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Reynolds balances corporate work, community betterment

By: Jane Pribek//June 23, 2011//

Reynolds balances corporate work, community betterment

By: Jane Pribek//June 23, 2011//

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(Staff photo by Kevin Harnack)
(Staff photo by Kevin Harnack)

Whether she’s singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” with a patient she encounters in the elevator or helping create pro bono legal clinics, Shelia Reynolds said she gets a lot of satisfaction out of working for Children’s Hospital and Health System Inc. in Milwaukee.

But deciding to leave her old employer to take on the role of corporate vice-president and general counsel for Children’s in 2002 was no easy task, she said.

At the time, Reynolds was a partner with Quarles & Brady LLP in its Health Law Group. She’d come to the firm directly after law school, and 16 years later, it felt like home.

It just so happened that while she was mulling the decision over a holiday weekend in 2002, she found herself confronted time and again with reasons a switch to Children’s could be a great new challenge. A local radio station was doing a fundraising push for the hospital, and patients and their families took to the air to share their experiences with Children’s.

“So I had Memorial Day weekend to make the decision, and every time I got in the car, these voices over the radio were telling me wonderful things,” Reynolds recalled.

Now in her ninth year with Children’s, Reynolds said she cannot think of a more fulfilling job. She manages the legal department and advises hospital leaders and board members on governance and a wide variety of legal issues.

She recently helped the hospital, along with the Next Door Foundation, create its Children’s Hospital Clinic in Milwaukee, a community-based clinic offering medical and dental care to low-income patients.

She also helped coordinate an onsite pro bono legal clinic for families with special needs children, to assist them in obtaining guardianship when the children become adults. The clinic started serving clients in 2005 with attorneys from Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek SC and since then, more than 100 guardianships have been completed.

Last year, Reynolds led the hospital through corporate restructuring, reducing the corporate entities from 14 to nine to streamline governance.

Milwaukee attorney Albert Orr, a board member with Children’s, said Reynolds handled the complicated process well.

“She had to balance many competing objectives — the hospital offers a wide variety of services. And there were a number of different constituencies, from patients, to providers, to government entities,” he said. “She did a really nice job coordinating the process and giving everyone a voice in it.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8CjsCy9zvQ

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