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For Katherine Frierdich, it’s the start of the fourth quarter, her fourth quarter. The general counsel, executive, board member, regulatory compliance expert, privacy officer, team builder, mentor, healthcare attorney, and recipient of a 2025 Women’s Justice Awards (in recognition of Missourians who “demonstrated leadership, integrity, service, sacrifice, and accomplishment in improving the quality of justice and exemplifying the highest ideals of the legal profession”) is ready for her last new role as a GC or consultant to companies needing GC expertise.
Frierdich recently wrapped up just shy of three years as Curative’s GC, Corporate Secretary, and privacy leader, where she built a legal team and function.
In just a year, Frierdich established a high-performing legal team, crafted new workflows to achieve a remarkable five-day contract turnaround, overhauled corporate governance, delivered more than 70 percent year-over-year legal expense reduction, mitigated risk materially, and implemented a forward-thinking privacy program to serve a rapidly changing healthcare market.
“I call myself a transformational leader,” the attorney says. “People leadership is very important to me, and it’s probably the greatest pleasure of my professional career. And so whatever that next role is—whether it’s as a GC or a consultant—growing, building, and mentoring others needs to be an important part of it.”
That kind of impact has not gone unnoticed. “We’ve watched Katherine transform and lead diverse in-house and outside counsel into cohesive teams that efficiently further the business’s goals while expertly handling its legal needs. Katherine’s real-world legal experience and ability to build and grow a team, in conjunction with her keen business insight, make her a unique talent,” say Tim Sensing and Rusty Comley of Watkins & Eager PLLC.
Frierdich recently opened her own consulting practice, Cadenzia Consulting, where she’ll be providing fractional general counsel services, startup and growth company guidance, and other general strategies and guidance.
“Among other things, I’m interested in helping a company build their legal function, their legal team, and help them understand that a successful legal team is not just a cost center, rather they’re a cost-saving center and strategic partner,” she says.
She’s also deeply interested in the burgeoning “general counsel in residence” movement. A “GCIR” is a former or current chief legal officer who temporarily joins a law firm to share their expertise, insights, and practical experience with the firm and its clients.
This role is modeled after the entrepreneur-in-residence concept used in venture capital, where an experienced executive temporarily embeds with an organization to mentor, advise, and influence strategy. Frierdich says she could do a great amount of good in this kind of role and may become an evangelist of sorts for its existence. “I’m pretty sure there’s only two reported ‘in residence’ roles so far, but I think the role will continue to expand,” she says.
Frierdich says advising law firms on how to attract and keep business gives firms an incredible edge in understanding what in-house leaders and professionals are looking for from their outside counsel. When law firms get let go, Frierdich says there’s very rarely a frank discussion about it. Those like Frierdich can provide their own experiences and reflections on how to best maintain business and cultivate a mutually beneficial partnership.
The GC also intends to grow her board experience and expertise. She’s currently serving on the advisory board for one startup at present and has been contacted by numerous others. She also sits on the advisory board for Breakthrough T1D in honor of her son who has type 1 diabetes.
“At present, I don’t want to spread myself too thin, because the GC role is really a 24-7 job a lot of the time,” Frierdich explains. “But eventually, I look forward to giving more time toward board service work.”
That’s because Frierdich is still in the middle of the surge for whatever comes next. She’s interested in joining or advising growth companies, innovative companies, or a company with an exit strategy for going public. Ideally, it’s a company poised for high growth that needs a measure of maturity and expertise to continue down the path.
Frierdich’s own pivotal moments came in-house at Centene, one of the country’s largest managed care organizations, with over 27.9 million managed care members. She navigated seven states’ worth of Medicaid, Medicare, and ACA-driven complexities, all with virtually no prior experience in the space.
“Previously, while at Bryan Cave, I was litigating all manner of cases, but I hadn’t really touched healthcare at all,” Frierdich recalls.
“And after joining Centene, I was thrown into the deep end to sink or swim. It was quite a learning curve, and what really helped was intentionally spending time with each of my subsidiaries’ executives. I would ask them about their teams, how they functioned, and what their priorities were. I would ask them what keeps them up at night. As counsel, your relationships are built on trust. You have to build it. And you have to maintain it,” she says.
Those relationships include navigating vastly different personalities, an experience the legal leader jokes she’s gotten her own master’s in (along with her more formal EMBA) at home. The GC says her children and stepchildren run the gamut from engineering, business, and econ majors and computer science whizzes (the boys in the family) to aspiring singer-songwriters (the lawyer’s seventeen-year-old daughter).
Those kids are just starting their own chapters while Frierdich prepares to embark on her final professional one. She’s going to take her time to find the right organization for her, but there’s no doubt that Frierdich still has so much to give.
