Minnesota Lawyer

Marlon Cush was about 10 when his family left the South American country of Guyana for New York City’s Queens borough. Growing up in a “family of proverbs,” he still follows this one: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Early in his career, before attending law school at the University of Minnesota, attorney Ryan Hoch earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and spent a year working for the CPA firm Arthur Andersen & Co.

As the pandemic spread last year, equipment manufacturer Smiths Medical played an essential role in helping companies in other countries gain access to its ventilator design.

Like many newly minted lawyers, Mara Garcia Kaplan started out doing firm work. After graduation from William Mitchell College of Law, she worked at several firms.

Melissa Manderschied had established a career in community outreach and land-use planning before deciding to become an attorney.

Digital technology has been transforming U.S. health care, helping providers, insurers and patients harness the power of data. Amanda Matchett has been involved in that sea change, as associate general counsel in the health care division of Infor, a St. Paul-based company that develops and sells cloud software.

For months, Robby McGarry has been deeply engaged in what could be considered a multi-layered challenge: helping lead the formation of Kindeva Drug Delivery L.P. following the $650 million sale and divestment of a global contract manufacturing and development pharmaceutical company from parent company 3M; and doing it in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century.

To Abigail Nesbitt, litigation is diplomacy by other means. She enjoyed the diplomacy she conducted in four years of practice at Robins Kaplan, but for her, something was missing: the rest of the story.

Caring for a parent with a rare disease drew Jaimala K. Pai to the health care field. It also informs her approach, as Medtronic’s senior legal director & chief counsel for cardiovascular diagnostics and services (CDS).

Now in her third year with Cargill, Anna Richo has fully gotten her sea legs with the Minnetonka-based global food giant.