What made you decide to return to Iowa?

It was a family-driven decision. My wife (Lizzy) and I have an 18-month-old son (Louie), and our families are both in Iowa. We just decided it would be nice to have grandparents closer than 350 miles away. My wife’s parents (Gerry and Mary Lou Neugent) live here in Des Moines, so we get to see them quite a bit. Another reason we came back is that my family is in the banking business up in northwest Iowa. My dad (Robert Dixon) runs (Citizens State Bank) in Sheldon and (Rolfe State Bank) in Rolfe. I’m involved at the board level with the Rolfe bank, and I’ve had to attend almost all of the board meetings by telephone. It just gives me the opportunity to be a lot closer now than I used to be.

Did you become a CPA with the intent of going into banking?

I kind of always thought I would eventually go to law school; I just wasn’t sure exactly when. The accounting program at Iowa was highly regarded, and I went through the painful paces of taking the CPA exam. I worked in public accounting as an auditor for a year, and it didn’t take me long to realize that wasn’t for me. So in that year, I started applying for law school.

Was securities law a natural draw for you?

It was. I started out in Vedder Price’s corporate and banking practice. With my banking background, I thought that was a natural area for me. Unfortunately, after I got toVedder Price, that practice wasn’t as busy as when I got recruited into it. So I branched out, ultimately into the securities and investment management practices. I worked in the investment services group, where the clients are mutual fund companies and investment advisers.

What do you view as your biggest career accomplishment?

I got to be the lead senior associate on an initial public offering for a closed-end fund that’s traded on the New York Stock Exchange for a client based in New York. I got to lead negotiations with the Wall Street investment bankers and their attorneys, handled the Securities and Exchange Commission filing process and also the negotiations with the underwriters. To be in the lead role for a transaction that winds up in The Wall Street Journal, that was big for me.

What will your focus be with Davis Brown?

My focus has really been to reach out to people in the asset management business, to try to do some of the work I was doing in Chicago. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that there’s much more of that business here than I had expected. I also did quite a bit of work for an insurance company in Chicago. We served as claims counsel to an insurer in that asset management area.

What areas of pro bono work interest you?

I got affiliated with this organization called the Chicago Community Loan Fund, a nonprofit lender that provided pre-development financing, mostly for low-income housing projects. I would prepare the loan documents for loans for preliminary expenses associated with the project. I got to know the people in the organization, so I did quite a bit of work for them.

Tell me about your family.

My wife is an attorney as well; in fact, I met her at Drake Law School. I was two years ahead of her at Drake, so I went to Chicago first and she followed me two years later. In Chicago, she was working for a small litigation boutique firm, just four or five attorneys, specializing in securities-based litigation. She’s not working yet in Des Moines, but I can attest that she is working on her Iowa bar application. She wants to find something, but right now we’ve been focused on getting settled in our house.