Courtesy: Fotodog
One of the most interesting people at Thomson Reuters has to be Tonya Custis.
By day, she’s a woman of letters and a Senior Research Scientist. By night, she’s a skater with North Star Roller Girls in Minneapolis. Custis, or RAGE-edy Ann, as she is known by fans and teammates, has worked in the R&D group at Thomson Reuters for five years and has been skating for the last three.
Custis’ day job consists of performing research primarily in the areas of Natural Language processing, machine learning, and information retrieval, to provide software solutions to R&D’s corporate customers. Her job is a perfect fit for her educational background, which consists of a bachelor’s degree in clarinet performance and music theory from the University of Connecticut; a Master of Arts in linguistics; a Master of Science in computer science; and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Minnesota.
She attests that all her degrees are actually similar.
“Music theory isn’t so different from linguistics or computer science; it’s all about abstracting larger patterns from data in order to make sense out of it,” she explains.
Custis also has no problem drawing a relationship between her professional career and her illustrious – if somewhat curious – hobby as a roller girl.
Courtesy: Preflash Gordon
“In a lot of ways being a research scientist and being a member of a roller derby team are the same. In both you work with others, trying to find a solution to a common goal,” she explains.
Custis started roller derby after one fateful match, or bout, as they are called in the derby world.
“I saw it and I had to do it,” she said. “I watched and thought, ‘Oh, I could do that,’ and then I did.”
Next year Custis will be appearing in a diversity calendar through Novations, a Boston-based global talent development company. Novations approached her league, which has one other Ph.D. holder and a third currently working on her Ph.D, and ultimately decided on her.
“They took pictures of me at my desk and had me skating around the halls at work. It was kind of embarrassing, but also fun,” she said.
It turns out, the most interesting aspect of Custis is not just her career or hobby, or that she does both. It is her ability to find the relationship between what seem to be completely different things and making connections that show information and ideas in a different, and clearer, light.
Posted by Anne Lawver in:
Company Current | Voices |
Comments (3) |
Share
Editor’s note: Guest blogger Richard Steel is the author of Steel on Immigration Law, published by Thomson Reuters. He practices at Steel, Doebly & Glassman, P.C., in Philadelphia. This post was written before a federal judge’s decision to halt key elements of the Arizona immigration law, before they took effect.
It seems that nothing has galvanized the debate over immigration – illegal and legal – as much as the Arizona statute that, among other matters, enables law enforcement officers to stop and inquire into a person’s immigration status if there is a “reason to believe” that the person is in the United States illegally.
This, and matters relating to immigration in general, raise a whole host of political, economic, social and legal-related issues. Of the numerous issues that are – and will be – raised, the ability to stop a person because of a “reason to believe” that that person is in the United States illegally has sparked debates everywhere. (more…)
Posted by Richard Steel in:
Company Current | Voices |
No Comments |
Share
Thomson Reuters has released several video profiles of employees, including our own Stephen Yao, CEO of our Legal business in China, as well as iPhone app developer and senior software engineer, Jay Peyer, and others from across the business.
The purpose of the vignettes is to demonstrate the impact that individual employees can have on our business – how they bring its vision and values to life.
According to our Senior Vice President of Talent, Dimitra Manis, “the stories help us understand what Thomson Reuters stands for as an employer and aims to encourage us all to think about what each of us can do to create a best place to work.”
The stories appear on our refreshed Career Center on thomsonreuters.com.
They’re worth checking out. Let me know what you think.
Posted by Scott Augustin in:
Company Current | Voices |
No Comments |
Share
On May 21, bicycle enthusiasts around the U.S. celebrated National Bike to Work Day. With increasing attention being paid to this not-so-new method of commuting, we thought we’d get some insight from some of our employees who regularly bike to work.
Richard Baum, director, IP Marketing, is an avid outdoorsman and has been commuting to work by bicycle for the last five years. Baum said his 19 mile round-trip commute not only saves money in car repairs and gas, but it also has serious benefits for his health.
“I notice a big difference in my conditioning when I ride to work. For example, my cholesterol typically goes down at least 10 percent when I’m regularly biking,” says Baum.
Baum occasionally runs across interesting things on the commute. “Once I came across a large snapping turtle that was crossing the road to get to a pond. I stopped to take a picture of it before getting on my way.” Baum recalled. “I wouldn’t have been able to see that if I were in my car.”
Sarah Ditzler, an office manager at our 1 North Dearborn Chicago office, is the team lead for a city-sponsored “Bike to Work Week,” June 12-18.
Thomson Reuters Professional employees in Chicago can participate and compete for the highest percentage of employees who biked to work in their category and division.
Each participating employee will track their bike trips and the team leader will submit the total to the Active Transit group. The team with the most miles wins!
“We have 11 employees signed up so far,” Ditzler said. “Everyone seems really engaged and ready to take on the challenge.”
Posted by Nicole Hansen in:
Community | Company Current | Events | Voices |
No Comments |
Share
I attended a World Research Group (WRG) conference in New York with IP corporate counsel.
The topic “Open Innovation” was on the agenda, featuring a panel with the senior corporate counsel from SAS, open innovation director from GSK, and an independent consultant.
The moderator started the session by asking how many people in the audience engaged in open innovation in their companies. No one raised their hands. This was very surprising to me. (more…)
Posted by Laura Gaze in:
Company Current | Voices |
No Comments |
Share
Editor’s note: Kim Massana is the interim president and general manager of Elite.
In our continuing conversations with law firm leaders about how they are managing in the current economy, one thing we’re hearing at Elite is that the panic of last year is gone and that our clients and prospective clients are ready to invest in technology again.
While there’s more confidence to invest, there’s also more focus on return on investment and in getting the right infrastructure in place. Firm are looking for technology that helps them manage their business to be more efficient and helps identify opportunities for greater profitability.
Law firms, in general, tend to change their financial management systems every 10 years. It’s often described as being like buying a new car. You can postpone it for one or two years, but you can’t postpone it forever.
Once a law firm is ready for a new system, they look for a solution that will be around in the future and in developing a long-term relationship with an innovative and trusted company. Being part of Thomson Reuters brings us the credibility of a trusted brand, the market capability and the financial strength that are key differentiators and, we hope, provide value for our clients.
What else are we seeing in the marketplace right now? Well, there is significant uptake in areas like business intelligence, budgeting and forecasting, and SharePoint integration.
And, we’re hearing from firms around the world that they want fewer systems in place for managing their accounting, multi-currency and multi-language needs. Firms also are looking for help with international compliance matters.
We are cautiously optimistic for 2010, and with solutions like ELITE 3E we are confident that we will be able to meet the needs of law firms.
2010 will be an interesting year for the legal industry as the downturn gives way to renewed confidence.
Kim Massana
Interim President and General Manager
Elite
Editor’s note: Elite is hosting its 2010 User Conference June 15-17 in Miami. Click here for more information.
Posted by Kim Massana in:
Company Current | Voices |
No Comments |
Share
With President Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week, Kagan’s legal career moved into the spotlight.
If confirmed, Kagan would replace John Paul Stevens, who is retiring at the age of 90. You can get complete coverage of Kagan’s nomination from Reuters.com.
Legal Current chatted about Kagan’s selection with Susan Low Bloch, a professor at Georgetown Law in Washington, D.C., and co-author of Bloch, Jackson, and Krattenmaker’s Inside the Supreme Court: The Institution and Its Procedures, 2d., published by Thomson Reuters, Legal.
In this audio clip, Bloch says the fact that Kagan has never been a judge should not work against her. She points to some big names who were non-judges before being seated on the Supreme Court:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
But, as for the confirmation hearings, Bloch says Kagan will be questioned vigorously. “There will be senators who are troubled by the fact she has no judicial record… people will be troubled by the fact there are some areas for which she has no public position. It’ll be contentious, but I think at the end of the day she’ll definitely get confirmed.”
Look for more from professor Bloch in the next Legal Current podcast, posted on Monday, May 17th.
Posted by Kevin Hunt in:
Company Current | Voices |
No Comments |
Share
Editor’s note: Guest blogger Bob Berring, a professor at Berkeley Law, is also a West author specializing in legal research. He also has been a consultant and speaker at events hosted by West.
Last semester, Dan Dabney, senior director in Classification for West, came to our Advanced Legal Research class to speak. He asked if Mike Dahn, vice president of WestlawNext product development, could come and show me a prototype of WestlawNext.
Mike not only showed it to me, he made a proposal. West had been running beta tests with a wide range of lawyers in firms big and small, but they thought that our Advanced Legal Research students at Berkeley, having just spent months thinking about legal information, and our Reference Librarians, who live in the world of research each day, would be an ideal group to run the new system through its paces.
Was it easy to use? Did it return the right results? How did it compare with the existing version of Westlaw? We agreed to coordinate a group of students and librarians to do just that. (more…)
Posted by Bob Berring in:
Company Current | Voices |
No Comments |
Share
As we finish our week-long salute to West Reference Attorneys honoring their 25th anniversary, we bring you some thoughts from a few current and former reference attorneys on what the next 25 years might be like.
A couple things came to the forefront in our conversations: We’re serving more global customers of Thomson Reuters, Legal, and using technology in new ways to aid interactions with customers, as the responses in the video clip below indicate:
As part of a Westlaw subscription, users can contact a West Reference Attorney anytime at 1-800-REF-ATTY (1-800-733-2889) or by email. More information also is available on the West Reference Attorney page on the West Web site.
Posted by Kevin Hunt in:
Company Current | Voices |
No Comments |
Share
As with many careers, sometimes it’s where you get your start that makes all the difference where you end up.
As we mark the 25th anniversary of the West Reference Attorneys this week, we introduce you to two people now in leadership roles within Thomson Reuters, Legal, who credit their time on the phones as reference attorneys answering the legal research questions of Westlaw users with providing a boost to their careers.
Joe Jaksha, now vice president of Product Development for Westlaw Business, started as a West Reference Attorney in 1991. Leann Blanchfield, vice president of Product Development for Litigation, also got her start 17 years ago as a reference attorney after spending time as a practicing attorney.
In this video clip, we asked both Jaksha and Blanchfield how their reference attorney experience helped their careers:
There are more than 250 former West Reference Attorneys working within Thomson Reuters, Legal.
As part of a Westlaw subscription, users can contact a West Reference Attorney anytime at 1-800-REF-ATTY (1-800-733-2889) or by email. More information also is available on the West Reference Attorney page on the West Web site.
Posted by Kevin Hunt in:
Company Current | Voices |
No Comments |
Share
Thomson Reuters, Legal, President & CEO Peter Warwick offered his perspective on the company’s approach to the current economic reality in a panel discussion, “Adapting and Thriving in a Challenging Economy”, at the Minnesota Venture & Finance Conference.
The launch of WestlawNext brings a significant advancement in the way professional legal research is done.
A discussion about online privacy and “The End of Forgetting,” with law professor Jeffrey Rosen.
