I grew up in a small town in western Iowa where I lived until I graduated with a degree in Journalism and Political Science from Iowa State University in 1980. Marriage to my wife Rose, from Des Moines and also an ISU graduate, and law school followed after a year in Florida working in newspapers. I was a copy editor at the St. Petersburg Times and Rose and I later worked at the Sarasota Journal.
Although Rose and I had intended to return to the Midwest after I got my law degree from Georgetown University in 1984, by then she was a journalist for a chain of suburban daily newspapers in Northern Virginia, and the professional opportunities for me with law firms in Washington, DC were too good to pass up.
I spent the first 20 years of my career as an associate and then partner as a litigator with WilmerHale, a large international firm in DC, where I had a nationwide practice representing corporations and executives in state and federal courts touching on everything from products liability to civil fraud and internal investigations. For 15 years I was responsible for the recruitment and hiring of more than 800 attorneys at my firm.
In 2005, I left the firm to became chief in-house counsel for the Washington Redskins NFL franchise, which had been a client for a number of years. I spent six years there, including several years as both General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer. During my tenure I dealt with county, state and federal agencies from Homeland Security to the FBI, as well as negotiations with vendors, contractors, and of course the NFL. I also was involved in hiring of executives in finance, stadium operations, security, transportation, and communications.
In 2011, I returned to WilmerHale as a partner, where I continued to represent the team and its owner as well as a number of domestic and international corporations in internal investigations, arbitrations, and litigation. I retired at the end of 2018.
My wife and I have three children who live in Washington, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn. We have two grandchildren (a newborn granddaughter and a grandson who is almost three years old), who we look forward to seeing more and more often here in Oxford.
I have taken up piano in retirement and run as often as I can in our lovely (and, thankfully, flat) village. Rose and I have just finished a book (our first) about her great-grandfather, who was a notorious murderer, thief, and brothel-owner in Des Moines at the turn of the last century, for which we have a publisher and hope to be in print by the end of the year.
