Episode 172: Stacy Horth-Neubert
Executive Director of the Harriett Buhai Center
00:48:10
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Show Notes
Today's guest is one of LA Business Journal's Most Influential Women Lawyers for her pro bono work. Stacy Horth-Neubert, former journalist and BigLaw attorney, shares her pro bono journey and her new role as Executive Director of the Harriett Buhai Center (only the second leader in the organization's history). Stacy delves into the pivotal role mentors and sponsors play in her journey within the law firm arena, elaborating on the concept of cultivating various strands of sponsorship and mentorship. She also imparts valuable advice to fellow lawyers, emphasizing the significance of diversifying skill sets and elucidating the profound reasons behind such a strategic approach. This is an inspiring episode about the role of bar leadership in career development and holding fast to your dreams.
Relevant episode links:
Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law, Rachel Barchie – LinkedIn, Tom Nolan – LinkedIn, Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, WLALA Foundation, Inner City Law Center, Amy Lally – LinkedIn, Salt Fat Acid Heat, Bryan Stevenson – LinkedIn
About Stacy Horth-Neubert:
Stacy Horth-Neubert recently joined the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law as its Executive Director. The Buhai Center was founded in the early 1980s by Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Bar and Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles. Since its inception, the Buhai Center has served as a cornerstone of family law and domestic violence assistance for low-income persons in California.
Stacy graduated Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of Florida with a B.S. in Telecommunication-News, and from Fordham University School of Law, cum laude and Order of the Coif. Stacy began her legal career as a litigation associate at Proskauer Rose LLP, where she first fell in love with pro bono legal service.
But it was her move to Los Angeles with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP that heralded the beginning of a profound legacy in pro bono work and equal justice advocacy. During her tenure at Skadden, Stacy not only maintained a high-paced commercial litigation practice, but also spearheaded the growth of the firm’s award-winning impact litigation program as a Pro Bono Coordinator for the Los Angeles office.
She joined Sidley Austin LLP later in her career, where Stacy continued to blaze trails, as a litigator, pro bono leader, and champion for women in law. Stacy serves on the board and is a Past-President of WLALA and the WLALA Foundation, and currently is Chair of the Board of Trustees of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. For her legal skill and leadership, Stacy has been named one of the Top Women Lawyers in California by the LA Daily Journal, and one of the Most Influential Women Attorneys by the LA Business Journal. For her pro bono work, Stacy has received the prestigious California Lawyer of the Year Award (CLAY) for extraordinary contributions to the law, and both the ACLU of Southern California Pro Bono Advocacy Award and its Freedom of Information Award.
Transcript
Welcome to the show, where we chronicle women’s journeys to the bench, bar, and beyond to seek to inspire the next generation of women lawyers and women law students. In this episode, I’m pleased to have a nonprofit leader, a former big law firm lawyer, and a wonderful community leader as well, Stacy Horth Neubert who is the new Executive Director of the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law in Los Angeles. Welcome, Stacy.
Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.
I’m so excited about your new position and your path through the law is interesting. Your commitment to public service, community service, and pro bono work is long standing. There’s a great message in that from your law firm work and pro bono work to where you are now serving full-time in a community and public service role. There’s a message in that. You can change at any time and you can expand various interests that you have. First, I wanted to check in with your initial idea about why you went to law school and what you thought you would accomplish with a law degree and being a lawyer.
In my own mind, my path to where I am is very straight, but telling the story probably doesn’t sound so straight. I was a journalism major. A broadcast journalism major in my undergrad. In my freshman year of college, there was a serial killer on our campus. This was the Gainesville Student Murders in 1990. I covered the trial of the killer, Danny Rolling as a student journalist in college.
I had never had any exposure to the legal system before. I was most struck much to my surprise by the dignity and poise of the appointed public defender who convinced Danny Rolling to plead guilty or maybe it was his. The result was that he pleaded guilty. The lawyer, at least in my memory, was single-mindedly focused on preventing him from getting the death penalty. That was his ethical mission in life.
He was, as I recall, not the prosecutor in it for publicity or for a political career. He did it purely out of this very strongly felt belief in opposition to the death penalty. That was such an eye-opening experience for me to be exposed to the legal system for the next time. It should vary dramatically, but also to see some parts that I did not expect to see. I feel that if I don’t know anything about this, I’m sure a lot of other people don’t know anything about this legal system. Maybe I should be a legal journalist.
I went to law school in New York so I could work at Court TV during law school, which I did. I covered the civil trial of OJ Simpson then as a producer, I produced a bunch of trials and worked all through law school. Before I graduated, Steven Brill, who’s the founder of American Lawyer Magazine and Court TV. He sold his interest and it became much more a channel that showed TV dramas and not trials. Also, it was going to pay me far too little for me to even take the bar.
Although I had not summered at a firm, I decided I should apply. As a third year, which is unusual. I was unusual then and still unusual, applied as a third year to a firm and got paid for a while so I could afford to take the bar and maybe pay off some of my loans. I did but then I ended up liking practice. The direct path to where I am now is that the part of the practice I liked the best was the pro bono work that I did.
I see that connection with your connection to the public defender, too.
I started doing pro bono as a young lawyer then ended up when I moved out to Los Angeles. Being the pro bono coordinator at Scadden, the first firm I was in. I was for many years. I’ve been basically doing pro bono coordination for many years. That was the part of my job that made me excited to get up every day and come to the office. My personal practice was focused on impact litigation, and that was very satisfying. After doing that for a long time, I knew that someday I wanted to do what I’m doing now.
I thought it would be after I retired, but then like many people during the pandemic, I reassessed my priorities, what mattered to me, and decided I didn’t want to wait that long. I would instead wait until I sent my last kid off to college, which I did the summer. I quit working in big law at the end of June. This job became available maybe three weeks later or so and I applied then the rest is history.
Talk about that timing, Stacy. For those who don’t know how long standing previously the executive director at the center was. The chance of an opening was not going to happen.
Once in 36 years. It was meant to be.
It’s interesting thing I was mentioning before we officially got on the episode was about Rachel Barchie and she had the same leap of faith, “I’m leaving the firm and I’m going to be open to whatever comes my way,” thing. Very quickly afterward, something came her way. Sometimes you have to cooperate with the universe and make yourself available.
That’s right. That’s a great way to put it.
It’s just struck me because I’m like, “That’s almost the same circumstance that Rachel had.” I’m thinking, “I see a pattern here. I see a theme.” I’m happy to help you, but you need to do a little bit on your end, too.
You need to do a little bit on your end. You need to be open to receiving.
You should be open to receiving.
I had known about and seeing your demonstrated commitment to pro bono work, but I hadn’t realized that you had thought about that, the role that you’re in for a while.
I wasn’t publicizing it.
After you did it, I thought that’s a great fit. That makes total sense.
That’s exactly right. As I said, I had figured I would wait until after I retired. It wasn’t something I needed to be discussing at the time. Early in the pandemic, I decided that’s likely what I wanted to do and the timing of it was moved up.
A lot of people during the pandemic, we had, What matters? What’s important? What brings meaning to me?
It’s silver lining of a dark cloud.
That’s what I always try to say, “There’s a positive part. There’s a silver lining.” I always try to look for that. It’s good to see a positive outlet like this, Stacy. It’s good. Since you have that many experiences, including the law firm experience, I wonder if you would talk about that a little bit in terms of navigating a big firm as an associate and a senior lawyer and what that experience is like for law students or newer lawyers who are reading.
I loved big law. It was fabulous. I know big law gets a bad rap in a lot of ways, but the parts of it I loved is the work is challenging. I happen to work with great people at both of my firms. I know sometimes you don’t get that lucky, but I did. I always enjoyed the people I worked with. I never had to work on a case I didn’t believe in. The work was very intellectually stimulating, which was super fun.
The other part I liked about working at a big firm is when I had kids, I worked part-time. It was 50 hours a week as opposed to 80 or 70 but I could do that because I had a team. I had other people who could take over things that I couldn’t do. If I was at a smaller firm, I would not be able to share the load as much, so I liked that. The third thing, is I liked being able to do pro bono from firm because we had amazing talent and amazing resources.
One of my old bosses, Tom Nolan. He used to always say, “If we don’t take the big cases, who can? We are the ones who can do it. We’re the ones who can take these big pro bono cases.” It’s true because we can afford to pay for the experts. We have the manpower to do an impact litigation and the brainpower to learn the law and apply it.
I feel I had the best job at both of my firms by being pro bono coordinator because I got to do great pro bono work and help other people do great pro bono work. I see this job as an extension of that meaning one of my roles at Buhai is to help more lawyers in practice, in firms or in-house be able to do pro bono work because there is an infinite supply of need. We all should be helping fill that need as part of our ethical obligations as lawyers but it’s also very satisfying.
I think about that as the skills, the transferable skills aspect. The way you describe that, the skills of being a coordinating pro bono at a large firm, the organizational skills and all the things you need to think about to get that done are very similar to what you need to be doing for the nonprofit itself in that role.
Also, the connections that you make, the people that you know, and the things you understand about the way the nonprofit legal sector works. Those were all invaluable. The other unique aspect of me personally that made me perhaps more well-suited to this role than some people is that lawyers don’t necessarily have a great reputation as managers of people.
That happened to be my specialty, managing large teams within my own practice. I had a lot of management experience with working with the pro bono committees at both of my firms and other committees. I was very involved in the women’s groups and very involved in bar leadership as well. All of those things are making me very well positioned to take on this job at this point of my career.
Let’s talk about the bar. I wanted to talk about that and I’m glad you mentioned it. The community leadership, pro bono leadership and the management experience that you got from the firm were important and instrumental in building the skills that you need to thrive in your position now but also bar leadership. Can you talk about that experience and how that has contributed to your professional growth as well as personal growth?
I cannot overstate the influence that bar leadership has had on my career, my career path, and my skill sets. I was on the board and still am on the board of the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, which not coincidentally is a cof with BWL. WLALA and BWL the Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles cofounded the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law, where I am now.
I worked my way up the path at WLALA to be President then later became the President of the WLALA Foundation, the charitable arm of WLALA. All of those experiences, learning how to raise funds at a high level, manage people, put on programs, network effectively with others and also making these connections that you make with these other very motivated and very talented women lawyers who are not in my niche area of practice.
That was my favorite thing about WLALA.
It was a unique opportunity. On a personal level, I joined WLALA when I was a new mom going back into big law as an associate. Where I was there was only one other woman who had done that and stayed for any length of time. She worked part-time and she did eventually leave too, so I was the only one who stayed after having my kids. There were two women partners who had kids but they were partners before they had had kids.
It was a different path. They both had stay-home husbands, which is not a lecture I had either. I needed some role models. I needed some people to ask, “How can you do this? How do we do this?” I found that in WLALA. It has been invaluable in keeping me sane, grounded, and giving me resources to ask questions to and I didn’t want to ask it as someone in my own family. Knowing other people who are managing the same and balancing the same things I was balancing at that very critical time. I’m a person who likes to give back to the organizations and people that I benefit from knowing. I committed to service through WLALA and it has paid dividends for sure. It also introduced me to the Buhai Center where I am now. There’s a lot of full circle coming around here.
There’s a lot of full circle connections in that but it’s important because I know how special WLALA in particular is from my experience as well. Many of the things that you highlighted are exact same experience. If you talk to a lot of former board members, they will say many of the same things about what makes it special. I also want to highlight it because there are different kinds of service. There is the pro bono service and community service in other ways then there’s bar service.
Sometimes the bar service gets overlooked or is seen as not service because it’s a professional association thing, but that’s not the case. There are community service aspects to the bar association itself. Many bars have founded nonprofits like WLALA and BWL did. There’s a service mentality in the people who are on the bar boards as well that’s rewarding.
The foundation doesn’t just fund good causes. It also has pro bono program. We fund law fellows who work at the Inner City Law Center and at other nonprofits in the community. It is very much a service-oriented way to spend your time, a service to a bar. For me, my two main passions helping women in the profession advance and pro bono are both coming together in the job I have now, which is at the Harriett Buhai Center, which I probably should tell your readers about.
Please describe the center. and the work that it does, too.
The Harriett Buhai Center was founded in the early ‘80s by, as I mentioned, Black Women Lawyers and Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles in response to the closure of the court system’s help for family law. It started off as this bar association organization, a volunteer organization, then evolved into a public interest law firm.
Betty Nordwind, who I have trying to fill the very large shoes of a legend in the family law community. She served as the executive director of the Buhai Center for many years. An extraordinary amount of time. She built it up to be what it is now, which is we provide free legal family law services to those in need. The majority of our clients are domestic violence victims. Most of them are women and women with children.
We have a bit of a niche market on the more complex cases. A number of nonprofit law firms do domestic violence restraining orders or very simple things. When it comes to the more complicated divorces with custody issues, there aren’t that many. I can name on two fingers the number of organizations in Los Angeles that do that in the way that we do it. There’s a huge need. My mandate is to grow our organization to be able to better reach that need. That’s where we are with the Buhai center.
Do you have staff attorneys on from the Buhai Center itself who work on the cases or is it a mixture of pro bono work from outside firms or just pro bono work? I’m curious how the model works.
It’s both. We have staff attorneys who have their own caseload. We also have pro bono attorneys who take cases then we have a mix, too. We also have interns and student interns. They assist as well so we have both. The pro bono aspect is one that I’m hoping to grow as that’s near and dear to my heart.
That’s a fun adventure and new challenge in growing the great organization that he has been growing to this point because there’s always an expanding need, expanding the ability for more pro bono collaboration. It does sound like, as you said at the beginning, “When you see all this, it looks like it all. It fits together very neatly all of these different things.” One thread that I’ve heard from various guests that does allow you to go over the hurdle of it’s something new that you’re doing and being confident about being able to do that is to break things down in the skills manner that you have.
I thought about this is similar to this skill that I have from doing this work. This overlaps with this skill and how they all fit together to certainly prepare you at least to get into the job and roll up the sleeves and do the work. That’s one of the answers to the question that we often have of hesitancy where we’re want to check off. I’ve done all those ten things that are on the application that they want. Unless I have the 9 or 10, I may not even apply. That maybe part of the answer is seeing the translatability and the skills.
That’s exactly right. You put your finger right on a very important point, which is there are studies that show that women in particular are more reluctant to take a job unless they literally check every single box. Truthfully, having knowledge of those studies helped me understand and give my own bravery in this as well.
When you start thinking about it and you take a job description that says, “Here are all the things you need to do in this job.” You start matching your skills up with that. A lot of us would be surprised at how many skills we do have, especially if you’ve been well-rounded. You do some bar service. You do some pro bono work. You volunteer at some community organization. You do something outside of sitting at a desk and working, which most of us do. Having the faith in yourself and your ability to learn new things to take that leap over those little things that those parts of it that you know are going to be the learning curve for you.
Seeing the translatability of that is important. That’s also something that I hope that readers, especially those in law school, or thinking about law school will take away from this. Which is going to law school can prepare you for a number of positions and a number of jobs. It doesn’t mean one path of practicing in a firm or doing. It could be that, but there are many others. It’s the layering of all of those skills on top of each other that can prepare you for that next challenge, which might not be practicing a lot at all.
The most important skill you learn in law school is how to read carefully and think critically. Surprisingly, those are rare skills. Once you’ve been through law school, you never think the same way anyway or always thinking through things logically and critically. I do think that’s an asset in the business world. It is a traditional path toward business jobs, other jobs, and entrepreneurial jobs. I have a very good friend who founded his own nonprofit. He’s doing all the things but he would say the lessons he learned and the way he learned to think as a lawyer are the reason why he’s able to do this nonprofit that he’s now founded.
The most important and rare skills you learn in law school are to think critically and read carefully.
Thinking about all those various skills that are put together. You stack them up and positions you for a lot of other things. I hope that hearing the stories like yours, people who might not consider law school at all. They might consider it as something that would help them gain the skills and the training that they need to accomplish something else. They may not think is like directly linked to law school training.
If you’ve seen the news, peers that the number of women applicants is up and far exceeding male applicants to law school now. At least, a lot of women are getting the message that this is a good way.
I’ve saw that and also the number of associates too was more women. It’s a good progress.
Watch this space in 8 to 10 years to see if the numbers of the more senior leaders start shifting at all.
As your friend, starting a nonprofit but nonprofit is a business. There’s an entrepreneurial aspect to it, but it’s for the benefit of others but you need some savvy in that regard in running our relation and all of that.
You have to know not just how to incorporate a corporation. How do you get investors? How do you deal with that money that they’re investing? What are your disclosure obligations? If you have a product, you have to understand the rules and laws related to your product. There’s a lot of lot there if you’re founding a nonprofit. As you said, in innumerable careers, it would been great for me to be a local journalist if I had.
That is so interesting. I didn’t realize the whole court TV. I’m like, “I remember classic Court TV.” It was awesome.
It was most people’s first and only exposure to what an actual trial looks like. I had observed more trials before graduating law school than many practicing lawyers will ever see in their life.
Think about that, that’s right. Talk about clinical or real world experience in addition from the books, that’s a whole other level.
Certainly, it’s observing. It’s not doing. It is a whole different thing. Having done trials now, I’ll tell you it is a different thing, but understanding the system was a leg up when I started practicing.
Again, it gives you different perspectives. I think of it more as from giving you a different perspective as a lawyer too in terms of telling the whole story and looking at even the cases that you’re working on as a lawyer through a different prism because of that journalism training.
Making sure that you understand your audience and know how to communicate well. That’s a skill a lot of lawyers still need to work on, but the journalism aspect came in handy for me.
Making sure that you understand your audience and know how to communicate well is a skill many lawyers still need to work on, but the journalism aspect can come in handy.
That’s what I was going to say. That’s telling a story with a different lens and a human story. It’s nice to have that training and telling that because we’re all humans and so are judges. People make decisions based on some human aspects as well.
Very true. Even in a business case, that’s true.
I have two related questions. One would be in terms of mentors and those who helped you along the way. Do you have any suggestions you have for those who are either looking for some mentoring or support or for those who might want to be mentors? Do you have any advice for those folks?
In the law firm world, having a mentor and a sponsor. Sometimes that can be the same person, is critical. It’s a lesson. I was a little slow to learn. I had lots of mentors. I had great mentors. I didn’t have sponsors and that was a little challenging. Early on in your career, identifying those people who can help make people partner if that’s your goal or who can help you find the job outside of the firm that you want, which is also a very legitimate goal. A goal that a lot of firms, both of my firms, Scadden and Sidley are very good at helping people find their next job and are happy to help people do that as well because it’s good for them to have people.
It makes a lot of sense to have that attitude. It’s a win-win to have that approach.
Folks within Sidley helps me in this job transition and to get to this place where I am now. The advice about finding them is identifying those people within your organization who have the power and clients to be able to push for what they need, meaning people that they need to help them or someone who will pass stuff down to you when they retire.
That’s important. It also has to be someone that you can get along with, who likes you back, respects and who have similar work styles. This is another important thing too that I would advise lawyers. If you don’t have that and you can’t find it at the firm you’re at, move. There is a firm that will have it for you and moving is hard.
Lawyers are risk averse. It’s not an easy thing. It’s easier when you’re a second year than it is when you’re a 5th year or a 10th year but do it as soon you don’t see that path for yourself, if that’s what you want to do. If you want to make partner, but almost all firms now are pretty good at helping you get jobs outside your firm. I shouldn’t say almost all. A lot of firms are good at helping you get a job outside of the firm world or outside of their firm as well.
Maybe you can talk about what you mean when you say difference between mentors and sponsors. People hear that but people may not know what that means.
I’ll give you an example of both. In my own personal world, one of my most dear mentors was an amazing writer and amazing lawyer. Meticulous, super smart, analyze things forwards and backwards in a way that no one does, and would spend hours preparing for an oral argument. Kicking the tires on every argument in every which way. Some of the most intellectually stimulating times of my career were debating things with him.
The meaning of a single word that everyone knows the meaning of, but what does it mean in this context? He mentored me. He helped me with my writing and learn how to presenting the courtroom. He gave me opportunities to present. That opportunities piece is the piece that starts to transgress in my mind to a sponsor.
A sponsor is someone who will give you opportunities, give you stretch opportunities, take a risk on you, and who will speak for you within your organization, who will be your champion to get that next thing, get that promotion and that next opportunity. They are different. Some people are good at mentoring and less good at sponsoring. Some people are good at sponsoring and less good at mentoring. They are rare people who are good at both. Most of the time, you need both. You need someone who’s your mentor and a sponsor. The mentor will teach you the things and the sponsor will help you get the next things.
That’s a good summary. I think about it as being the sponsor. As you said, it’s being a champion as someone who will say your name in the rooms where it needs to be said at the right time to support things. The thing I found over the years, sometimes you never know who those people are, but knowing as you progress and how decisions are made. You’re like, “I know how that sausage is made.”
Somebody must have spoken up. Somebody must have said something. No idea who that was, but it couldn’t have happened without that. That realization makes you realize you want to pay it forward. You want to help other people in the same way. It doesn’t matter if they ever know who you are or that you did know because other people did it for you.
A good example of that is Sidley, my most recent firm. There’s a partner there, her name is Amy Lally. She is the most incredible the porter of women lawyers I have ever known, in ways big and small. She is that rare person who’s both a mentor and a sponsor. She will take the time to teach someone and also will speak up for them and give them the opportunities. Those people are treasures. When you can find one, you’re lucky. Be on the lookout, but you’re right. Once you didn’t do know how the sausage is made, you recognize that you had help along the way when as you advanced for short.
Totally anonymous help many times. You’re like, “Great. I’m so glad somebody did something good and I’m just going to pay it forward in the same way.”
That’s exactly right. Take every single opportunity you have to help someone. I have people tell me sometimes, “You did this for me many years ago.” I’m like, “I did? I don’t remember that at all.” Probably took me ten minutes but they remember because it made a difference in their life. That’s the thing, if you can help someone, do it. You never know how much of a difference.
I had that one of those moments with a new colleague who joined the firm. He was communicating with some friend of his another firm. That friend said, “Please say hi to MC because I remember her. She doesn’t remember me probably, but I did. Years ago, I was in the Smith Court competition and she gave me a lot of good advice and I’ve continued to use that.” I was like, “Isn’t that nice?”
That is so nice. That’s the spice of life right there.
I know.
There’s no better feeling than knowing you helped somebody.
Maybe it made a difference to them in some way or even a small way. You’re like, “That’s nice.” It’s good to be kind and generous.
Our mom’s got something right in that advice.
I have a question for you too. You’re relatively new to your position, but what advice would you give to someone who might think down the line that they do want to come into a role like yours and become a leader of a legal nonprofit? Do you have any thoughts about what to do to prepare for that? Some of it you’ve talked about in terms of your training.
Get your nose out of the books. That’s the thing. I truly would always advise young lawyers in my firms and this is the truth, “You can do and be good at your job. There’s always going to be a job. If you want to have a career, you have to do more than your job. You have to go do other things, too. You have to do a good job at your job.” That’s the baseline, but to have a career means you got to do other things. You have to join a bar association, do pro bono work, and join the board of a nonprofit.
You have to expand not just your connections. Although, that is a very important part of these things, but also your skillsets. All of those things will teach you things that you’re not going to do and going to get in your job because there is no one lawyer job anymore. There are very few people who will at least at a big firm or even a medium-sized firm who do everything. I’m a corporate lawyer, a litigator and I do management work. Most of us are not going to get that at a firm. If you want to have a career that ends up in a path that is something other than practicing law in a particular field or lane, you have to do more than your job. You’ve got to do other stuff too.
Very strongly held similar view, especially for the newer lawyers who are sometimes feel either required to you or encouraged to stay and work the long hours in their office. I always tell them, “You have to do that. You have to gain your skills. You don’t want to be too arrogant about that but you need to leave the hallway.”
You need to know more than like the four or however many offices there are on your hallway. You need to get out so that you can get to know people and expand your skills, whether it’s going to bar events. Think about becoming engaged in different ways in the community and growing your skills because it is like a cumulative game. It took a long time. It’s not like you can decide. “This year I’m going to start doing this then next year, I’m going to know everyone. I’m going to have this.” It’s a long-term play.
It is. One aspect of this that is hard for young lawyers to get their head around is going to those rubber chicken dinners. If a table is offered or someone asks you to go to a bar dinner or a nonprofit dinner, go. Don’t just go and talk to the one person you came with. Take it as an opportunity to meet someone new. I will speak for myself here, before I went to law school, I had never met a lawyer other than the ones in that trial I told you about.
I didn’t know anyone personally who was a lawyer. It was intimidating. I came from a working class background and to go into a room full of people who appeared at least wealthy, well dressed, and well mannered. It’s intimidating to go up to and speak to someone you don’t know or even to walk in the room with all of them there.
The thing that helps me and would help a lot of people and I advise young new people on the WLALA aboard the same thing. If you join a board you can then treat it like your event like you are the host. If you were hosting a party, how would you act? You would say to the person who is the spouse of someone who you know but you don’t know that person.
You would co and make them feel welcome at your home because you’re the host. Be the host. It’s much easier for people to feel the host if you are the on the board. This is your organization and you are hosting people even if you didn’t plan the event. You are a representative of the bar association. You can play the host and makes it much easier to break the ice and say, “Hi, I’m Stacy.”
That’s an excellent description, Stacy, because it has to do with your mental attitude instead of being scared, “I’m in this big room with people all who all seem to know each other and I don’t know anyone. What am I going to do?” If you put mentally that idea of the host, then you’re going to walk up to people. You’re going to talk to people and feel comfortable doing that. That’s a great mindset.
It helps people get over that. I don’t want to impose. You’re not imposing. You’re welcoming. You’re helping people feel welcome. I’ll never forget, there was one bar association I had joined. I’m driving down to this big international conference meeting and I’m like, “Cool.” I get there. As I’m getting out of my car, I realize I do not know a soul because this is a brand new conference and brand new people. There’s like a moment of like total fear like, “What are you doing? You don’t know a single person.” I didn’t think about it the way you phrased it, which I’m quite good. I’m like, “Great, I don’t know anyone. That gives me an opportunity to meet a bunch of people. Fine.”
That’s exactly right. You also said something that was very true. It takes a while to recognize this. It takes years before you walk into the room and you can feel confident that you’re going to know somebody. You have to meet people over and over again before you can walk in the room and say, “I know that person.” It takes years and that’s okay. If people hear that, sometimes they’re discouraged. I don’t want to wait years. You’re going to meet people the first time, too. That person is going to be someone who might be the next most important connection that you’ve met. It has immediate dividends, but the real reward comes over time.
You're going to meet people the first time too, and that person is going to be someone who might be the next most important connection that you've met. It has immediate dividends but the real reward comes over time.
The cumulative effect of it. What’s interesting is if you go out of your comfort zone or your normal group of folks, you can still experience that feeling. You’re like, “I don’t know anyone here.” I’ve done that a few times where I’ve gone into a new arena or I’m serving in a different part of the community. It’s a shock. When you walk in, you’re like, “I’m back to that. I’ll have to go around and put my post mindset on again and mingle.” It’s a good skill to have because you’ll continue to need it throughout your career. There are rooms still that you will go into and go, “I don’t know anyone. This is fine.”
By then, you might hopefully be a little more practice so it doesn’t feel quite as hard.
A little moment and a little tinge and say, “I recognize this. Now I know what to do. I’ve handled this before so no problem.” To me, it’s fun at some points to have people you don’t know because you’re like, “I’m getting out. I’m expanding my range because I don’t know everything here.” That’s a good thing. You want to keep growing. You don’t want to remain static. It’s a good sign as you go on.
I like many people.
I know you do. You’re good at that. You’re thoughtful. That comes again, the journalism training, the curiosity and the interest in people. People can sense that if you’re truly interested in them. They’re willing to share and talk to you because they know you’re interested in them. It makes a difference. Typically, I close with a few lightning ground questions, so I’m going to ask you a few of those. Which talent would you most like to have but don’t?
I would love to be an amazing singer like Billie Holiday or even Billie Eilish. I would love to be an amazing singer. I sang a little bit in high school and I would love that. It’s a muscle. You don’t exercise it. It does atrophy. I can’t testify.
It’s true. You have to get back in and retrain it. That’s for sure. Who are some of your favorite writers?
I love reading. When I became a working mom, I decided I wasn’t going to be able to do everything and I still wanted to do all the things we were talking about, bar associations. I gave up reading for pleasure and watching TV. As my kids got older, I was able to bring back reading for pleasure. The pandemic, I was able to bring back some watching TV, but I don’t have a favorite writer. I feel the same way about a favorite color or favorite anything but I am very partial to and this is not novels or anything, cookbooks, because I love to cook.
If I have to name my favorite writer now, it’s Samin Nosrat of Salt Fat Acid Heat because that cookbook I read like a novel. It taught me more about cooking. I’ve been cooking for many years and it taught me more about cooking than I had ever learned in many years. Things I didn’t know. It changed my cooking. That’s a great one. I highly recommend it.
I like that. That’s very practical. It gives you skills building. What is your favorite thing to cook or a certain type of cuisine?
Variety is the spice of life. I like to cook everything. I’m not a big baker. I will say that.
That’s what I’m going to ask you about. I’m like do you like baking?
My oldest kid likes baking and that’s a good thing. Whenever they’re home I get to have the benefit of baked goods that I didn’t have to make but I like cooking. Savory, but I like to try all different things. Heavy and the vegetarian dishes, too. I do eat meat but I’m trying to reduce that. That’s one of my goals and I like cooking with vegetables.
I remember when I took both cooking classes and baking classes. I thought that I found that either people like cooking or they like baking but there’s a rare people who like both. I liked baking for somewhat of an odd reason. When you cook, it’s very in the present moment when you can create that experience and share community from the food with people.
It’s like when you have the leftovers the next day. It’s not the same thing. When you’ve cooked and you’ve had the whole thing. It’s on moment and there’s joy in that. The thing I liked about baking, I’m like, “You could share it with a lot of people after the fact.” The community was more discrete communities in sharing it, but you were also able to share with more people. I was like, “That’s what I like about the baking. You can share the wealth and share the joy with a number of people.” You need to be present at one particular moment. Maybe in a odd way of thinking about the difference between the two. I know that.
I love that. That’s beautiful. I think of it more of, in my day job, I have to be precise. I don’t want to have to be precise when I’m cooking. That’s the reason I enjoy cooking. I can be totally free of rules and I can’t do that with baking. I can only do that with cooking.
It’s exactly the typical thing. My mom also says she loves cooking more than baking. She says that’s because she can intervene or adjust things at any point along the way. With baking, no. Once you pass a certain point, there’s no correcting that. Whatever’s going to happen happens. I’m familiar with that distinction. I thought about that is what things does it create and how many people can you share it with. That’s what I looked at it. Who is your hero in real life?
Bryan Stevenson would be right up there, equal justice initiative. For those of your readers who might not know, the Just Mercy movie was made about him. I have been an admirer of him long before the movie. He’s very inspirational. He nonprofit represents death row inmates in Alabama. I would say it’s the Lord’s work, whether you believe in the Lord or not. He’s an incredible human being.
He’s done amazing things and for such a long time. Move for the movie. There were a lot of people who are engaged in pro bono or public interest work, have Brian as a hero for so many reasons. For what in life do you feel most grateful?
That one’s easy. My husband of 33 years and that’s 33 years married. We have been together a lot longer than that. I have two beautiful young adult children who have grown into human beings who I not just love. Most grateful for that.
Isn’t that nice to be able to say? That’s great. Here’s the fun one. Given the choice of anyone in the world with us or not, who would you invite to a dinner party?
I find that one so challenging. Who would I invite to a dinner? Probably, Michelle Obama. She’s a badass. I admire her a lot and she would be a lot of fun as well. She would be allowed to invite her husband if she wanted to.
I was going to say that. What about that?
He could come.
Maybe for dessert or something because you’d want to have.
You have to have one-on-one time.
Girl to girl conversation or woman-to-woman. Last question, what is your motto if you have one?
I have so many mottos. I have a million but I’ll give you my top, “Went to war. Not the battle.” That’s probably the one I use most frequently in life and work. I focus on the war and not the battle. Varieties is spice life which I already said before. That is a motto. Use all the tools in your tool chest. That’s something I believe in deeply. Don’t sweat the small stuff. No one dies wishing they hadn’t slept more. I slept more, but I don’t think I’m going to die thinking about that.
Win the war, not the battle.
You’re like, “Yes.” From day to day, sometimes I do feel that way, but in the long term, probably not.
There’s the good ones, too, like being the change you want to see in the world. I deeply believe that. In spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart. That’s Anne Frank. Probably, I believe this one too, which is Karma’s a bitch. That’s the summary of a lot of what we talked about. What comes around goes around.
The flip side and another way of saying that is what we talked about being kind and generous comes back in some way.
What comes around goes around. That’s in both ways, good or bad. What you send out is going to come right back at you.
What comes around goes around. So, what you send out will come back to you.
Stacy, thank you so much for doing this. It was interesting. There’s so much to learn from your overall path. I’m so excited to see what you do next for the Harriett Buhai Center.
Thank you. It’s a pleasure. It’s a great opportunity to spend a little time with you as well. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Thank you so much.