Steve Henry:
CLASS OF 1968
Woodrow Wilson High SchoolClass of 1968
Levittown, PA
Georgetown University - Law CenterClass of 1976
Washington, DC
Cambridge, MA
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyClass of 1972
Cambridge, MA
Steve's Story
Life
Except for a few yrs in DC, Boston has been my home since 68. Spent 5 yrs getting my BS and MS in Electrical Engineering at MIT and met my wife, Carol. Then on to DC for law school at Georgetown. Back to Boston in 77. Since 76, I've practiced as a patent lawyer, doing everything from computer-related patents to litigation to licensing deals. (My experiences on the WWHS Debate Team convinced me I would enjoy law.) I've always thrived on challenges and this profession has kept me on my toes, with technology and busines always changing. For a few years, I also taught patent law, and a couple of years ago, won a landmark case for software and business methods patents, of which I'm quite proud. Then I co-wrote a brief on behalf of the Boston Patent Law Association that Justice Kennedy cited in a Supreme Court decision in 2010, adopting my argument. Along the way, I like to say I earned my MBA the hard way, not that I got the degree, but by managing my firm of about 175 people for five years, and seven years before that serving in various other leadership roles. After that experience, I felt pretty burned out and insisted on retiring back to the role of practicing lawyer. It would be great to just quit for a few months, to catch my breath and lie on a beach reading and every so often, swimming. Time is precious. Unfortunately, I've hit my stride, as they say, and professionally it is too early to quit, having been named a Boston SuperLawyer, one of America's Best Lawyers and a Top 100 Massachusetts lawyer as well as a Who's Who in American Law nominee. I do a good bit of speaking and writing, of a professional nature.
Just under three years ago, I underwent a sextuple cardiac bypass surgery and now am much more conscientious about exercise and managing stress. So I recently left the private practice of law and became an in-house lawyer at a mid-sized company, Ab Initio Software.
My main accomplishments in law-firm management were re-shaping the firm to get it over a rough patch with a lot of friction among some of the partners, and changng the firm culture to infuse the values of teamwork and investing in training and infrastructure.. Along the way, I found to my surprise that I had strengths in teaching both clients and lawyers-in-training. Those are talents I hope to put to good use in my new position, where both my managemnt experience and my legal experience should let me continue to challenge the status quo and improve it through positive acts ...Expand for more
and encouraging others.
For a long time, I have been heavily involved in MIT alumni activities, including serving my class as treasurer for about 30 years, interviewing applicants and fundraising. For the last few years, I have coached some juniors who are student leaders on various aspects of leadership. It is very rewarding to see and help the development of our future contributors, and to give back a little of what others did for me.
Apologies for all the self-congratulatory, egotistcal-sounding statements, but they can't really be helped if you want to understand how things turned out.
Carol and I just celebrated our 40th anniversary. She teaches math at a community college and is one of the best I've ever seen at communicating at the student's level. I was never able to teach our kids as effectively as she could. She spends a great deal of time tending to her aged mother.
Speaking of kids, we have three, now adults, of course, and three precious grandchildren. Our first-born, Suzanne, went to Wellesley and then earned her PhD in neuroscience at UC in San Diego and got married two years ago. She and Marcus then moved to Israel where she did pre-rabbinical studies in bioethics, an area of interest she acquired in grad school. Recently ordained, she now teaches in St. Louis. She has a daughter and a son. Her twin siblings, David and Michelle, also are married. David is an engineer (WPI), like his dad, and Michelle is a health care policy researcher (Penn grad) with considerable musical and artistic talent she certainly did not get from me. David first built submarines at Electric Boat and now its helicopters at Sikorski. Michelle first did research at Penn's Center for Bioethics on the impact of patents relating to genetic testing (with results published in very distinguished journals) and then moved on to the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation, where she studied every child death in Philadelphia, tobacco programs and other interesting subjects, before taking time to have baby boy.
It sure feels great to have your kids out in the world as contributing adults. I give Carol great credit for raising three well-adjusted, caring human beings.
The hair is thin and starting to gray, but I can never think of myself as that old. Can you? Yet being a grandfather is super!
I could never has foreseen all of this at WWHS. So, what's new in your life? You can easily find me on-line to drop me a note, and I'd love to hear from old classmates.
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