence during the summer of her junior year, and lived in …

Practicing Law, Then Making It

Four South Carolina attorneys and legislators on why, and how, they manage both

In this age of extremism, say attorney-politicians, there’s never been a more critical time for experienced lawyers to enter the political arena—local, state and beyond. Who better to create the law, they point out, than those who practice it daily? “We need people who care about reason and truth. We so need more lawyers in political office who understand and appreciate the role of the rule of law,” says Max Hyde Jr., who has served in the South Carolina House of Representatives, …

And Beyond

Former metallurgical engineer Deborah Peacock makes deals on Earth and among the stars

In 1980, Deborah Peacock was standing at the bottom of the hill, overseeing operations at a Salt Lake City mining mill where copper was ground for industrial use, when the crushing machine operator called her in a panic from the top of the slope. “I have to get out of here!” he yelled. “I can’t take it.” Racing up the hill, Peacock, a metallurgical engineer and the frontline foreman at Kennecott Minerals Company, saw what she describes as “a blanket of tarantulas coming over the …

The Roadmap

Tragedy propelled Amanda Pierson toward her legal calling

Amanda Pierson was studying for the Bar in 2014—and already had a job lined up as a litigator—when, just before Father’s Day, her 72-year-old dad unexpectedly died in his sleep from heart failure. Despite the wills and estates class she’d taken in law school, Pierson didn’t know where to begin putting his affairs in order. “We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know who to call,” she says. “All of us deal with estate planning and probate in our lives, and yet it’s one of …

Engineered for Law

An engineering background guides Todd Basile’s IP work

Growing up in Annapolis, Maryland, Todd Basile was captivated by the Blue Angels demonstration team that soared high above the U.S. Naval Academy next to his family’s home each year. “I wanted to actually be a combat aviator, but my eyes are terrible. It turned into, ‘If you can’t fly ‘em, build ‘em,’” says Basile, who went on to study engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. In the summer of 2005, Basile interned at Smiths Aerospace, now GE Aviation, in …

Little Big Town

Colorado attorneys talk about practicing law beyond the metro

Marcus Lock will never forget the time he snowmobiled 20 miles in the dead of winter, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, to meet with a client who lived where the plows couldn’t go. “I don’t make that mistake anymore,” Lock says with a laugh. It’s not the only adventure that Lock, a civil litigator in Gunnison, has weathered. A mediator once helped him sneak out of a meeting, past an increasingly loud group of angry residents, through the Underground Mining Museum in Mineral …

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