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
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 …
Dana Constand and the Three Bears
Her approach to folk painting and family law is just rightDana Constand’s paintings often feature peaceful scenes of adult bears with cubs. This makes sense for a family law practitioner who encourages her clients to be cooperative, not combative. “I tend to attract clients who want to do the best for their families and their children,” says Constand, whose solo firm is called Family Focus Law. “If you do divorce amicably, your whole family comes through it better.” Before launching her legal career a decade ago, Constand was a folk …
‘I See You’
Joanna Adu connects with clients caring for loved ones with disabilitiesDuring college, Joanna Adu decided against a legal career. Five years post-graduation, she was living in Seattle and working in retail banking, the single mother of a son with a disability. At one meeting, a branch manager posed this icebreaker: What would you do if you had no fear of failure? “I didn’t even have to think about it,” remembers Adu, 39. “I said I would go to law school.” She had begun reconsidering the career a few months earlier as she was weighing opportunities for …
Confidence & Poise
From angelic singing to javelin tossing, Janet Rhodes has great bar storiesJanet Rhodes’ work as an employment lawyer means she doesn’t get to sing as much as she’d like, but she’ll still perform for friends’ weddings or bust out Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker” on karaoke night. Rhodes, second in second row, at a Sandlapper Singers performance. Singing has been one of her passions since elementary school, when she joined the choir at her family’s Methodist church, performing while standing on a stool and wearing a Christmas pageant angel costume because …
Common Ground
Former Judge Robbie Barr makes human connections everywhere she goesRobbie Barr is used to people telling her she can’t do something. She’s also used to ignoring them.“With most things in my life, where people say, ‘You can’t be a lawyer. You can’t be a judge. You can’t leave the bench and move to Denver. You can’t dye your hair blue,’ I do it anyway,” says Barr, 69, the founder of BarrADR in Denver. “Maybe whatever’s scaring me is where I need to go.” The 5’2” Barr took up taekwondo in her late 50s, sported a shiner caused by …
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