Dec 19, 2012

Jen Grosz recognized as one of 40 top young business professionals

Jen Grosz is the only person from the western third of North Dakota to be selected as one of the 40 top young business professionals in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota for 2012 by Prairie Business Magazine. Read about Jen’s achievements as portrayed in the nomination submitted to the magazine by peer and partner Paul Ebeltoft:

I am nominating Jennifer D. Grosz for recognition as one of the best and brightest young business leaders the region has to offer. Jen is a partner of mine and an officer of our Firm. Putting pride aside as best I can, there remains no one more worthy of your recognition.

Jen is 31 years old. A three-year graduate of North Dakota State University and then, in 2005, from the University of Nebraska School of Law, Jen has had a short business career. She has made the most of it, seeing an opportunity and having both the wisdom and the wit to grasp it.

In 2009 Jen and four other lawyers left their former firm to create a new law firm. As a founding partner of Ebeltoft . Sickler . Lawyers, Jen assumed the leadership of its personal planning team, a small group dedicated to helping clients meet unique family and business planning objectives. In short order, she recognized that her firm could leverage its power in personal planning, business transactions and real estate law to become counsel to oilfield operators seeking succession planning or outright sale of their operations. Building strong partnerships with accounting firms and merger and acquisition advisors, by 2012, Jen became their “go-to” lawyer for large-scale business sales transactions. Mobilizing a multidiscipline team of strong personalities in the oilfield, of hard-charging independent counselors and of her busy partners and associates to provide due diligence and closing services anywhere in the Bakken play might be a daunting task for one so young. Jen proved in short order that following her lead would be worth it – for all of them.

That Jen is capable of going head-to-head with New York law firms and international companies over tens of millions of dollars has caused more than a couple of eyebrows to rise. One officer of an international company, resisting Jen’s efforts to protect her client, leaned over a conference table and said “In time, young lady, you will learn.” She did. She learned that by persisting she got what her client needed in the deal. She also learned that her “opponent” on that job failed to keep his.

Jen’s practice group has become the most productive and the most hardworking in the Firm. Recently, some of her law partners received a text message at 4:00 AM on a Saturday morning. It came from one of Jen’s team. The single word was “boom!” We all knew that Jen had closed another sale and had another satisfied client.

If Jen was one-dimensional, I could stop now. But I must continue. She was a founding member of the Dickinson Young Professionals Network. Perhaps that is why, in addition to logging work hours that would bring most to their knees, Jen still finds the time to serve as mentor to new lawyers and law clerks in our office. Jen’s work was responsible in large part for earning Ebeltoft . Sickler . Lawyers the State’s Young Professionals Network award as the Best Place in North Dakota to Intern in 2010.

Jen helps those in emergency situations and those who do not have access to public services to meet their needs by serving the House of Manna in Dickinson. The many needy individuals that work prospects in the oil boom attract to our area often make the House of Manna their first stop. Jen is on its Board of Directors.

Jen is actively involved in fund-raising for one of the Firm's sponsored charities, the Dickinson State University Foundation. Jen serves this year as a section-chair for the Foundation’s largest community fundraising event, Yuletyme. And the list could go on.

It comes as no surprise then, that back in 2005 when I was doing reference checks on a young lawyer applying to work in western North Dakota, one told me that the only negative thing that she could think of is that Jen sometimes got very personally involved in what she chose to do. The reference was right. Thank goodness.

In sum, you could not do better than to choose Jennifer D. Grosz as one of your “40 under 40.” I would be happy to provide any additional information that you might need.