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Motorola Solutions’ purpose is to help people be their best in the moments that matter. This moment, right now, matters tremendously for us.


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for the Olympic Trials 1500 meter qualifying time. Following two years of road races and track meets, Steverson realized his dreams of competing internationally were not going to happen. His times were fast, but not fast enough. Resilient, practi- cal, and a longtime positive thinker, he moved ahead, creating a new goal and put together a strategy to reach it. “Because my father was a police offi cer, I’d long suspected that I might do well in a law-related career,” he says. “And the fact that my older sister, Janet Steverson, was then enrolled at Harvard Law School [and is now a lauded professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore.] simply reinforced my hunch.” His next move was to secure


another full scholarship in track—this time at Siena College, a small Jesuit school close to Albany, N.Y., where his parents were living. “My plan was to fi nd a full-time job, run cross country and track, carry a double course load, and graduate summa cum laude. T at’s what I fi gured I needed to do to get into Harvard Law,” Steverson recalls. “I remember discussing my plan with the dean of student aff airs and he said it just couldn’t be done in my time frame, but that just gave me more incentive to do it; and I did it, on schedule.”


DIVERSITY & THE BAR® MARCH/APRIL 2011 “T e Harvard experience was good


but humbling. Suddenly I was just one among many high achievers,” he adds. After graduating in ’91, Steverson— unlike most of his law school friends— stayed away from the big fi rms in New York and Washington. Instead he headed west to Arnold & Porter’s Denver offi ce. In very little time, he was second-chairing appellate argu- ments, and in his third year presented an oral argument in the 10th Circuit— opportunities that would have been much longer in coming had he worked at a larger offi ce. Steverson was introduced to


Motorola while still an ambitious young litigator with Arnold & Porter. “Motorola was a client, and I came to them as a ‘rent a lawyer,’ or so the fi nance department aff ectionately referred to me,” he says. “My inten- tion at the time was to establish a great relationship with the company and then return to the fi rm and make partner. As it turned out, I really liked working at Motorola, and they made me an off er to work in their small Atlanta offi ce dealing mostly with battery issues.” Initially Steverson declined the


off er. He still wanted to stay with Arnold & Porter. Eventually Motorola’s general counsel at the time, Peter Lawson, convinced Steverson to accept


with the promise that he would be moved in two years. Almost two years to the day, he was transferred to the cellular business in Libertyville, Ill., not far from Motorola’s Schaumburg headquarters located 30 miles from downtown Chicago. Now that he was close to Motorola’s


decision makers and no longer in the Atlanta satellite offi ce, Steverson quickly plotted a strategy to succeed within the company. “I was determined to do whatever it took to learn every- thing about Motorola. Fortunately, the opportunities came to me: I mastered a lot of substantive legal matters, learned a lot about each of the businesses, made frequent moves, and put in long hours for the company.” Prior to being named GC of


Motorola Solutions last year, Steverson sensed that he was being groomed for the job; however nothing was ever offi cially stated. “Peter [Lawson] isn’t the type of GC to come out and say he’s preparing someone to take over —it’s just not his style—but when he and Greg [Brown] continued to give me more and more responsibility I could see the writing on the wall. Increasingly, I was spending more time with the senior leadership team and the CEO. As the Mobility spin- off and Peter’s departure approached, he and Greg began pulling me into the board meetings. As corporate secretary, it’s obviously important for a GC to understand board interactions and to possess a solid background in corporate governance matters.” When asked about future plans,


Steverson says, “Motorola Solutions’ purpose is to help people be their best in the moments that matter. T is moment, right now, matters tremendously for us, and my focus is to help us be our best in the moment; that means serving our customers, while protecting and growing this company.” D&B


Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.


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