Monday, February 11, 2008

The Mover

'Kooky' Irish firm draws lawyer into tech world

By Jay Rizoli

When Christopher Mirabile took over as chief financial officer at Iona Technologies Inc. last month, he was far from a new face at the Waltham software company. In fact, the 11-year veteran has done work for Iona longer than he's been employed there.

Mirabile was an associate with Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault when he first came in contact with Iona, a Dublin-based provider of service-oriented architecture infrastructure software.

"I was approached by a partner about some kooky little Irish software company that wanted to go public," said Mirabile. "Normally you're a little wary of a company-side IPO, but it was the fifth-biggest software IPO at the time, I was told. It was quite a splash at the time, certainly in Ireland where the company is based."

The "kooky little Irish software company" raised about $140 million in that 1996 offering; the following year, Mirabile came aboard as senior counsel.

Mirabile, a graduate of Boston College Law School, didn't set out to become a lawyer. In fact, he says, the only career advice he remembers getting is "you probably don't want to be a doctor." That advice came from his father -- who was a doctor. He and his sisters attended The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., where his father was the attending physician, and Mirabile later attended Colgate University, majoring in English and dabbling in computer science. He took the LSAT, he says, "but didn't pull the trigger because I wasn't sure I wanted to do it."

Mirabile instead joined the strategic consulting group at the premerger Price Waterhouse in Chicago, where he spent two years before going to BC. By the time he reached Testa, he said, law firms were booming and associates were busy with startup and strategic licensing deals.

Working with Iona, "I got to know the partners pretty well, and they were remarkable people," he said. "I understood the business pretty well and what they were trying to do, and I stayed available and there was a continued relevance. Eventually the call came, and I wasn't really ready and wasn't looking to move, but it was just too good an opportunity."

Mirabile joined Iona as senior counsel and later became corporate counsel and general counsel. Last year, he was honored as one of 15 In-House Leaders in the Law in New England by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and New England In-House Magazine.

"You have to love technology and love licensing," he says of his longtime home. "I think the most refreshing thing is the range of work and people and issues, being there at the inception of products. I really felt like I could connect with the client. I went from a lot of repetition to every day being a new adventure -- to jumping out of bed and not being able to wait to get to work."

Jay Rizoli is a freelance writer in Franklin.