August 2004

Since graduating from UM Law in 1997, Colleen Grady has spent half her time overseas as an attorney for White & Case LLP. Colleen was based in Stockholm for two years and spent significant time in Helsinki. Her involvement in other projects has taken her throughout Europe, Asia, and Australia. Advising corporate clients on international transactions, Colleen describes her role as that of a facilitator of international mergers and acquisitions. "Mergers and acquisitions take a long time to work out and I'm typically involved in every stage of the process from assembling a team of international lawyers to closing the deal. You get to know your clients extremely well and if you've done your job well, at the closing, everyone walks away from the table happy. It's normally not a confrontational area of the law."

Two years ago Colleen internationalized her home when she adopted two boys from a Ukrainian orphanage. Last summer, Colleen and her sons returned to the Ukraine to adopt her third son. The boys are now ages 8, 9, and 11. "When I was in Bangkok on a business trip, I met up with my best friend from law school who was living in Japan at the time. We did some traveling together and when we went to Cambodia and I saw all the homeless children, I decided I wanted to do something to help. When I got back to Stockholm, I started doing research on the internet for ways to help. Initially, I was just looking for organizations to make donations to!"

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Colleen grew up in South Florida and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Barry University with a degree in Elementary Education in 1992. She worked for two years as a fourth grade teacher at a Catholic missionary school in Charleston, South Carolina before returning to Florida to start law school.

Colleen graduated Magna Cum Laude from Miami in 1997. During her second and third year, she was a Dean's Fellow for Professors Hausler and Fischl. She was on the University of Miami Law Review and in the Order of the Coif. In 1996, she received the West Book Award for Outstanding Scholastic Achievement.

Colleen says that the classes that best prepared her for her career in international law were Business Associations, Commercial Law, Securities, and Bankruptcy. "When advising clients from outside the U.S., these are always the four areas that they want advice on. If you want to work at a large firm, at some point, you also need to take a couple accounting courses and if you want international law, you have to live abroad. That is the only way to understand legal and cultural differences." Language skills are also essential. Colleen is fluent in Swedish and is currently studying Russian.

As busy as her life is, she has made time to found a not-for-profit organization whose goal is to enrich the lives of children living in Ukrainian orphanages. "We collect donations and ship them to the orphanages and I am organizing some art camps for a couple orphanages next spring."

Colleen has been working out of the Miami office since returning from Europe in 2002. Most recently, she was involved in a $105 million merger agreement between Miami-based HIG Capital LLC and T-Netix, a publicly traded Dallas company.