Mary Isensee
Three years ago, Mary Isensee made some big changes in her career.
After six years of practicing corporate law at three different large law firms in Houston, the University of Houston Law Center alum decided to go in-house.
Isensee went from representing energy companies involved in corporate financing matters such as credit facilities, term loan agreements and hedging contracts to writing export control policies and customer-facing agreements focusing on technology, data privacy and artificial intelligence.
Just as she was getting established at Houston-based PROS, Inc., the Covid-19 pandemic hit, which required the company’s entire global operations to go to remote. At the same time, the pandemic required Isensee and others at PROS, which is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, to step up to help their clients, which included airlines, hotels and other businesses that were particularly hard hit by Covid-19.
“It was difficult for me personally,” she says. “I enjoy being among my coworkers and having those quick conversations and updates. I feel like working remotely made it harder to have those – people’s days filled up with meetings and the short moments of catching up personally or on business matters seemed to disappear.”
PROS executives needed its team, including Isensee, to step up the excellence in services being provided.
“Having a significant number of customers in the travel industry, I was busy with customer bankruptcies and contract modifications, while still supporting the sales team in closing new business and developing a new ‘Go to Market’ strategy,” she says.
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By all accounts, Isensee was a critical component in PROS not only surviving but thriving throughout 2020 and 2021.
“Mary is a one-woman army at PROS,” says Todd Mensing, a partner at Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Anaipakos, Alavi & Mensing in Houston. “She was able to hit the ground running to corral internal teams that still operate independently. She organized processes for reviewing software and customers for export control issues and implemented tools for vendor and customer screening.
“Mary was tasked with spearheading a knowledge management project to streamline sources used by the legal department and to create a self-service list of common questions/topics for internal clients,” Mensing says.
Citing her extraordinary successes in her first three years as an in-house counsel, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook congratulates Isensee for winning the 2021 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Rookie of the Year.
ACC Houston and The Lawbook also thank the AZA law firm for nominating Isensee for the award.
The 2021 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards ceremony will be held Jan. 13 at the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Houston.
“Mary is smart, thorough, persistent and simply a nice person and a pleasure to work with,”
said Ray Gold, a partner at Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe in Washington, D.C.
The three-judge panel that reviewed more than a half-dozen Rookie of the Year nominations also highlighted Isensee’s extraordinary commitment to Big Brothers and Big Sisters where she mentored two teenagers over a six-year span. She is also an active member of the Junior League of Houston, where she has done volunteer work for Kids Meals, Walk for Alzheimer’s and Summer House.
“Volunteering at BBBS was formative because I learned how much impact one person can make in another person’s life and how important it is to break free from the ‘busyness’ that we surround ourselves in,” she says. “I think it’s easy in today’s world – especially in remote work environments – to forget that we are the part of a sum and that there is a greater community out there.
“Between emails, social media, delivery services, etc., one can go weeks without having an actual interaction with another human being. Volunteering has been a great outlet because it has allowed me to exist outside of that ‘busyness,’” she says.
Born in Houston, Isensee is the third child in a family of six (five girls and one boy).
“Being in a large family was a formative experience for me,” she says. “It required that I learn how to cooperate and negotiate among various people’s needs.”
Isensee learned the values of hard work form her father, who is a CPA. He has been at the same accounting firm for more than four decades.
“My father worked, and still works, long hours as a CPA,” she says. “He works closely with individuals and small businesses and has had a great deal of satisfaction with his work. He always made time for his children though, which I appreciated as a child, and I now try to model his behavior.”
Her mother was “largely in charge of shepherding us for different activities and making sure we did our homework and reading.” Her mom became a substitute schoolteacher when the children were older.
Isensee’s first thoughts about being a lawyer came in high school when she participated in mock trial and enjoyed classes on government and history. The interest in law continued through college at the University of Texas, but she wanted to “get some real-life legal experience before making the jump” to law school.
For three years, she worked as a paralegal at Quan, Burdette & Perez in Houston doing immigration-related employment matters.
“Working at QBP definitely helped me be a better lawyer and a better in-house corporate counsel,” she says. “I learned very early on that to provide good legal service means also providing excellent customer service.”
In 2012, Isensee graduated from the University of Houston Law Center magna cum laude and was hired by Vinson & Elkins as an associate in corporate finance. She spent three years at Sidley in Houston and a year at Bracewell – all representing private equity firms and energy companies in corporate transactional matters.
“All are great firms that do cutting edge work,” she says. “I would say the largest difference can be found in the cultures. That’s why it’s so important for law students to get experiences at firms beforehand if possible and to really engage within those firms – get on recruiting committees, interact with the staff, go to the holiday parties and networking events. As lawyers, we work so closely together that culture can have a huge impact on your work.”
Isensee says she wasn’t looking to go in-house in 2018, but that she received a call from an outside recruiter looking to fill a position at a technology company.
“The job description piqued my interest,” she says. “It was exciting to hear of a technology company in Houston and to think about being a part of the team. The size and composition of the legal department was also a real draw – it is large enough not to feel like the lone man in the trenches, but small enough to have the opportunity to get your hands involved in different areas of the business and areas of law.”
Isensee started at PROS in August 2018, but she admits that the transition from being at a law firm to now being the client and being in-house “wasn’t easy.”
“Being at a law firm in some ways has more reliable expectations while also has more fluctuations,” she says. “Being in-house is really about responding to the business needs. Though you have to respond, of course, to your client when a lawyer at a firm, I think the difference is that there is a team set up whereas as an inhouse lawyer, I am often the only attorney on a matter.”
Lawyers who know Isensee and worked with her at the law firms and now at PROS say her intellect, work ethic and curiosity about law and business made her a success in both environments.
“Mary made the pivot from a mostly oil and gas transactional practice to technology by focusing on data privacy and artificial intelligence and their legal implications on the business,” Mensing says. “She was the on-the-ground architect for a booming business, helping steer the company forward.
“She has operationalized export control review and training, wrote export control policy and created customer-facing export control documentation,” Mensing says.
Isensee says her two biggest achievements during her time at PROS has involved export controls and support for the sales and customer success teams at the technology company.
“Managing export control matters is something I had no prior knowledge of before joining PROS,” she says. “Since taking responsibility for this area, I have managed self-classification reviews of our software, created an export control compliance policy, and have raised business awareness of export control compliance topics.”
“I have been an instrumental part of standardizing our ‘Go To Market’ approach as it impacts our contracts and creating self-service resources to enable sales and customer success to pursue opportunities without legal interference,” she says.
For example, PROS recently transitioned various B2B solutions to a single platform. The change required months of cooperation among the product, sales, finance and legal teams, which Isensee oversaw.
Lawyers say Isensee played a crucial role in how PROS handled the Covid-19 pandemic.
“When the pandemic caused countries to lockdown their borders, airline and travel businesses were negatively impacted … and a number of these companies filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. and around the world,” Mensing says. “As a SaaS company with about half of its revenue in the travel industry, PROS worked to support customers seeking concessions to help them weather the storm.”
PROS’ lawyers, including Isensee, worked with other departments to execute these concessions, which ultimately strengthened the customer relationship.
“In addition to maintaining relationships with existing customers while serving as the point person across departments, Mary was also able to help negotiate deals for new customers in a difficult business climate,” Mensing says. “After an initial dip in revenue in 2020, collections were back up by the end of the year, largely in part due to Mary’s contributions.”
“Mary is a young attorney practicing at an experience level beyond her years,” Mensing says. “She was the on-the-ground architect for a booming business, helping steer the company forward. She has operationalized export control review and training, wrote export control policy, and created customer-facing export control documentation.”