As Chief Growth Officer, Dean is responsible for driving the firm growth that ensures that we can meet clients’ expanding needs.
Husch Blackwell’s recent growth trajectory is thanks in part to Dean’s leadership and his active role in identifying talent. During Dean’s tenure as CGO, Husch Blackwell has routinely attracted lateral hires on an annual basis that exceed some of the legal industry’s largest mergers and business combinations, allowing the firm to identify, recruit, hire, and onboard precisely the talent we know our clients will need. Dean has also overseen exponential growth in Husch Blackwell’s summer associate program, an important diverse pipeline of talent that allows us to transform new graduates into gifted, collaborative, client-focused professionals.
Alongside his focus on lateral growth strategies, Dean also has the responsibility to expand into new markets across the country. While our fully remote Link office—part of our commitment to a progressive vision of the future of work—allows us the flexibility to recruit professionals anywhere and offer our clients on-the-ground services in a wide variety of locations, we also recognize the need for a brick-and-mortar presence in key regions where our clients are experiencing growth of their own. Dean oversees targeted location growth in the places where our clients need us to be, ensuring that the firm expands in ways that fit our growing, successful, national client base.
Dean’s growth responsibilities also have an individual, personal focus: he serves as strategic business unit leader of the firm’s general assignment associates, with a commitment to helping these new attorneys grow professionally and develop their careers, with Husch Blackwell’s emphasis on client service at the center. The firm has embraced innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit to create solutions for our clients as well as opportunities even for our youngest associates. Dean’s team also works with business leaders to manage our paralegals and other professionals, an important and growing resource for our clients.
After more than 20 years in leadership at other law firms, Dean first joined Husch Blackwell in 2013, excited about being part of an organization enthusiastically looking to be different through a client-centered focus structure. The firm had recently launched its new strategic plan, with an emphasis on reorganization around client industries, and Dean took an active role in the leadership of industry teams and rewarding behaviors at all levels to move the firm forward in conjunction with our clients’ success. Today, he continues to value Husch Blackwell’s unusually entrepreneurial nature and its dedication to letting businesspeople do their best work for the business of the firm, while attorneys focus on offering the highest level of legal services to clients.