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
Engineered for Law
An engineering background guides Todd Basile’s IP workGrowing 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 metroMarcus 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 …
How Can I Protect My Right To Vote?
Voting rights are essential in a democratic society. "It's the right from which all others derive," says Richard Bell, a New York personal injury and civil rights lawyer. “Voting gets you the elected officials who pass laws on every other right and appoint judges who rule on every other right. When you don't vote, then somebody else makes the choice for you, and you may not like that choice." Voters anywhere can face problems with voter registration, finding their polling location, or voter …
A Serious Thing
Medical malpractice attorney Lance Cline passes down the lessons he’s learnedOn a dark winter night in 1978, the driver of a semitruck was backing a flatbed trailer up to the side of a company’s building to deliver an order of sheet metal, blocking both lanes of Indiana State Road 32 in the process. His truck had no sidelights and, though he was expected, the driver had arrived after hours so there was no one to guide him or warn oncoming traffic. Unaware of the danger, a young woman crashed into the trailer, causing the male passenger in her car to suffer brain …
‘I Made Plutonium for Uncle Sam’
Bradley Groff brings an engineer’s perspective to IP lawBrad Groff had already inspected the overhead pipeline at the South Carolina nuclear weapons plant where he worked as a mechanical engineer, making sure the position of the components perfectly matched the 50-year-old illustrations, and hand-sketching his findings on a notepad. Then his hard-nosed supervisor looked at the findings and said, “There’s an old blue-handled valve I think you missed. Go back out and look,” Groff remembers. Somewhat begrudgingly, Groff again climbed the ladder …
Can Employers Remove Negative Social Media Posts?
At the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, a business client came to labor and employment attorney Kyllan Kershaw with a dilemma: Employees were posting support for Black Lives Matter (BLM) on social media, tagging the company, and nudging it to support the movement. When the boss chose to steer clear of the issue, he was tagged in an unflattering post about white power. “We were able to kind of thread the needle,” says Kershaw, of Littler Mendelson in Atlanta, Georgia. “The latter post …
From Cloning to Counseling Clients
Becky Harasimowicz brings a scientific eye to her intellectual property practiceBy the time Becky Harasimowicz set out to earn a J.D. and a master’s degree in bioethics from Wake Forest University—simultaneously—she’d already proven her ability to juggle simultaneous challenges. At Mount Holyoke College, she’d aced a triple major in politics, biomedical ethics and international relations while playing varsity volleyball. And when an opportunity arose for her to study abroad, she chose South Korea, she says, not just because it was the “epicenter of modern …
The Follow Through
Why Sara Johnson helps those who’ve been failed by the systemDuring a discussion of a violent, gang-related case with prosecutors, rookie criminal defense attorney Sara Johnson pored over the gruesome crime scene photos. “They really demonstrated how destructive high-powered rifles and certain kinds of ammunition can be to the human body,” she says. But she never missed a beat in the conversation. “I sort of heard through the grapevine afterward that they were like, ‘Sara didn’t even blink. She wasn’t fazed,’” she recalls. Those steely …
Up Is Down
Sampada “Sam” Kapoor’s path to Mississippi went through JapanWhen she was 12 and already fluent in English, Hindi and Japanese, Sampada “Sam” Kapoor arrived with her family in Jackson, Mississippi, where she struggled with one language barrier: Southern slang. One day, for example, the teacher instructed the class to “put your books up.” Kapoor recalls: “I remember seeing everyone in class putting their books down beneath their cubbies, underneath their chairs. So I was like, ‘Oh, up means down here. Got it.’” Kapoor laughs. “I feel …
The Med Mal Changemaker
Jim Bartimus relies on his memory, work ethic and med school trainingIn the early 1980s, a pregnant Kansas woman had been left lying on a gurney by health care workers in a Missouri hospital when her uterus ruptured, causing the death of her unborn child. Back then, in accordance with a unanimous “breath of life” Missouri Supreme Court decision, the woman had no legal recourse because the child hadn’t been born alive. Despite the clamor of activists on both sides, Jim Bartimus—then a young attorney representing the woman—insists the case was more about …
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