From Welcome To Windhoek: A Judge’s Journey - An interview with Dean Rich Leonard

This is the remarkable story of how a boy from rural Welcome, North Carolina grew up to become an innovative judge, global citizen, and go-to guy for court-building in emerging African nations.

Along the way, he organizes the first-ever judicial conference in Tanzania, jogs with children in Lusaka, dances with a python, and has adventures ranging from the harrowing to the hilarious.

In the end, he discovers the distance between Welcome and Windhoek is not as great as he imagined, and that both places now occupy adjoining spaces in his heart.

The story of Rich Leonard: Dean Leonard’s work on the bench and at Campbell Law was publicly recognized when North Carolina Lawyers Weekly named him the 2014 Lawyer of the Year. Most recently he was recognized among the top CEOs by the Triangle Business Journal in 2021 and he was named Bankruptcy Law Lawyer of the Year by Global 100 magazine. He also received the 2018 McKnight Renaissance Lawyer Award from the North Carolina Bar Association and the same year, he was elected to serve as chair-elect of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s General Alumni Association. He then served as chair from May 2019 to May 2020.