
ONDA Family Law Bolsters Firm with New Associate Frances Seman
'ONDA is known for being both fierce advocates and trusted guides, and I'm honored to join a firm that approaches family law with such humanity and excellence,' said Ms. Seman. Share
A U.S. Army veteran, longtime educator and former legal aid attorney, Ms. Seman brings a rare blend of strength, empathy and dedication to her practice.
'Frances has dedicated her career to helping others, and that passion shines through in her work,' said name partner Scott Downing. 'She is a steady and compassionate advocate, and we are excited to welcome her to the ONDA team.'
Before earning her law degree from UNT Dallas College of Law, Ms. Seman served six years in the Army, earning an honorable discharge in 1998, and spent a decade teaching middle and high school. She went on to work with Legal Aid of Northwest Texas, where she represented survivors of domestic violence. Ms. Seman also holds two master's degrees from Texas Woman's University.
'ONDA is known for being both fierce advocates and trusted guides, and I'm honored to join a firm that approaches family law with such humanity and excellence,' said Ms. Seman.
Ms. Seman recently was named to the 2025 Lawdragon 500 X – The Next Generation, which describes honorees as lawyers who 'provide a forecast of the fascinating future of global law practice.'
The addition of Ms. Seman supports ONDA's continued growth in North Texas, where the firm is known for handling complex family law disputes with precision and care.
About ONDA
Orsinger, Nelson, Downing & Anderson has served families for more than 30 years. With offices in Dallas, Frisco and San Antonio, ONDA is one of Texas' largest family law firms. Each partner is Board Certified in Family Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, and each is a member of the Texas Academy of Family Law Specialists.
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Business Insider
2 days ago
- Business Insider
This startup offered ride-hailing for women years before Uber and Lyft — and its founder isn't shying away from the competition
Uber is starting to let women request women drivers. It's about time, says Jillian Anderson. Anderson founded HERide, which started offering rides in Atlanta in 2022 — three years before Uber announced last month that it would start allowing women to request female drivers on its app. Anderson said she got the idea for HERide while working as a ride-hailing driver herself. Many of the women Anderson picked up after dark told her that male drivers often asked to take the ride off-app or tried to get their contact information, she told Business Insider. "After hearing endless stories like that for a couple years, I was like, this sounds like a feature that Uber and Lyft could just create," Anderson said. "Why haven't they implemented anything like this?" Instead of waiting for the companies to act, Anderson said she started coding her own app, recruiting women drivers, and creating HERide as an alternative. Today, the app operates in Atlanta, including at Hartsfield—Jackson Atlanta International Airport, as well as nearby Athens, Georgia. While ride-hailing is nothing new for most Americans, apps like HERide — and Uber's newest feature, called "Women Preferences" — show one potential avenue for growth in the industry: Offering special rides and services to specific groups of people, from women to older people. Uber said in July that it would pilot its rides-for-women feature in a handful of cities. Already, the company offers rides for teens and a simplified version of the app for senior citizens. Lyft also has an option for women and nonbinary riders to request a woman driver. Besides women, HERide also markets its service to LGBTQ+ clients, DeVynne Starks, the company's cofounder and director of marketing and communications, told Business Insider. "We don't just want only women to be safe," she said. "We truly do want to enforce safer ride-sharing practices for everyone." With Uber unveiling its own rides-for-women feature, HERide is now betting that it will have an edge over its bigger competitors in the places where it operates. Anderson points to one advantage: HERide guarantees riders a woman driver. Uber, meanwhile, says that its Women Preferences feature "increases your chances of being matched with a woman driver," though "it's not guaranteed." Another is that HERide uses a rate card to determine its fares instead of fluctuating rates based on demand or an even more complicated model like Uber's upfront pricing, Anderson said. Before they ride, HERide's users can use a fare estimator widget that Anderson said she coded herself and added to the ride-hailing service's website. "It's probably the No. 1 question that we get before people actually download the app," she said about the price of rides. HERide drivers, meanwhile, get 80% of each fare for rides that they complete, though Anderson says that that will be closer to 70% in the future to make the company profitable. Some Uber and Lyft drivers have told Business Insider that they often get less than half of the fare that customers pay. Anderson said that she wants to retain drivers, including those who make ride-hailing their full-time job. "If we're paying them a fair wage, I believe that we'll stay competitive in the space," Anderson said.

4 days ago
'Highballed': How disproportionate property taxes are forcing some Americans out of their homes
Bonita Anderson's favorite part of living in Baltimore is having family nearby. A family matriarch with five children and eight grandchildren, Anderson worked hard to buy a place in the city for her family to call home in 2009. "It was an accomplishment for me," she said. "That's where we used to gather to bring the family together." Last week, what was once Anderson's cherished home was listed for sale at nearly $540,000 -- more than five times what she paid for it. But Anderson won't see any of the proceeds. After more than a decade of making payments toward her $100,000 mortgage, Anderson was diagnosed with cancer in 2020. Amid mounting medical bills and property taxes, the lifelong Baltimore resident says she had to choose between fighting for her life and fighting for her home. While undergoing treatment, Anderson fell behind on her property taxes by about $5,000. In 2022, she lost her house at a Baltimore City tax sale. "I sat down and thought, 'Oh my god, I'm 70 years old and I'm homeless,'" Anderson told ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott. The City of Baltimore had put a lien on Anderson's tax debt and auctioned it off to the highest bidder -- a company that specializes in tax lien purchases -- for just $69,500. "If you can't afford to pay your property taxes and you keep missing your payments, government is going to auction your property off for back taxes," said Lawrence Levy, executive dean at the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University. Court records show Anderson tried to make good and redeem her home, paying the city $18,900 by the end of 2022 -- more than triple her outstanding taxes. But instead of putting these payments toward her back taxes, the city applied the money to taxes that had accrued under the new owner. Anderson was unknowingly paying the investor's tax bills instead of her own, allowing the company to foreclose on her home in 2023. 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They often receive "lowballed" appraisals when trying to purchase or refinance their homes, Rao explained, "but when it comes to paying their taxes, once they've owned the home ... often their assessments are proportionally higher than what they should be." 'Stripping generational wealth' In suburban Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 91-year-old Gloria Gaynor, who suffers from dementia, lost her home of 25 years because of $3,500 in taxes she didn't pay during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gaynor's daughter, Jackie Davis, told ABC station WPVI-TV that her mother stayed home during the pandemic. She skipped her annual trip to the tax office after hearing that tax collectors had paused enforcement as COVID-19 spread through the Philadelphia suburbs. When the government restarted collection efforts and the county tax office reopened, Gaynor went in and made a payment, intending to cover her previous year's taxes, according to her attorney, Alexander Barth. 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Forbes
6 days ago
- Forbes
How Cognitive Manufacturing Is Rewriting The Future Of Work
Manufacturing's next transformation isn't happening on factory floors—it's happening in workers' minds. The most consequential shift since Henry Ford's moving assembly line is not about physical layout or materials science. It's about how humans think, learn, and adapt alongside machines. For over a century, manufacturing excellence meant infrastructure, repeatability, and scale. But the next leap forward demands adaptability, cognitive agility, and loop-based learning. This is cognitive manufacturing—the fusion of AI and human ingenuity to create self-optimizing systems. At the center of this revolution is the platinum workforce: individuals who possess orchestration, systems thinking, and decision-making prowess that elevate man and machine alike. The platinum workforce is the human engine of this cognitive manufacturing revolution—defined by cognitive skills like orchestration and systems thinking, not just physical dexterity. 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This means an operator might be responsible for overseeing a fleet of cobots, managing their schedules, and troubleshooting their AI-driven workflows—a role that demands strategic oversight, not just button-pushing. This is the rise of cognitive manufacturing. And it requires an equally transformed workforce architecture. The Platinum Workforce in Practice So what does this look like on the ground? To Build the Platinum Workforce, Take Three Strategic Moves Calculate your current state using these metrics: percentage of workers comfortable with digital interfaces, average time to retrain for new processes, and cross-functional skill depth. Companies scoring above 70% are ready for augmented operations; below 50% need foundational digital literacy first. Start with one production line using platforms like Tulip (average 6-month payback) or Ready Robotics ($50K–$150K initial investment for cobot integration). Track three metrics: error reduction percentage, labor efficiency gain, and training time required. Successful pilots typically show 15–20% efficiency gains within 90 days. Deloitte research shows smart factory early adopters ("Trailblazers") achieve average three-year gains of 10–12% in manufacturing output, factory utilization, and labor productivity. McKinsey analysis of Industry 4.0 "lighthouse" factories found manufacturing costs reduced by more than 10%, warranty incidents cut by 50%, and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) improved by 11%. Implementation Priority: Start with quality control and predictive maintenance where ROI is clearest, then expand to workforce augmentation and supply chain integration. Budget 3–5% of payroll for continuous upskilling. Leading manufacturers report task compression ratios of 10:1 or higher when workers use AI copilots. Research published in MIT Sloan Management Review (2024) shows manufacturers need phased approaches: 3–6 months for pilot projects with short-term metrics, 12–18 months for full facility deployment. Cherry Bekaert analysis confirms successful digital transformation requires 12–18 months minimum with clearly defined milestones. Implementation Reality Check: A Reality Check: The Perils of Rushed Transformation Digital transformation failure rates are sobering: McKinsey, BCG, and others report 70–95% failure rates, with Forbes placing manufacturing at 84%. Common pitfalls include resistance to change, weak leadership support, and cultural mismatches. HP's $160 million ERP disaster and Revlon's $64 million rollout debacle underscore the costs. Lesson: pilot first, budget for change management, and secure operator buy-in. The Global Reality: Why This Matters Now U.S. manufacturers face rising competition. China now produces 30% of global output and boasts 5.8% productivity growth—far outpacing Germany's stagnation. China's surplus equals 10% of GDP. Germany's energy crisis and export losses compound the opportunity for agile U.S. firms. The World Economic Forum's Global Lighthouse Network co-foundded with McKinsey shows nearly 60% of manufacturing leaders are implementing AI-driven solutions. Smart factory leaders achieve 15–25% efficiency gains through predictive maintenance and analytics. First-movers in human-AI integration are already pulling ahead—delays compound competitive disadvantage. Policy and Culture Must Keep Pace Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEPs), currently financed by a mix of federal and state funding, can catalyze transformation by supporting cross-sector experimentation, while regional learning systems—modeled on Northern Italy's Emilia-Romagna—align public investment with private capacity building. 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Resilience doesn't come from automation. It comes from collective human ingenuity, augmented by technology. Let's build it—together.