About Natalie Pompilio
Natalie Pompilio is an award-winning freelance writer based in Philadelphia. Formerly a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Natalie was on the ground in Iraq in 2003 and in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. She’s collaborated on four Philadelphia-centric books: More Philadelphia Murals and The Stories They Tell (with Jane Golden and Robin Rice); Philadelphia A to Z (with photographer Jennifer Zdon); Walking Philadelphia: 30 Walking Tours Featuring Art, History, Architecture, and Little Known Gems (with photographer Tricia Pompilio) and This Used to Be Philadelphia (with photographer Tricia Pompilio. She holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, and she’s a rabid New York Yankees fan.
Articles written by Natalie Pompilio
As Easy as Beethoven’s 9th
Brett Weiss stays composed whether he’s in court or Carnegie HallBrett Weiss believes singing at some of the nation’s best-known venues helped prepare him for his career as a lawyer. Both jobs “share a performative aspect,” he says. “Knowing how to hold the stage is something that helps me every time I stand up in court,” says Weiss, 65, who has performed with choirs in venues like Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center. “You’re able to tell a story, to command the scene, to hold your audience. You’re not worried, ‘Oh my …
‘Do It For Them’
For Ben Rubinowitz, the client comes firstBen Rubinowitz celebrated his 68th birthday last June by delivering an opening statement in New York State Supreme Court on behalf of clients injured and killed in the worst crash in Metro-North Railroad’s history. He wouldn’t have it any other way. “The client’s plight is everything, and if you’re not going to do it that way, don’t do it all,” says Rubinowitz, managing partner at Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf, which he joined in 1989. …
The Long Tongue of the Law
Ronita Bahri’s path to advocacy went through Iraq and JordanOne of Ronita Bahri’s first personal injury clients was a teenage refugee who was “physically destroyed” after being hit by a truck, Bahri remembers. The boy and his family were Chaldean Catholics who spoke little English and had settled in the U.S. two years earlier from northern Iraq. “When it’s someone not American, doesn’t speak the language or know his rights or have people in his corner, the insurance companies love taking advantage,” says Bahri, 35, an associate at Goodman …
Bravissimo!
Diego Matamoros trades the opera house for the courthouseThese days, when Diego Matamoros sings, it’s often in the kitchen to an audience of four: his wife and three children. But during his eight-year career as an opera singer, the baritone performed on some of the world’s biggest stages, including New York’s Metropolitan Opera House and Italy’s Teatro Regio Torino. He received thunderous applause and calls for encores playing such roles as Guglielmo in Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Sharpless in Madama Butterfly. When he lived and worked in …
The Attorney Who Doesn’t Sleep
Could that be why Stephanie E. Grana fits more into a day than seems doable?The day before last Thanksgiving, Stephanie E. Grana braved I-95 holiday traffic to meet two new clients. Normally, the journey from her Richmond office to the clients’ Fredericksburg home would take about an hour each way. On Thanksgiving eve, each leg took more than three hours. She could, of course, have arranged for a phone chat or video call. But these clients had recently lost their adult son in a collision, and Grana, 54, a plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer with Cantor Grana Buckner …
The Importance of Grit
Gene Kang on caring for community and remembering others’ sacrificesWhen Gene Kang was growing up in East Hanover, the town didn’t have many residents of Asian descent—even today, more than 80% describe themselves as white—and he didn’t fully embrace his Korean heritage. He rarely felt discriminated against, he says, but hedid have a sense of otherness. “I really spent most of my life trying to assimilate, to be like everyone else,” says Kang, 40, a partner at civil litigation firm Rivkin Radler. “It was only later on, in college and in law …
A Happy Practice
Why business lawyer Sherap Tharchen creates solutions that benefit all partiesSherap Tharchen’s parents were refugees who left Tibet in 1959 to settle in Nepal. Without any formal education, they used the tenets of their Tibetan Buddhist faith to set the course of their rug-manufacturing company: Treat others with fairness and compassion; try to solve problems, not create them; contribute to the world in a manner that builds community instead of dividing it. It was a successful approach. At its peak, the company employed more than 200 people and made products of such …
After the Smoke Cleared
How Boston attorneys prosecuted the criminal trial—and helped victims in needHours after two bombs exploded near the Boston Marathon finish line on April 15, 2013, then-United States Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz surveyed the scene from a raised vantage point. Workers in white hazmat suits were moving slowly on Boylston Street below, collecting and photographing the nails, ball bearings and other bits of shrapnel that had cut through the air at bullet-like speeds when the explosives detonated. A tarp on the ground covered the body of one of the victims. Ortiz …
Expect the Unexpected
Going to the bench and back with John NazzaroIf there’s one lesson to take from Judge John Nazzaro’s 10-year run hearing criminal and civil cases, it’s this: expect the unexpected. Conservatives hailed him as a champion of the Second Amendment one day, then criticized him the next for approving diversion programs for drug users. Liberals approved when he released incarcerated persons who “sincerely wanted to address their issues,” but balked when he set high bonds on offenders charged with re-violating a protective order. “I …
‘If We Divorce, I Get Elena’
Why Elena Karabatos is the family lawyer for 95% of the human raceOn a Monday earlier this year, three of the partners at the Garden City matrimonial law firm Schlissel Ostrow Karabatos kept getting text messages from other Nassau County attorneys: Where are you? What are you doing? Will you be here soon? They were confused. Where were they? At the office, working, as usual. All but one of them, it turned out. Senior partner Elena Karabatos was at an event hosted by the Nassau County Bar Association, an organization she once led, where she was being honored …
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