Board Member Profile: Hank Shea
Hank’s favorite part of his role on the Board is being able to spread the word about the VDP.
Hank Shea is currently the Chair of the Veterans Defense Project (“VDP”) Board, and his vast legal experience and dedication is essential to the organization. Hank has close family ties to veterans as his grandfather served in World War I and his father served during the Korean Conflict, both with the US Army. Hank has a plethora of legal experience due to a lifetime career dedicated to helping others, but he believes strongly that the work he has done with the VDP over the last five years has been some of the most rewarding of his career. The pride he feels towards helping veterans is immense.
Hank attended Georgetown University on an Army ROTC scholarship. It was expected he would start four years of active duty after graduating and in anticipation of that, he joined Georgetown’s rifle team to learn to shoot and their Ranger unit to learn to lead. As graduation was drawing near, Hank’s next youngest brother, Pat, encouraged him to take the LSAT and think about the possibility of attending law school. Hank ended up accepting a seat in Harvard Law’s class of 1981 and was able to defer his active duty obligations until he graduated. It was at Harvard that Hank met his late wife, Anne Simonett, who would go on to become the Chief Judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, before her untimely death in 1995.
After Hank’s second year of law school, he accepted an offer to fulfill his active duty requirements by serving in the Army’s Office of the General Counsel in the Pentagon. His clients included Arlington National Cemetery, the Panama Canal Commission, and the Army’s Civilian Marksmanship Program. During this time, among many other things, he testified before Congress, traveled the country for crisis management, and worked on various policy changes regarding both minorities and women. Hank was so fulfilled from his four years of active duty in this role that he then served an additional seven years of reserve duty in the same Office.
Hank and Anne moved to Minnesota when they started their family. He took a job as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota, where he served for 20 years. Although he worked on a range of cases, he spent the great majority of his time successfully prosecuting economic and corporate crimes. During this time, Hank joined the University of St. Thomas School of Law (“UST”) as a Senior Distinguished Fellow, where he has served for the last 18 years. Hank also serves as a Fellow at UST’s Initiative on Restorative Justice and Healing, and Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions. It was ultimately through the connections he made at the University of St. Thomas that brought him to his work at the VDP.
When current VDP co-founder Ryan Else, was a third year law student, he invited Hank, who was teaching at the law school, to come hear VDP co-founder, Brock Hunter, speak about his work on behalf of veterans. From there, a wonderful friendship between the three men was formed, and Hank regularly had Brock or Ryan speak to his classes each year thereafter. In 2019, Hank joined the VDP Board, followed by his becoming part of the Executive Committee in 2021.
In his Chair position, Hank oversees the Executive Committee, which is the operational part of the Board, as well as advises on the daily efforts of VDP co-founders, Brock Hunter and Ryan Else. Much of Hank’s time is dedicated to strategic planning and fundraising as a primary goal of the VDP is to expand its mission to a national level. In particular, the VDP hopes to build on recent Minnesota legislation, the Veterans Restorative Justice Act (“VRJA”), and the newly created Veterans Justice Act (“VJA”), to expand its legislative advocacy efforts into more states to be able to reach and help more veterans.
Hank’s favorite part of his role on the Board is being able to spread the word about the VDP and recruit people with similar passions for helping others. Hank also finds great joy in his Board work as it reminds him of the debt we all owe veterans who have served this country, including both his father and grandfather, and other relatives.
Hank married his wife Chris Shea in 1997 when he was the Chief of the Economic Crimes Section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and she was President of the Betty Crocker division at General Mills. The two have spent the last 27 years happily raising their four children. Now, they spend most of their free time seeing their children and their four grandchildren as much as possible. Hank feels that he owes much of his success to the unwavering support of his wife Chris and his entire family. The VDP is incredibly fortunate to have Hank’s commitment and compassion on the Board of the organization.
- Written by Sara Weber, University of St. Thomas Law Student Extern for the VDP
