When they decide to become lawyers, some people may picture themselves in drama-filled courtrooms arguing cases in front of hard-nosed judges and skeptical juries. Instead of courtrooms, though, most lawyers end up working exclusively in office buildings and conference rooms, devoting their time to contracts and compliance instead of opening statements and cross-examinations.
Chicago native Dina Torrisi Martin is one of the lucky few who made her legal dreams come true. While many attorneys never step foot in a courtroom, she spent more than two decades in front of a judge and jury.
After graduating from the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, she landed her first job at a law firm that allowed her to start trying cases immediately. “They threw me in the deep end of the pool, and within my first two years I had tried probably 10 different cases,” Torrisi Martin says. “I was lucky because there’s a lot of different things you can do with law. But my dream was always to do trial work.”
Torrisi Martin lived that dream for more than 20 years, during which time she specialized in medical malpractice defense, representing insurance companies, hospitals, and health care professionals—everyone from nurses to physical therapists to surgeons. She spent time at three separate firms over the course of her career, ultimately becoming a shareholder at Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym.
She’d made it to the top of the mountain. Then she decided to jump.
“I’d been doing my job for a long time and had achieved pretty much all of my goals,” Torrisis Martin says. “I had tried a good number of cases and won a good number of cases. I’d worked my way up through different professional organizations and was about to become president of one of them. I had a good client base. There just wasn’t much left for me to accomplish.” That’s when she started thinking of leaving, “Which was crazy,” she says, “because not too many people leave at that stage in their profession. I could have coasted for the rest of my career. But I felt the compulsion to get out, so I left.”
It wasn’t about running away from her previous career. Rather, it was about running toward a new one. “There’s so much out there in the world to experience, and I really wanted to be able to learn new things,” continues Torrisi Martin, who had a particularly strong craving for mission-focused work. “I wanted to get involved in something where I would be able to do something for the greater good.”
She seized an opportunity to do exactly that in 2021. That’s when she became General Counsel of the Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation (IDFPR), where she worked with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office, state legislators, and others on impactful issues like reproductive health regulations, responsible use of artificial intelligence, and regulatory development of the cannabis industry.
Then, in spring 2024, Torrisi Martin accepted her current position as vice president and general counsel of the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI), recently renamed as the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. “Growing up, the Museum of Science and Industry was my favorite place to visit, and when my daughters were young, we were members and frequent visitors,” she said in a press release upon joining MSI. “I am excited that my relationship with MSI has come full circle and honored to serve MSI’s mission to inspire the inventive genius in everyone.”
Another mission Torrisi Martin feels honored to serve is that of The Chicago School, whose Board of Trustees she joined in 2022.
“The Chicago School is all about diversity and trying to make mental health more accessible to people, particularly people who typically haven’t had access to mental health services, by helping people in underserved communities become social workers and psychologists,” Torrisi Martin says. “When I talk about doing mission-focused work, that’s what I’m talking about. Because of my background working with healthcare professionals, and also being familiar with the regulatory landscape, The Chicago School is somewhere I wanted to be, where I felt like I could provide a different and valuable viewpoint.”
Given her legal background, that viewpoint often is grounded in risk management. “When the Board is thinking about certain issues or opportunities, I can see in my mind what might go wrong and how that can be prevented,” Torrisi Martin says. “That’s important, because a nonprofit can’t fulfill its mission if it’s mired in litigation.”
Torrisi Martin also is keen to leverage her health care network and expertise to help The Chicago School stand up a new osteopathic medical school in Chicago, the proposed Illinois College of Osteopathic Medicine at The Chicago School. “Because I know so many people in the healthcare industry in Chicago, I’m really looking forward to being a part of that,” she concludes. “I think that would be the highlight of my role as a Board member.”