Episode 170: Rachel Barchie
Executive Director, Simms/Mann Institute and Foundation
00:53:42
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Show Notes
Rachel Barchie shares her journey from BigLaw attorney to nonprofit and family foundation leader. She offers tips for those interested in transitioning from the practice of law to other arenas, and how legal skills add value to other leadership roles.
About Rachel Barchie
Rachel oversees all aspects of the Simms/Mann Foundation and Institute’s day-to-day operations, working closely with the President and Board of Directors to identify and develop programs that empower people and communities through a whole-person approach.
Rachel was previously the Executive Director of another family foundation in Beverly Hills with a focus on education, arts and healthcare. Prior to joining the philanthropy sector, she practiced litigation and employment law for a decade at a Los Angeles law firm. Rachel also served as board chair for a national nonprofit organization that focuses on healthy relationships for teens.
Rachel has a JD from the UCLA School of Law and graduated from Scripps College with a bachelor’s degree in Foreign Languages. She and her husband, two children, and rescue kitty live in Los Angeles.
Transcript
In this episode, I'm very pleased to have a fellow graduate of UCLA Law School and an amazing person and lawyer, Rachel Barchie, who is the Executive Director of The Simms/Mann Institute & Foundation and has quite an interesting career trajectory. Rachel, welcome.
I'm so pleased to be here with you.
I'm so glad to share your journey because it's an interesting one. You're doing such impactful work with the legal training that you have and your great nonprofit skills as well. I want to start first with your law school and law practice journey, then the transition to philanthropy. What originally inspired you or gave you the idea to go to law school?
I was at Scripps College. I was studying foreign languages and had that thing of being a Liberal Arts major, I'd always wanted to be a teacher. Interestingly, both my parents were teachers and they tried to discourage me from becoming a teacher and think outside the box of what other kinds of things I could do. At some point, when I was in my sophomore or junior year of college, my mom started encouraging me to maybe think about law school. I wasn't sure about it, but I'm from Eugene, Oregon. The University of Oregon and the law school are there. I remember I was home visiting over a winter break. We went and stopped by the law school to pick up the course catalog so I could see all of the different things that were possible there.
I had always had an interest in nonprofit work, even as early as middle school or high school. I did a lot of volunteering and on to college. When I saw all the different possibilities in terms of the different types of law, even the courses that were offered, it piqued my interest in terms of thinking about all the things that I could possibly do with a Law degree.
I decided to go for it and applied to law schools when I was in my senior year then went straight through. I ended up getting into UCLA School of Law, which I was very excited about. Both of my parents were Bruins. They had met at UCLA for undergrad. At the time, when I was applying to colleges, that was too big of an environment for me. I wanted to be in a smaller liberal arts school, but when I was looking at law schools, that seemed like a great fit, so I was delighted to get in and then ended up going to UCLA.
I had the same sense about it. UCLA as an undergrad was too much, but as the law school, it was right. It is a much smaller community and you can handle that.
Something interesting happened that kick-started the whole journey. It was when I was in my senior year at Scripps and I had already been accepted to UCLA for law school. I knew I was going there the following year. I went to this conference that they had called Life After Scripps where alumni would come back and talk about what they were doing in their careers.
There was a woman named Liza who had been a graduate of Scripps and also of UCLA Law. She was a staff attorney at an organization Break the Cycle. She spoke. I resonated with the work that she was doing and so she and I made that connection. She ended up being at this public interest fair during my first year at UCLA that I went to and I met her. I ended up applying for and getting a law internship with Break the Cycle the summer after my first year of law school. Everything went from there. That's also how I know you.
I had no idea, Rachel, about how early that connection was to Break the Cycle. Liza was amazing. That's so cool.
I did that Break the Cycle, which was amazing. Break the Cycles is an organization. Unfortunately, it ended up closing its doors a couple of years ago, but it was an organization that was dedicated to representing teens who were survivors of dating violence. It started off with direct legal advocacy and grew more broadly into other advocacy, awareness, and prevention programs over time.
I did that. For the summer after my second year of law school, I was looking at different law firms to be a summer associate. It turned out that one of my top choices was a law firm called Greenberg Glusker. One of the board members to Break the Cycle was Michael Bales. He was a Partner at Greenberg Glusker and so he put in a good word for me. That's why I ended up being a summer associate and that's where I ended up going in practicing law.
I haven't realized that connection between Greenberg and Break the Cycle as well. Everything was bringing you there, Rachel.
I know. It's funny. I was having this conversation with my husband because we were thinking back and he was like, "Did any of the internships that you ever did in college or law school matter?” I said, "The Break the Cycle kick-started everything when I started.” I hadn't put it all together either when I started thinking about that.
It's flowing back and forth. If you missed one signpost, there was another one to connect you to it. That’s pretty cool. You originally had this idea of nonprofit work when you went to law school, but then you went into practice at Greenberg for several years after law school.
Even during my time there, I did a lot of pro-bono work. That was the part of my practice that I enjoyed the most in a lot of ways. I was a litigator, so I was doing all business cases and employment cases and getting amazing skills that way. There are cases that spoke to my heart the most in those pro-bono cases. For example, I had the opportunity to represent a transgender HIV-positive individual from Mexico who has been seeking asylum for a couple of years.
A very young lawyer handled that case. I worked with that, but it helped start up a small claims clinic where our lawyer would go into Southwestern Law School every month and supervise law students who are helping small claims litigants. There are a lot of different things like that that I got to do during my time at Greenberg that were rewarding as well. I always still had it in my mind that that's the direction that I was still leaning. I was wanting to be more in the public interest side of things.
They're all pretty wide-ranging in how they show up, whether it's the small claims clinic or the asylum case, but the commonality as well. You and I both have this affinity for pro-bono work. It is the commonality, the meaning, and the impact of those particular cases, whether for those individuals who are receiving the legal assistance but also the impact overall on the law and the legal system, which is satisfying. You ended up exactly being on the board of Break the Cycle.
That was an interesting path, too. I had been a law intern in 2003. A few years later, I joined the junior board. They called it Break the Cycle Young Professionals. We're all in our twenties young professionals help put on events doing fundraising and raising for Break the Cycle. At some point, I was invited to join the big board and that was exciting. I was excited to move into that position.
There was a leadership transition and I was asked to become the president of the board, which I did for a couple of years, and then there was a leadership transition on the staff side and we were left without an executive director. It was at the same time that I had decided after much deliberation to leave Greenberg Glusker after practicing law for several years. Unwittingly, I ended up being in the position of saying, “I need to take a step back and focus on my family,” but then being in a few months period of being the intern.
Intern is very busy.
On a volunteer basis, it was the most stressful I've probably ever been. That's worse than studying for the bar or working on jury trials. There was a time when I was afraid that we were going to have to close the doors of the organization and we had to let go of staff. There were budgetary issues and I was way over my head. I had never done anything like this before. It was a real challenge for me. The good thing that came out of it is that we were able to quickly do a search and bring in someone who is a great national player, Amy Sanchez. She ended up successfully running the organization for several years until it did unfortunately end up shutting down during COVID, but it got several more good years in.
At that point when you're in the transitional role like that, you're like, “My job is to transition this organization into continued stability and moving forward.” You accomplished that. There's so much in that story that is so interesting. The first thing is if people haven't served on nonprofit boards or corporate boards, moving from being on the board or the chair of the board to being like the head of the organization and the staff is highly unusual.
That move is an unusual move, but it makes sense in retrospect for you because you're like, “I had this interest in all aspects of nonprofits and public interest work.” Given your experience as an intern and other roles in addition to the board, you had a pretty 360-degree view of the organization, which helped in the transition. If you had someone come being the intern who had no familiarity with any of that. It would have been much harder to turn it to a new director because you have to spend time figuring out how everything works in this organization.
That's true. Although, I will say I felt like I had a good 360. It is so different being in the position of board chair versus being a person who's around in terms of having to get on these meetings with some of our huge funders. I didn't have visibility. There were some of these that were multi-year commitments. There were certain deliverables that were to be met.
I was a board member. I have no idea about that.
It was a lot of my fire and I was leaning on the senior staff to help. We were able to move through that process, but it was a big and good learning experience. I could honestly say now there is almost no harder job out there than being the executive director of a fundraising nonprofit because every day, you're having to live and breathe and trying to keep the lights on in the organization basically. In most other types of organizations, that's not a problem.
There is almost no harder job out there than being an executive director of a nonprofit or fundraising. Every day, you have to live and breathe trying to keep the lights on of the organization.
You're in a survival cashflow mode, but you're also like, “We have to create and provide great services too.” Being able to switch both of those, that's a special skill. The other thing that is interesting about that is that you said yes to something that you had never done before. That's a good thing for people, especially women, to be reminded of because often, we're like, "We need to have all these twenty things in place before we could take that role.” You said, “I'm going to do this.” Part of it sounds like the timing was right because you were looking to transition. It seemed like it was a good opportunity to transition more into philanthropy and nonprofit work, but still, as easily, you could have said, "Maybe not this. Not now.”
Part of it was I almost didn't feel like I had any other choice because everyone else was not in. I was afraid that if someone didn't step in to try to smooth this transition, everything might fall apart and I could not. I was obligated as a fiduciary of the organization. As a board member, I felt like I had an obligation to step in and give it my all, but I do think that's a very good point. There's that stigma where women will only apply for a job if they have 90% of the skills or something. Maybe I'm exaggerating that, but I do think that's important.
When women are offered a stretch opportunity, it's important to not discount that and to give it serious consideration of taking that stretch opportunity. Even if it's not easy and even if things don't end up going well, it's always a real opportunity in hindsight for learning and growth and taking you to whatever the next thing might be.
Looking externally at your career journey, that seems pretty pivotal from the board role to the ED role at Break the Cycle. From there, you launched into a broader holistic career in philanthropy and foundations. Talk a little bit about that. I'm more familiar with nonprofits on board work and less with the foundation.
I was, too. When I left Greenberg Glusker in November of 2014, it was after a long consideration and discussion with my husband. At that time, I left without anything else lined up. I made the decision to leave before the Break the Cycle position even came up. I was already going to be leaving and I had this real sense that I needed to step away and take off the horse blinders because it's easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day of like, “I'm working on this case. I'm preparing for this trial.”
There's never a good time to say, “I need to take some time to look at what else is out there.” I had this sense that there was more out there and I didn't know what it was. I made that decision, and then I had my stint to Break the Cycle and that was for a few months. I was doing some contract legal work with another firm doing some research and drafting things on the side.
After a couple of months, one of my former partners from Greenberg Glusker reached out to me. She reached out to me and she said, “I'm working with a family and they're looking to hire their first executive director of their family foundation on a part-time basis.” She knew I was interested in nonprofits because that's something I had told everybody when I decided that's what I wanted to explore. She said, “I know you have an interest in nonprofits. Are you interested in meeting them?” I said, “Of course.”
That was Jerry Moss who is the M of A&M Records. I ended up meeting with him and his then-wife. They basically hired me on the spot. I left the meeting and called one of my dear friends from law school. He has worked almost all of his career in philanthropy in corporate social responsibility and different places. I was just hired as the executive director of the Moss Foundation. I don't know anything about the philanthropy world.
He connected me to a bunch of people who were the executive directors at other family foundations in Los Angeles. I started to meet my counterparts. I became very involved in Southern California Grantmakers, which is the local body of all the local foundations and grantmaking organizations. I went through the whole fundamentals of grantmaking and training through SCG.I just dived right into this and learned as I went, but that was a good experience.
I was there. I worked with that foundation for a few years, but midstream, I was approached by a woman named Sylia Obagi who had been with the Annenberg Foundation and the Roy + Patricia Disney Foundation. She had launched her own philanthropy consulting firm called The Generative Group. She asked me to help her on a part-time basis, supporting her with some of her client work, doing research, and helping her facilitate a family gathering for a large foundation.
I was doing that for a while. That was interesting because I was doing my work at the Moss Foundation, but then I was also getting a perspective on what some other foundations were doing and other things in philanthropy. It's doing that for a little while, and then at some point, I was reached out to by a woman who had her own consulting firm. Her name is Rachel Levin. She had a variety of different clients and one of them was The Simms/Mann Family Foundation.
She was going to be going and working exclusively for one of her clients. She was looking to find new homes for her other clients. She was helping them interview people who could be philanthropic advisors for Simms/Mann. I ended up going through that interview process, which was many rounds of interviews and I ended up getting that position. For a couple of years, I was splitting my time part-time with the Moss Foundation and part-time with the Simms/Mann Family Foundation as a philanthropic advisor.
Going back to Greenberg Glusker, the Simms are a long-time client of Greenberg Glusker and I’ve represented Ron Simms in one of his real estate. He doesn't remember, but I and a couple of my colleagues from Greenberg Glusker worked there. One of them is the general counsel. There were all those connections too.
There is trust and familiarity, so that's good.
In both positions, the fact that I was a lawyer was very important. With Simms/Mann, it is one of the deciding factors because it did give that level of credibility and level of trust of, "If this person has practiced as a lawyer and has been a partner in a law firm, we know that they have a level of professionalism and analytical skills.” It helps us with our philanthropy. A couple of years ago, the Moss Foundation went through a transition and so did Simms/Mann. I ended up moving up into the full-time Executive Director role at Simms/Mann.
Being a lawyer gives you a unique level of credibility. People will expect you to be professional and possess excellent analytical skills.
I was going to ask you about the legal training or critical thinking and analytical skills from your legal training and legal work. How do you think that translates to the skills that you need in your roles?
First of all, the most direct application is there are legal matters that come up. For the most part, if there are more simple grant agreements or vendor contracts, sometimes I draft those. If it's more complicated, then typically we will retain outside counsel, but I am able to be the one supervising outside counsel. I know the questions to ask and am able to issue spots for what are areas in these. Some of our grant agreements, if they're multi-million-dollar agreements tend to be very complex and have a lot of deliverables.
There needs to be a lot of thought that needs to go into that. I feel like having that legal background to be able to issue spot in that way, but then even setting aside the actual legal piece, there is a lot of research and due diligence that does go into trying to figure out what organizations to support, what way, how to how to build that out, and what a program might look like. That critical thinking comes into play there. Also, being able to read proposals, analyze them, and write up my thoughts about them. I'm not shy about public speaking and having been a litigator. I'm comfortable presenting my ideas.
That's important because you're presenting in meetings. You're also doing public speaking. That is an important skill to be comfortable with.
I'm also the face of the organization in a lot of ways. The Simms are very involved and very hands-on. They're often involved, too, but sometimes I'm the primary person, and so, to be able to be the person who's directly interfacing with head people at UCLA Health or other organizations, it helps to have that type of background.
Each of the foundations has its own priorities or particular areas they focus on in terms of philanthropy. You've been pretty agile moving between. The subject matter could be very different across all of them.
That's one of the things I love about it. That was one of my favorite things about litigation. I felt like I was constantly learning about a new industry or a new area of the law and having to be a generalist. It's the same here. Every new thing, I get to learn so much about and I'm still learning so much every day. I love that. My boss, Dr. Victoria Mann Simms, who is the head of the foundation, she's a lifelong learner. She's someone who is always very curious and asks a lot of amazing questions about things.
Litigation allows you to learn about a new industry, giving you the chance to discover something new every day.
It's fun to be in that job where we're learning together and trying to dive into an area. An area that we focused on a lot over the past year is nursing and the nursing workforce. One of the things is we worked with one of our nurse consultants and created this initiative called Off The Chart: Rewarding Nursing Greatness. We're working with different health systems to shine a light on the fact that nurses are the backbone of our healthcare system. I don't have a background in healthcare. I've learned so much from our consultants and the different nurses that we've worked with about all of that. It's been exciting.
That's a good point about translatable skills and what's similar between your law practice and what you're doing now, which is litigators of all stripes, whether it's in the trial court or appellate like I do, we love that it's new. We're good at getting up to speed quickly about different clients and different subject matters. We like that it changes. We like that variety. It's interesting for you to recognize that and say, “That's what I like about this, too. I'm good at it,” because that's what I did so often in whatever case I was working on. I enjoy that. If I had one type of case or one type of subject matter all the time, I would not still be practicing.
That's the thing that I find interesting about working at a foundation and funding a lot of different issue areas and different organizations. Often, if you're in a nonprofit organization, it can be easy to get in a silo because you're worried about the bottom line of your organization and the programs that you're running. Whereas we as funders have the privilege and the luxury of being able to step back, take a bird's eye view, look at the whole landscape of what everybody is doing out there, and figure out, “Where can we fit in? Where can we try to help support to make the most impact?” That's always interesting to try to figure that out.
That was an interesting thread that I was going to follow, too. There are priority areas or particular areas that the foundation might be interested in, but you have a much more big-picture holistic view like, "Other people are already doing A, B, and C. We don't need to reinvent the wheel or do that. Where can we fit in and make the biggest difference?” In that question, you're looking at larger issues or questions or things to be solved, problem-solving, and figuring out how you can add to that mosaic, which is also well served by your legal training.
That's been interesting. As part of this nursing work, I've become part of a small funder's network of big national funders who have already been funding nursing for a very long time. Already, I've learned so much from all of them because these are folks who are supporting in all sorts of different ways, whether it's funding nursing schools and capital campaigns or it's helping with scholarships for nurses or faculty support, or the nursing workforce on a health system side. It is learning from them how they've done things and looking at what the broader trends are, then trying to figure out what is our piece of the puzzle because we're one foundation. We're a medium-sized foundation, but where can we have the most incremental impact?
You're right. It's different from serving or needing one particular nonprofit that is handling a problem in a certain way and saying, “This is our niche. This is how we're working,” and building up from the ground up in a way in terms of what people need in direct services. Whereas you can get outside that discreet view and say, “Where can we make the most impact in a way that fits with our mission and all of that?” That's interesting. It's valuable having had the time, however stressful it was. At Break the Cycle both as a board director and in that time as ED, it has valuable experience and information for the particular role that you're in now.
I agree.
All the connections as you've described them, I feel like the Break the Cycle connection was meant to be. If one thing didn't get you involved, something else was. You were meant to be there. I feel like you were meant to be able to be there to step in for the time that was crucial for the organization. Sometimes when people think, “I'm not going to practice,” they leave the law behind, but you build relationships and those relationships have been integral to your philanthropy career.
It’s interesting because I wasn't building those relationships for that purpose. In fact, the particular partner who introduced me to the Moss family is someone who I'd worked with a lot and I had a great working relationship with, but it's not like I'd ever had in my mind, "This person is going to help me get my next thing.” I felt like I was lost at sea. I had a few moments where I was like, “Did I make it?”
Do I need to go back and be like, “Can I come back?” People had done that at Greenberg, had left and come back. I was like, “Am I going to be one of those people?” You never know at the time, but those relationships are important for your day-to-day working relationship and to have those good relationships then you don't know where that will end up leading you.
Also, you made people aware of what you're interest was and why you were leaving and you had a plan in mind and then having people know that. When there is an opportunity, they're like, “I wonder if this would be a good fit.” That's another thing. It’s being clear when you're transitioning like that about what you're interested in doing. That can give people the opportunity to have the light bulb go on. You’re on the right opportunity. You’re going to help yourself and help others by making it easy for them to put two and two together.
I’ve been so grateful to the people all along the way who have helped pull me up to the next thing. I try to pay that forward in a way. Sometimes people reach out to me and they say, “I'm practicing law, but I would like to move into something else.” I always try to make time for those conversations. That's why I love what you're doing on this show because it is so important for people to know that they are not stuck. Whatever career they start with in law, they can always move. There's always a million other things that you can do and we're going to have long careers. You can feel stuck when you're 5 years in, 10 years in, or even 20 years in because you've got many more years ahead of you in your career.
What feels right or is the right place to be at one point in time may change as you go through life for various reasons, so be open to that as well.
I agree. I was telling someone the other day that I was meeting with a colleague who is also a lawyer in the philanthropy space but working in the community foundation. She's someone who used to work with my husband in a law firm many years ago and she has a young baby. My kids are a little older now. I was thinking back to when they were young babies. I had always felt this drive to like, “I still have to. I'm going to continue working.” I was trying to move up in the philanthropy world.
I was very focused on that, but then I was telling her those years are also very short. Not that I regret any part of what I've done because it's gotten me here and it's amazing, but I do think that there are seasons of our life. There are times when you may want to take a step back for a time. I was working part-time. It was a tough decision to make. It was a huge pay cut and it was a huge pivot, but it was what felt good at the time.
There was a time when I was concerned like, “Am I still moving in a forward direction in my career?” It ended up all working out. People should feel comfortable that just because you go in one direction or you feel like you want to take more time with family or explore a different career path or whatever the reason is doesn't mean that you're like completely stepping off the escalator and you're never going to get back on. There are seasons and you'll come back to a time where you'll want something different and that's okay.
That's an important point, especially for women whose lives are more fluid in that way. There are a lot of different things going on at different points and times. That sense of, “If I make this particular decision to not be going full bor at one point in time doesn't mean that's it for all time.” With each decision, sometimes we do think like, “This is it. Once I do that, there's no changing,” but that's not true at all.
Our lives personally and otherwise can be quite fluid. There's an interesting book by Dr. Lucy Ryan out of the UK that was published about the midlife collision where everything's coming together. Parents are getting older and various things are happening. Women may step back from particular roles at that point in time, but immediately, after things get under control, she said those women are so ambitious. They either switch careers. They go into something else. It's not like that period was a tough one, but now they're like, “I'm ready to do whatever it is.” Maybe the same career or a different career, but they're very focused on accomplishing things. That’s just another good reminder.
I feel like women because we are so often caregivers in one way or another, we are juggling a million different things. That's its own skill, too, which is sometimes underestimated, but being able to juggle all those balls in the air and keep it together is its own superpower.
Women knowing how to juggle different balls in their lives and keep them in the air is a superpower.
That's a whole other thing. Keeping all the different tracks in order and being able to move between them is a different set of skills. You're right, Rachel. What do you tell the folks who you talk to about, “I'm thinking about not practicing anymore? I'm thinking about going into nonprofit work.” What advice do you give them?
I try to open their eyes to all the different types of nonprofit roles that are out there. That's something I was never aware of. I was aware of just being on the nonprofit side. You could be a staff member of a nonprofit and it's raising money or doing work in whatever cause. I realize there's that, which is very important and wonderful. There are legal service nonprofit organizations. There are foundations, community foundations, and affiliate organizations that help nonprofits. There are all these different ways that you can fit in and you can enter in. There are certain places where there are jobs posted that people might not know to look at, but they're good places to look for those opportunities that people might otherwise miss.
That's great because this sense of what is possible, what's available, and what that means to be in that space can mean so many different things. You talked a little bit about this. I would think about mentoring or people who are pop up personal board of directors when you get your first position. Can you talk about that a little bit about what mentoring has looked like for you? Sometimes people have a sense of what mentoring is supposed to look like and it looks different in different settings.
I'm not someone who I feel has had one mentor throughout. I feel like I've had so many different people at different stages of my career who have helped me in different ways than anything from so many of the partners when I was at Greenberg Glusker. There we're amazing mentors to me both in terms of the practice of law and little nuggets that even now I think of sometimes when I'm doing work of different things that they had taught me along the way.
In the philanthropy world, anything from peers to people who have been doing it for a long time. Even my boss now is such a mentor to me because, at the time that I started with the Simms/Mann Foundation, I still was not terribly seasoned in philanthropy. I was still very much a beginner. This is also been a big growth opportunity for me and she's been a philanthropist for decades.
I've learned a lot from her, too. It is not being afraid to ask for help and to reach out think of who in your network can help you in whatever place you've ended up. I was very lucky that I had a dear friend from law school who had already been in the philanthropy world for a long time. He's one of these people who knows everybody so he was able to connect me with a lot of different people right away.
Sometimes from time to time, if I am thinking of like, “I need to talk to someone or pick their brain about something,” I'll go to my LinkedIn and scroll through like, “Who else is doing work in this field that I can reach to?” I'm always amazed that people will pop up who I may not have talked to in several years, but people are always very happy to hear from you. People want to share their expertise and, for the most part, are very generous. I like to do that when I can and I like to do that for other people when I can.
Exactly, pay that forward to other folks. That's an important point of asking for help or asking for input or someone's advice or experience. Sometimes, people will be hesitant to ask, but people are quite willing to share if you ask them. Usually, they are willing to get on the phone or provide input, but you have to be willing to make the ask. That's a good point.
You have to be respectful of people's time because people are very busy. Maybe it's just, “Can we have a fifteen-minute phone call over lunch?” Most of the time, people are flattered to be asked to be honest. When people reach out to me for my advice, I'm flattered. I'm happy that I feel like I'm in a position where I could be helpful to somebody else. Most people probably feel that way.
For law students, that's a good point you made, which is, “What are you asking for?” “I'm asking for X amount of your time for this particular question.” It makes it easier for someone to say yes and it isn't a huge immediate imposition. If there's a follow-on from that, then you could have coffee or lunch or whatever it is that you want to do. Make that discreet ask of what you are asking of someone much of their time and be as respectful as possible about it.
Also, to make sure that it comes across that is informational as opposed to like, “I'm asking you for a job.” A law student could get confused about that line because when you're a law student, what do you want? You want to get a job somewhere but you go so quickly from point A to point B. If you're out there to do informational interviews, you have to make it very clear that you're not coming and saying, “Please give me an internship.”
The whole informational thing is an important point as well. That's a good one because I've received different things and different ways from people. It's when it's clear and it's informational that people are happy to provide information about their experience. It may lead to additional references or a job down the line.
You never know that if you connect with this person again, they could call you months down the line.
That's good. It is to be conscious of that when you're asking for that input. I love that, your willingness to ask and to ask in a particular way. I love that story of your friend and you're saying, “911.” You know all these people. “Now that I have this position, I'd like to you know research some of this and get some input from folks.” You know who to call to ask that. That's the other thing. It’s being conscious of people's strengths, skills, and all of that when you're asking for their input as well. Somebody else might have been like, “I don't know.”
He was on it. That same day, he had invested in all these different people. I knew he would and I will do the same for him.
There are people like that. That's their strength. They enjoy connecting people and helping people in that way. They're just on it like, "I'll do it,” and by the end of the day, there's five email connections and they've done all this stuff. For some people, that would be like, “I'm not comfortable doing that.” That's their personality not being asked. That's an important thing that you understand people's strengths and comfort levels when you're asking for their assistance. You tailor it to the person.
I appreciate that you also talk to others who are thinking about transitioning out of law practice to something else because you're fostering the next leaders in that regard and helping people make the leap or decide whether they should make the leap. In some ways, where you are now was pretty foreshadowed by your initial interest in going to law school, but on the other hand, you couldn't have possibly known the details or even the world of foundations as opposed to being in a nonprofit.
I feel like in hindsight, if you create the highlight reel, it looks like a very linear path, but in reality, at the time, it did not feel that way.
Looking at the resume and positions, if you look at it, "The Break the Cycle position was pivotal in that move.” Although, you're saying, "No, I'd already thought I was going to do that move.” There's still something about saying yes to that opportunity both as a sense of responsibility to the organization and to the good work that it was doing, but also to have that willingness to leave just sets the tone for all your other opportunities and your willingness to take on something different. If you hadn’t been that, you may not have come to it.
That's true. I do feel like it is from a position of privilege that I did get to make those decisions. I was in a position where I'd saved up money from working at the law firm for several years. My husband is also a lawyer, so we were able to afford for me to take the massive thing. First of all, not having any of those. Even when I got my first position for the years that I was working part-time, it was a huge pay cut. It was a luxury in a lot of ways that I was able to do that and be brave in that way.
It’s still a leap of faith in so many different ways because you have faith in yourself and faith that it's going to work out in a certain period of time.
There was a lot of comfort to me of, “I have a Law degree. I can always go back and practice law.” I have that so, whether it would be if I decided that I wanted to go for a while and continue to do part-time contract legal work, it is out there. People shouldn't feel like if they leave their full-time law position and look for something else there's nothing else. You have a Law degree. You can do legal work to get you through as you’re figuring out what to do.
Lawyers must not feel down when they leave their full-time law position. Your law degree alone can get you through life.
That's a good point because we're like, “You work in a firm and you do this.” What does it look like to practice law? There are so many different ways to do that. As you said, “I still have all my skills and my training. I can still apply them in a different setting.” That helps you make the leap as well to say, “I know something I can do if this isn't working immediately timing-wise.” Typically, I'm with a few lightning-round questions. The first question is which talent would you most like to have but don't?
I'd love to be a great singer. I was a theater kid in high school but could never be the lead in the musical, so I've always wanted that.
I was going to ask you. Were you just in plays or you were in musicals but more in the chorus?
I was in plays as leads then I was in the chorus of the musicals.
Chorus in the musicals, that's generally my role, too, but I enjoyed it.
It was fun.
Who are some of your favorite writers?
I read a lot of fiction, so I never say I have a favorite writer, but whatever is the most favorite thing I've read. My favorite book of the year, I'll do a plug. It's called Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It’s a very interesting story. It's about two people. It’s like their lifelong friendship and working together to make video games. I love it because it's a love story, but it's not a romance. It's about all the different types of love you can have with your family and friends and for your work.
I had not heard of that book. I'm going to look it up. I love reading all different types of books, fiction and nonfiction. I'm going to look that up for sure. Who is your hero in real life?
I'd say my mom. One of the reasons is, not just being an amazing mom and now grandma, but the throughline of one of the things we've been talking about is my mom has reinvented herself and her career multiple times throughout her life and showed me that you could do that. She's now in her early 70s, but she's in the third or fourth iteration of her career.
She had been an elementary school teacher and she got her PhD when I was in elementary school then continued to be a teacher and became a professor. For many years, she has been working as a coach for gifted and exceptional kids and adults and has moved all so into more of a spiritual lens with that, too. She’s had an interesting career journey and continues to explore it, change it, and grow it. I find that inspiring.
When you said that, it resonated with me because hearing about it is different than seeing someone do that, especially when you see it when you're younger. You feel like, “That's totally possible. I've seen it happen. It can be done.” It creates a different perspective. My dad had that career where when I was young, he went back to school and got his MBA and changed from doing what he was doing to a whole different career. I thought, “If you can do that with a small child and a family, you can do it in a lot of different settings.” There are so many different ways to see it. For what in life do you feel most grateful?
This is going to sound like a cliché, but everyone says you need a village. We have an amazing village. My parents live close by. My in-laws visit from the East Coast regularly. We have such an amazing community of friends. I feel like it makes our lives so much richer and surrounds us and our kids with this community of trusted adults.
That makes such a difference. I was going to ask you if your parents are still up in Oregon or whether they were here and that's nice.
They moved down years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter. When I was growing up, my mom's parents watched me while my parents worked. My parents now do that with our kids. My dad picks up the kids from school Monday through Thursday and they go to my parents' apartment. They get help with their homework and sometimes they get dinner. It's amazing for all of us. Our lives would just not be the same without having them here.
That's a different experience. You are having complete confidence and comfort when you're like, "They are having a great time. They're well taken care of. I don’t have to worry.” Given the choice of anyone in the world who could be with us or not, who would you invite to a dinner party?
I'm going to say Taylor Swift. I become a Swifty. My daughter and I got to go see her when she was in LA. It was such an amazing experience. It was the level of joy in that stadium and such a diverse group of people. It's the one singer that my daughter and I can 100% agree on all the time. I feel like she's created something amazing.
There are a lot of mother-daughter pairings and even father pairings at the Swifty concert. She's quite the business person.
She is. It's incredible what she's accomplished.
That sounds good. You'd have to have your daughter come to that dinner. Last question, what is your motto if you have one?
I say this to my kids all the time. Teamwork makes the dream work. Partly, this is the thing I say to them.
I was going to say that’s for a different reason.
Cooperating with each other, but it also applies in the workplace or anywhere. Two heads are always better than one. Break down those silos and see what other people can contribute.
I could see you saying that to your kids. I was like, "I understand that one.” That's true that's something that we don't get a lot of in law school. I remember the business school folks were always doing team things and the law students were always doing just off on their own in the library or whatever studying. That's something we have to learn after law school as a whole working in teams in that way. That's a good lesson.
The thing I love the most in my legal practice is when I get part of a team working on a case and point strategizing like, "How are we going to get our client from point A to point B? What are our legal theories? How are we going to map out this case?” I always found that to be the most fun and engaging.
I always think it's better to bounce ideas off each other. The end result or the end concept or the result is so much better that way. Rachel, thank you so much for joining the show and for sharing your journey. Hopefully, we'll provide a roadmap for those who might be interested in applying their legal training to the nonprofit realm and what that might mean.
Thank you so much. This has been so fun. Thank you for having me.