Lindner steps up to CEO challenge

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While helping Meta House Inc. search for a CEO, an unexpected invitation came Amy Lindner’s way.

Members of the search committee asked her to throw her hat into the ring for the position. Lindner accepted the invitation, and within weeks went from private practice IP attorney to Meta House CEO.

“She only has that one speed,” said David Frank, a partner at Gierke Frank LLC and former colleague of Lindner’s at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren SC. “Amy’s someone you can always count on to give their best all the time and every time. … She immerses herself in projects and they become a part of her.”

Lindner, a Waukesha native, received her political science undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. She then took a year off to run a car mechanic’s office while she considered law school, and the mountain of student debt it would entail. She ultimately decided to go for it, and graduated from Notre Dame Law School in 2003.

Hired into the litigation practice at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren shortly thereafter, Lindner carved out a place in the IP division.

It was during this time that she first was drawn to donate to Meta House by her “mentor for life,” Anne Reed, who became executive director at the Wisconsin Humane Society in 2009 after years at Reinhart.

Fast forward a few years later and Lindner was part of a group winnowing résumés to pick the next Meta House chief executive officer. When her fellow committee members surprised her by asking whether she’d be interested in the position, she decided to resign from the search committee and spent some “intense” weeks studying the organization and her own strengths and weaknesses.

“There had been that one candidate who was so top of the pile that [I thought] this might be an exercise in futility,” Lindner recalled. “But it’s an amazing organization that I care about and I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t give it everything I could.”

After undergoing the same promised scrutiny as the other two worthy candidates, Lindner was offered the CEO position.

Though the role took her out of the law firm, she said she’s certainly “not lacking for intellectual stimulation” with legal challenges that range from health care regulation to housing agreements.

“The only way I know to locate the soul is to think of that core of my body where I feel the joy,” she said. “There wasn’t any income in the world that could beat that joy.”