When the long-term implications of COVID-19 first began to make themselves felt, business as usual became anything but. As people scrambled to make sense of the quick-moving scourge and mount an effective response, the clock was ticking. What we learned about coronavirus resulted in a cataclysmic shift in nearly every aspect of the way we interact, both personally and professionally. While the pandemic’s devastating consequences may ultimately be quantifiable with figures and statistics someday, there’s simply no way to qualify the extent of its life-altering impact on society. However, for those, like Robert L. McKenna III, who were prescient enough to foresee the coming storm while it was still on the horizon and mitigate some of its destructive power, there has been at least something of a silver lining to the ominous cloud.
Robert McKenna III, a founding partner at the Huntington Beach, California-based law firm Kjar, McKenna & Stockalper LLP, had an early inkling COVID-19 was going to be a bigger deal than most suspected. In February of 2020, as the first reported cases of the disease began to filter into the U.S., a conversation between McKenna and a buddy who worked for a bio-tech forward global trading and venture capital firm tipped him off that major trouble was brewing.