Episode 30: CEO Jennifer Friend
CEO of Project Hope Alliance and former law firm partner and litigator.
01:21:12
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Show Notes
M.C. Sungaila sits down with former law firm partner and litigator Jennifer Friend, now CEO of Project Hope Alliance. Jennifer shares her experience of homelessness and how that led her to law school, litigating in a law firm, and now leading a non-profit organization whose mission is to help homeless youth succeed in life. Jennifer is a beacon of kindness and mercy, and articulately explains how her litigation skills make her an effective nonprofit leader.
Relevant episode links:
Project Hope Alliance, ABA study - Walking out the Door: The Facts, Figures and Future of Experienced Women Lawyers in Private Practice, Edwards Lifesciences, EdSource
About Jennifer Friend:
Jennifer Friend
Prior to becoming CEO, Jennifer Friend enjoyed a successful career as a partner at a large law firm, representing national and international clients throughout the civil courts of California. While practicing law, she served as President and Secretary of the Project Hope Alliance Board of Directors and was actively engaged in the organization’s expansion and strategic growth. In 2013, Jennifer answered her calling, left her partnership, and became Project Hope Alliance’s full-time CEO. Since then, she has led PHA from a team of two to a mighty team that is focused on eliminating the barriers and filling in the gaps that homelessness causes in the lives of children and youth throughout Orange County.
Her personal experience as a homeless child in Orange County, which inspired the Broadway play Nomad Motel, fuels her deep-rooted passion and commitment to homeless children and youth, while her ability to cast vision, think strategically, and lead and direct broader systemic change uniquely qualify her to serve as Project Hope Alliance’s CEO.
Jennifer holds a J.D. from Whittier Law School and a B.A. in Criminology, Law, and Society from the University of California, Irvine, where she serves as a Trustee.
Transcript
I'm pleased to have Jennifer Friend join the show, the CEO of Project Hope Alliance in Orange County, California. Welcome, Jennifer.
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have a conversation with you.
Thank you so much for joining. You have a varied career in both practicing law and running a nonprofit organization. Before we get to that, I wanted to start with the early fundamental question about how you became interested in the law or decided that you wanted to go to law school and be a lawyer.
I distinctly remember when I decided that I was going to go to law school. There were a couple of things that factored into it. One was my dad's comment that I needed a job that paid by the word. He said that in a moment of frustration because I was arguing with him about something. The other because at the time I was in 7th grade, my family of six was living in a motel in Anaheim and we were all in this one motel room. We had been evicted and that was the beginning of this season of my family experiencing homelessness.
I remember sitting there in the room. I had made the school play, but I couldn't go and be in the school play because my family only had enough gas money to go from Anaheim to Huntington Beach and Huntington Beach back once a day. There wasn't enough money for me to go to the rehearsals and practices required on the weekend. I sat there and thought to myself, “I need a job where I can make enough money regardless of who my partner is, have children, buy a house, put my kids through college and not have to worry about financial insecurity.” I thought, “I'll be a lawyer.” That sounds a bit cliché, but that was it.
I had always been very intrigued by politics, even from a young age and the argumentative style. That little freckled girl in the Tropic Motel in seventh grade decided that being the social butterfly, verbose and wanting to have financial security equaled law school and being a lawyer. I learned a lot in the process growing up.
I came to decide to be a lawyer with a similar aspect to my decision-making process quite young as well. Originally, I thought I would be a writer, specifically a poet. I was enjoying poetry at that point in time. Soon after having that vision, I had a vision also of myself as a poet starving in a garret. I wasn't sure what a garret was, but I wasn't going to be starving. I thought, “Maybe I should have a job where they pay me to write.” I had that idea, which somehow led to wanting to be a lawyer, perhaps because I was also argumentative. It all went full circle because I'm an appellate lawyer and that's exactly it. I write and persuade courts for clients, so it all fits together. It’s funny that it started with words.
A good appellate brief reads similar to poetry, but you don't have the word restrictions that you have in poetry in appellate briefs. That's where the real artistry of your writing comes in.
Also tied in with that story for you is where you are in terms of Project Hope Alliance's mission and the work you're doing to help homeless youth in Orange County. Your whole story and where your journey is all tied up in that particular vignette of your experience. That works out well for our storytelling here. You went to law school and practiced law for many years. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Some of the interesting parts happened maybe before I made my first, “Jennifer Friend appearing on behalf of the plaintiff, Your Honor,” statement. My way of rebelling in high school was to not do my math and science homework. We were living in motels, staying with friends and doing different things. As a result of that, I had an A in Model United Nations and was traveling across the country competing at Harvard and Berkeley at the highest levels and mock events but I almost didn't graduate high school. I was one of the speakers because I was flunking geometry as a senior. It was this crazy thing.
I went to a community college. I have three younger brothers. They all played football and all went to college on full-rides, University of Pennsylvania, University of San Diego and Cal Poly SLO. I didn't play football, so I went to Golden West, worked 50 hours a week and went to school full-time. I transferred to UCI where I worked full-time, which meant that my grades could not be as competitive as other students because I didn't have that much time, quite honestly, to dedicate to my academic pursuits.
Partnership decisions impact the rest of your life, so you need to know your why.
I went to Whittier Law School. I passed the bar on the first try. I already had a job at a small civil litigation firm and I got this letter in the mail that said, “We are questioning the moral character portion of your bar application.” I thought, “I've lived my life as a Pollyanna. I never even tried to inhale. There was nothing scandalous or remotely scandalous about my moral character or my background.” It turned out that the reason it was being questioned was that I had so many evictions on my credit.
I was eighteen years old and my parents were the lessors or the lessees. They had their names on the lease and they would be served with eviction notices. If they said, “Our daughter who's eighteen is living in the home and she hasn't been served,” it restarted the eviction process. Every time my parents would get eviction papers, they would give notice that I hadn’t been served. I had eight evictions on my credit even though I was only 24 years old. I had to have my dad sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury. I had judges writing me letters of recommendation and the head DA in Orange County. I had to rally all that stuff and it delayed my being sworn into the bar by six months, which is something that we don't think about.
A lot of our first-gen students who are coming through and overcoming these obstacles and barriers get to their dream and even still, as a result of things that are outside of their control, so to speak, delay their dreaming even further. Finally, I was reviewed and they said, “Yes, you're fine.” I was admitted. I practiced at a small firm, went to a more midsize firm and popped. I had a dream to make a partner before I was 40.
At Selman Breitman, I ultimately found a firm where I had tremendous respect for the managing partner of the Orange County Office. Without question, Jerry Popovich is one of the best civil-defense lawyers in America. With his character and dedication to his family, as well as the pursuit of excellence in the law and leadership in the law, I was like, “This is where I want to be.” I was made partner at 38 and had my second kid pretty much right away because I was like, “I can do it.” I had the first baby and still managed to be made partner but I knew I was rolling the dice if I tried to have two babies before a partner. That wasn't going to happen as a litigator anyway.
I loved practicing law. I specialized in 14th Amendment due process department matters. I represented a lot of public contract workers. I was at the forefront of securing due process rights for construction contractors in public bidding, having the ability to engage in the practice of discovery before being blacklisted. That was fun. I also did catastrophic injury and general defense work as well.
I always loved being a lawyer. I argued in the Court of Appeal at least ten times, if not more. I didn't leave the law. I went to my calling. That was a little bit bittersweet. Being in a trial is unlike anything else. You become completely obsessed with your case and the facts. It’s like being an ER doctor. You’re all-in and can't see anything else going on around you. I did that for thirteen years.
I'm processing that whole story from the beginning of the additional challenges to becoming a member of the bar through that. You said something interesting about the partner you wanted to work with and learn from. A lot of people have mentors, sponsors or people they look up to. How did he or others play that role for you in your career?
It's interesting because until I was 42 and my story of having experienced homelessness got outed on the front page of The Register, I had never shared that story with anyone. I wish I would have, but I didn’t. I'm new to the vulnerability game. It limited my ability to reach out to people to serve me as mentors as effectively as they could have. There's one. You probably know Kate Corrigan. I have a giant place in my heart for her. Up until Jerry and I were partners together, Kate held that special place.
I was a cashier at Lomond in Huntington Beach. Kate came in and we were talking. She was pretty early in her career in the DA Office and I transferred to UCI. She said, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I want to go to law school and become a district attorney.” She said, “Tell me about that.” I told her and she said, “Where are you going to school?” I said, “I'm going to UCI.” She's like, “I'm an anteater as well. Here's my card.”
I looked at her card, Orange County District Attorney's Office. She’s like, “Give me a call.” She brought me in as an undergraduate intern in the DA Office and gave me access to some of the most incredible trial lawyers and judges. She let me shadow her. I have so much respect for the way that she practices law and the relationship building that she does that allows for her clients to be represented at the highest level.
When we watch TV about lawyers, we see these lawyers acting like jerks to each other. What that does is it completely impedes the client's ability to have any room for grace or negotiation. If both lawyers are being uncivil to one another, no one wants to listen to anything the other person has to say. Ultimately, it does a huge disservice to the client who's supposed to be at the center. I watched the way that she did all this but the fact that she gave me access as an undergraduate student was phenomenal.
When I went to law school, I was an intern in the DA Office. I had a bench trial before the DA even had a bench trial. It was this crazy dog breeding case in someone's backyard over in the Santa Ana Heights area. The new DA was like, “Why in the world is Friend getting to do a bench trial?” Tom was like, “She already proved herself. She's been here already.” I'd already been there for three years. She gave me that chance and opportunity to have access, but I would never have had access because she asked questions and cared. She wrote my letters of college recommendation. I have much love for Kate Corrigan.
That’s an amazing story of mentorship and sponsorship. It's important to hear those stories because sometimes people are afraid to ask for help or to follow up on that help. I’m also commending you for following up. When she said to call her, you did. An important thing to notice too, is when there's an open door or window to take that opportunity.
They don't necessarily come around. At that time, there were not a lot of female trial lawyers that were not only operating at the highest level but were around. Even when I was a partner, the composition of the partnership was disproportionately male. If you're a trial lawyer and you want to have kids, you're insane. How can you live in a hotel room for a month and have a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old? I did it. You’ve got to marry the right person to do it.
There's another important partnership decision in that. It's a challenge and you have to have a reason for doing all that. It can be very impactful for the rest of your life, so you have to have a reason for why you're doing it for yourself that makes sense and it's worth it for all of this.
I think about Kate often when I come across young women or teenage girls. I think about how she didn't have to ask any follow-up questions. She didn't have to give me her card, but she did and it made me want to make her look good. I wanted to work hard for her and her to feel proud that she had brought me into those spaces. I wanted to do whatever I could to support her because I felt seen and valued. Having someone on my team made me want to do whatever I could to make them successful. She taught me a lot. As an adult, she showed up in moments in my life as well. It's one of those things where we circle one another. I always appreciate it when I get the opportunity to talk about what an incredible person Kate is.
Interestingly enough, I saw Kate. We were having dinner at the same restaurant and hung out. We serve on the Orange County Bar Board together. That's one of the most beautiful and detailed descriptions of mentorship and assistance in the mutual value of that and the inherent mutuality. You want it to do when to make her proud for having stood out to help you, which gave you even a stronger opportunity to excel. You wanted to do that. You wanted to support her in having supported you.
Access without expectation is one of the greatest things that we can give to another woman.
That is a great description because access with expectation is different. Access without is something else.
I remember the first time that I went to one of Kate's famous Christmas parties. I'm looking around this room, thinking, “How in the world did I get invited? This is incredible.” Everyone was there because they were coming with this depth of character that wanted access without expectations. I’ve got to watch what it looked like for people who were on opposite sides of a very contentious litigation matter to leave the courtroom. You'd have the DA and the PD. We're all drinking beer and playing pool together at Q’s Billiard.
When someone was going to miss a discovery deadline or someone had a creative settlement or plea deal, they would listen to one another. The clients benefited because of that mutuality of respect they had. It profoundly changed the way I saw the practice of law and made me a little bit embarrassed when I sold out and became a civil litigator. I’m not going to lie. At the time, though, that $4,000 difference in salary between the DA Office and the civil firm was the difference between eating fish sticks every night and maybe mixing it up a little bit.
There is much liberty, grace, and creativity in allowing people to bring their whole selves to the workplace.
It goes back to our desire to be in a position to support ourselves in a good way. There's that as well. I appreciate that idea of access without expectation. In so many ways, that’s true when you help someone. It's not in the category of give to get, tit for tat or something where, “I'm only doing this so, in the future, you owe me something.” That isn't the same thing. It's not as genuine. When it is genuine, it creates that atmosphere of generosity that you're talking about.
Women are uniquely positioned to give access without expectation. When we do that, that's when we see culture shifts within organizations and people showing up for one another in ways that you would never imagine in a workplace for your work peers would have that type of commitment to one another. That is a way that women lead differently. That can lead to some superior outcomes in organizational culture.
I suppose in your role in running an organization, hiring and all of that, you have a much more opportunity to see the impact of leadership in that regard.
I love every single minute of it. It's one of those things and I'm sure you can relate. There are different schools of thought amongst female partners, one to the other. One school’s thought was, “I had to suffer through all of this. I didn't get any help. It's going to be the same for you. That's how it is.” The other was, “I've worked so hard to get into a position to be able to bring equity, understanding and opportunity to it, so let's start blowing stuff up in the best of ways and start rewriting the narrative that speaks to all of our experiences.” I had some of the former experiences. There were a lot of women that made tough false choices about whether or not they could be a litigation partner and have kids.
When you feel that you can't have a family and reach the professional level that you want, I can understand there is some bitterness and I get that. As a human, I understand and appreciate that. I have this opportunity to create an environment where we get to show up for each other in ways that I only dreamed of in my mind. Some of this work from home, forced work from home and COVID has created opportunities for working moms to be able to normalize the fact that there are some times when you need to be at home, but you're still being as productive as someone who's in the office. It’s having the opportunity.
All the time, I think about what I would love to have happened if I was in my mid-twenties. What would I love to know that is possible? What would I love to see at work? I try to do those things. We have an all-female leadership team. It wasn't intentional, but it's been that way for the last couple of years. There have been babies born at Project Hope. Everyone's returned to work and sometimes it looks a little different, which is amazing because then we don't lose this incredible skillset and they get to do what's best for themselves and their families. I love it.
Probably one of my favorite parts of being a CEO is looking at if we believe and come at it from the premise that we trust our team. Everyone is an adult and we assume the best until proven otherwise. There's so much liberty, grace and creativity that lives in that space to allow for people to bring their whole selves to the workplace. Also, excel in ways that they never imagined and discover qualities and characteristics that they have, that they never saw in themselves.
It's only when we stifle that and say, “This is what it looks like. It needs to look like this. Everyone's done it this way,” that we start losing it. When I left to come to Project Hope, that was the largest mass exodus of female partners in the history of the legal profession in those two years because women were like, “Forget it. I'll build my world.”
There was an ABA study about senior women lawyers leaving law firms at a point where you would have thought, “This is the point to reap the benefits of all your years of work.” Why is that? You can't say, “I have young kids that I have to raise,” when you're in your 50s and leaving. Part of what's behind that is this feeling of hitting your head against the wall and thinking, “Nothing's ever going to change. I'm going to pack up my skills and take them somewhere else.” That's a huge drain and loss to an organization without much experience.
It's a huge loss to the young female associates and female senior associates as well. I was up for equity partner on the month I gave my resignation. I feel confident that it was going to have happened, so it's funny. I would hope that it would send a message that we need to change it, so it doesn't keep happening. It's so expensive to lose talent.
Let's talk about that in terms of your decision in your calling to leave the practice of law and do what you're doing. Was that another epiphany moment you had early on in terms of becoming a lawyer or was it a thing that built up over time?
It happened within a short period. One of my brothers had watched the Motel Kids of Orange County documentary and that is about the origin of Project Hope. I watched the documentary and my brother and I went to a board meeting to find out what it was. At the time, the organization's total operating budget was probably $20,000. It served more as a foundation. It funded bringing kids from motels and shelters to this one public school. I walked into the board meeting and walked out as the secretary of the board, a good Type-A overachiever thing.
I started getting involved with the board. At the time, Hayes Drumwright, founder of Trace3, was the chair of the board. We started talking about, “What would it look like to do something transformational in the lives of these kids?” I shared my story with the board, but I wasn't ready to take it public, but it would be frustrating to me when I tried to talk about what childhood homelessness looks like in Orange County. I threw stats out there. There are over 20,000 students experiencing homelessness that are identified in Orange County's public school system. They didn't get it because we think only of the person holding the sign asking for money at the end of the freeway.
We think of middle-aged unhouse individuals that are sleeping on the sidewalk. We don't think of kids sleeping in motels, shelters and cars. The trial lawyer in me was like, “What demonstrative exhibit can I create that will convey the story I'm trying to tell?” I was in New York visiting a client and I had time for the airport, so I went to MoMA. I saw this multimedia art installation piece that you could walk through and I thought, “I'm going to build one of the motel rooms that my family lived in. What if we did that and people could walk through it?”
I cold-called the dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at UCI and I said, “Joe, you don't know me, but will you do this for me? Will you build a multimedia art installation piece?” He said, “Yes.” He's been on our board for years. He said yes and they built a set so we could take it apart and take it on tour. I pitched the story to the Orange County Register and said, “I'd like to tell a story about the intersectionality of a nonprofit having a story it needed to tell, a university having the skillset to tell that story and private enterprise having the cash to pay to have the story told.” My brothers had donated $10,000 to pay for the materials. The Register said, “That's an interesting story. That's great. We'll send a reporter out and do a story the day that you debut the art piece.”
At the same time, we were looking for a new CEO. We were serving 65 kids and our total operating budget was maybe $80,000. We had one employee, but we wanted to do something meaningful. We hired a search firm. I was chairing the search committee. People on the search committee said, “We want to give the elephant in the room some air. We want you to be the CEO.” I laughed.
I said, “I know how much the job pays. I cannot do this job. It's not a possibility. Even though I would love to, I can't do it.” Simultaneously, I'm at church. I'm hearing all these sermons about Esther. She's the queen but Jewish so she can live and exist within two otherwise separate and different communities. I'm thinking about how I’m a partner at a law firm, but I experienced homelessness, so I’m starting to feel all of these.
I showed up for the interview with a reporter. The reporter and I are sitting on the bed in the art installation. The reporter says, “This feels incredibly personal to me. I'm looking around and there are football trophies and personal objects that convey lived experience. How in the world did you come up with this?” I said, “Off the record, I lived here for nine months with my family of six.” He was like, “That is the story. Are you ready to tell it?”
I am suited up because I felt so insecure that day, knowing that I was walking into what I had internalized as a very shameful childhood. I had my best Armani scarf and Brooks Brothers suit on. I shined my shoes. I looked at him and said, “I'm not ready to tell it, but God is, so I’ll go for it.” For the first time, I told the story and ended up on the front page of The Register. At 42, I was terrified. I thought, “The gig is up, Friend. Everyone's going to know that I'm an imposter. It's all over. I managed to fake it this long. I had built all my clients. I had made a partner. It's done. It was a good ride and run.”
I got on the phone. I'm calling my clients at Dish Network and my partners to let them know that it'd be in the newspaper. I don't know if this is going to affect my business because I'm afraid people are going to not want me to represent. I've created this false narrative in my head. Instead, the outpouring of love and support was like, “That's why we hired you. We didn't know what it was inside you that always drove you to do more, but that's it.”
After this one sermon, I realized that I was supposed to quit my job and be that CEO. I'm sitting there thinking, “This is terrifying.” Even down to the clothes that I wore, I had built an external armor and a professional armor that I thought kept me worthy. Doing this, I was going to have to dismantle all of those things and, ultimately, just be me and I didn't know what that meant.
One thing about being a lawyer is it's an identity. It's not a job. I went home and said to my husband, “God wants me to quit my job and be the CEO of Project Hope.” He was like, “We can't do that.” I said, “I'm terrified of being actively disobedient to what I know in my soul I'm supposed to be doing. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm more scared of that and not having enough money.” He was like, “You know what our mortgage is.”
Once people are aware and they know there’s a problem, they get on board to solve it.
He came back a couple of weeks later and said, “I ran the numbers. We have enough credit that we could live on credit for a year. I don't know what this is going to look like.” He sold high-end real estate and this was the same time the market crashed. That was years ago. In 2021, we grew by over 451%. We served over 35,00 kids and serving kids at 43 campuses throughout Orange County with social workers on-site full-time from kindergarten through age 24, kids who are experiencing homelessness. It’s the best decision I have ever made.
I vividly remember sitting in that multipurpose room at Skyview Elementary, which was that school taking two hours for me to print out a letter on letterhead. I’m crying, thinking, “I'm the most incompetent person. I have no idea what I'm doing. I did not go to school to be a nonprofit executive. I can't even print a letter on letterhead. I have no secretary. There's me and La Shawn Hye sitting in this multipurpose room. I'm supposed to be figuring out how to end generational homelessness. This vision I cast as a board chair, I'm supposed to execute this?”
Being a lawyer is about telling a story that you believe in, hoping that other people will believe in it too so you can get to a just result. That's what I do every day. I know for a fact that for our kids experiencing homelessness, anything is possible for them if we fill in those gaps and eliminate the barriers that homelessness is causing. I want everyone else to know and believe that too. When we do that, we see our kids do the impossible.
As a trial lawyer, you have to become a short-term expert on disparate subjects. You have to absorb all this information and discern reliable sources and what are not common threads and common themes. That's what I had to do. I still do that. I had to read everything that I could find on generational homelessness, on poverty, on how communities of color are desperately impacted by different systems and try to find commonalities. Also, problem-solve and hope that I'm articulating it enough that other people share or at least see the passion and possibility in it.
All the time, I even still think, “I need a different degree.” I was going to go back to school. I'm like, “Maybe I need my MBA.” I'm doing all the financial forecasting. I remembered that I would figure out my quarterly revenue goals. I'd look at my clients, caseload, my associates, billable hours and figure out how much revenue I needed. I’m like, “It’s the same thing.” This is where I'm supposed to be. I loved the practice of law. I did not leave it and I missed the courtroom. All day long, I'll take our kids as my life client.
I have a question for you about your fear in perception about revealing your history and the response that people had to that, which was radically opposite. Where did that fear come from in terms of revealing that?
It came from a couple of things. I grew up in affluent areas. My family experienced an upper-middle-class lifestyle. It was very economically schizophrenic, for lack of a better term. My dad was afraid of my brothers and me not being accepted because of the economic situation he created. At the time, he had this crazy idea that everyone was going to be walking around with their phone and everyone thought he was insane. He was the guy going to Mexico, having those giant briefcases made to have demos to show what it would look like to put one of the brick phones in there.
I remember this one time, I was crying and we were at the motel. I am innately an honest person. I'm very candid and transparent. I had to come up with all of these lies and I couldn't even remember which story I had told and to whom. I was crying and said to my dad, “I need to tell my friends. I can't do this anymore.” He said, “If you tell them, they won't like you.” As a parent, I can see how my dad was doing what he thought was an act of kindness and protection. I know that without hesitation. Our parents loved us so much, but I still remember that when I was nine. That was the narrative, and that loop stuck in my head for some reason. My insecurities that we all have growing up as teenagers were tough times to be homeless. At that age, you want not to be different.
It's tough to stick out in any way in that regard. You want to fit in.
I still catch myself with those waves of insecurity and that narrative coming back all these years later. The rest that I felt, that's when you know that you are valued and seen. It’s because you feel like, “This whole time, if they knew the real me, then they wouldn't like, value and respect me.” When they know all this stuff, they're like, “That's one of the reasons I like you. I didn't have the language. I didn't know where that scrappiness, grit or determination came from.” For the first time in my life, I got to be my whole self and I was integrated into one person. It feels rad.
Especially when you're an authentic person and you can align everything in that way, it feels much more comfortable when that’s your natural light. We're not told that being vulnerable or open about things like that is a positive thing. Brené Brown is making this a language that people understand. Prior to that, it was not deemed a plus.
Especially for women in our generation, our moms were out there burning their bras in the street so we could hopefully one day be a partner at a law firm. You do what you need to do to get the job and hope that one day, you'll be in a position to grant access without expectation for someone. I remember one time being in the Arizona airport and on my way to take a deposition. I was using a hand pump in the women's restroom and the bottom fell off of it. All the milk ran down the front of my suit, filled my brand new shoes and the bottom of the thing went all the way down to the end of the restroom under all the stalls. Women started handing the bottom of it underneath the stalls.
I have a text from my partner saying, “Where are you? The plane is boarding.” I'm bawling. I go to the counter to wipe stuff off, plus I'm thinking, “I'm not going to be home until 10:00 tonight and I can't come. What am I going to do?” I'm crying and this woman comes out of the restroom. She's in her mid-70s. She goes, “I'm sorry. We didn’t do you any favors.” I was like, “What is this?” I can't tell my partner why I'm late or I'm going to be eating Advil all day long because I'm in so much pain. I see a world that looks better for my daughter, which is exciting because there are a lot more female CEOs. There aren't enough, but there are a lot more female partners, so we get to do our pieces to create that equity, experience and opportunity.
You’ve transformed the organization with that level of growth in the timeframe that you've been there. That's amazing and starting from the point where you're like, “I don't even know all the different things I'm supposed to be doing.” How did you make that happen?
One thing that I know to be true about people is that once they're aware of a problem and identify that it's a problem that needs to be solved, people will get on board to solve it. One of my greatest challenges in the first six years of being CEO was to educate our community that there are enough students experiencing homelessness to fill Dodger Stadium five times over. Those are pre-pandemic numbers, so we'll see what those look like.
I started with the moms. There was relatability in my story because when they read my story and saw my face or met me, I didn't comport with any of the ideas they had in their head about what homelessness looks like. I talked about sitting in class next to my friend who had no idea was experiencing homelessness and how their kids are doing the same. Moms wanted to get involved, so we truly started a grassroots movement. I've always had the vision of where I wanted us to go. We still haven't gotten there yet, but it's happening.
There's some freedom and flexibility for me in this role because I'm equally compelled to the urgency, but I don't have any career aspirations tied up in this role, so I can make decisions that are best for the kids, even if personally or professionally, they may not be the best decisions. When we're looking at collaborations, if someone needs to have all the credit to get something done, I don't have a problem because my focus is on getting the thing done.
I'm not looking to be the next CEO. I can invest in my team financially. I can control my salary to create an opportunity to hire good talent and things like that. It's been incredible. We started in the Newport Mesa Unified School District. I knew for a fact that if we went to where the kids were, that was going to be the secret sauce.
We had our first principal at Newport Harbor High School. Sean Boulton, who is an amazing human and also an incredible principal, I say that as a parent of a sailor, as well as someone who works closely with him, had the moral courage to say, “I'm going to give you the room. I'll ask for forgiveness later. We’ll ultimately go in and do the things.”
Another advantage of being a relatively seasoned lawyer is I am not risk-averse because I know where the risk is. As long as I can ensure around the risk, I'll take it as opposed to sometimes people assuming that because I'm a lawyer, I'm going to be worried about being sued or risk-averse. I know what the causes of action would be, so I can analyze the risk and say, “Let's do this.” I can be thoughtful about how to ensure or protect against the risk. Once we placed those social workers on the campuses, then every high school and junior high school principal opened the doors and said, “Here.” We funded it 100% with private philanthropy. I didn't want any public money because I didn't want them telling us what to do.
I only wanted to accept their money on our terms, which meant that I needed to have enough data, outside respect, scrutiny and analysis before we were ready to engage in that type of a power dynamic. When COVID happened, I saw that as our opportunity because we didn't freeze. We ran into the field, knowing where the kids were with Wi-Fi hotspots, Chromebooks and all of those things. The cities came to us with money saying, “Please take money so you can serve more of our kids.”
We had an Edwards Lifesciences study that showed that we were contributing $75,000 annually to the local Orange County community. We had national data that supported that we’re 20% points above the national graduation rate for students experiencing homelessness. We've been published in EdSource and a bunch of places, so they said, “Okay.” We seized that opportunity because the power dynamic was even and we could be in a true partnership. It's exciting. We expanded on to three additional campuses, so our team will be around 2,014 members.
You need to have measurable goals.
Can you do a snapshot of some of the programs, what that program is, how it operates and what you do to support the kids?
Our case managers have their own office on the public school campuses, K to 12th grade. We're there when the kids are in school. Teachers, janitorial workers and school counselors will identify that a kid is experiencing something and when they think it might be related to their housing status, they refer them to our office. We do an intake. Our office has no branding that says that it has anything to do with homelessness, so kids don't even necessarily know that we only serve students experiencing homelessness.
We built out what's called the Hope Index, which has eleven different indices across which we measure our intervention. It could be anything from basic needs. We have food pantries, hygiene pantries, clothing and those types of things on campus and in our space. Sometimes a student will come in because they have slept in a car. They need to brush their teeth, change their clothes and do those types of things.
Oftentimes, through our partnerships with UCI and their school of education, we're partnering highly skilled tutors to catch our kids up academically or filling out FAFSA forms, taking them to a college campus or sending a kid his mom to a kicker camp. He's been identified as one of the best kickers in Orange County and he was recruited to participate in this camp, believing that then he's going to start being scouted next year for a full-ride scholarship to college. We paid for the airfare, motel, camp, shoes and all of those things.
We are eliminating those barriers and filling in those gaps that homelessness causes. Also, graduating them from high school and staying with them until they're 24 to help facilitate them getting permanently housed, getting into either a junior college, a four-year college or specialized skill training so they can be financially independent adults by age 24. That's when we can say that we've ended the cycle of homelessness. It’s a 30 to 1 ratio, 30 kids to 1 case manager because the work is intense.
That’s amazing and very smart of you to have the studies and back up the impact because that's always a question with a nonprofit and community service organization. “Can you show me the data that supports that you're making a difference? If we’re going to put money there, we want to know that this is an effective program and we’re going to help get through this.”
No jury ever believes the expert that says, “I have a gut feeling that this is the right way.” It’s the same with how can you be compelling or convincing but more importantly, how do I even know that I'm leading an organization that's making a transformational change if I'm not honestly measuring?
From your standpoint of leading the organization, you need to know what is effective too. In our mind, we might think this is a great program, but what are we doing? You need to have measurable goals for your team and the organization itself.
There are some things that we've tried that didn't work. I'm so glad that we are critical of ourselves so we don't spend valuable resources doing those things that don't work.
I can even think of that myself in my law practice, where I'm like, “This is perfect. Clients are going to love this. This is a great development or marketing thing.” You go, “That was a great idea, but it's not effective. It's not building relationships the way I want to.” You have to pick yourself up off the floor and find another way to accomplish what you want to accomplish.
Plus, you gained so much information in the course of that failure that makes your success that much stronger and makes it possible.
You can see where it goes from theory to practice. Where's the missing part? Maybe there's something about the theory that needs to change too and meeting people where they are. One of the things I’ve found doing the show is sometimes you get unexpected nuggets from things like that. I've learned to listen. Listening is powerful. As lawyers, we tend to talk a lot more than listen. That's something I've learned from doing this and it's much more interesting. I certainly learn a lot more from people.
When you completely switch careers in your mid-40s, you don't have a choice but to listen. I needed to learn a lot and I've had some amazing, generous women. Nicole Suydam, the CEO of Goodwill, is a dear friend of mine. She was introduced to me the first week I started at Project Hope by a common friend. God bless that woman because I would call her and be like, “Everyone's using this acronym. What is it? I’ve googled it and I have no idea what it means. Who is this person? Everyone's telling me I need to talk to them.” I wouldn't have survived without listening to her wisdom. Her generosity in sharing what she knew was so wonderful.
I've heard wonderful things about her as well from others in the nonprofit community, so that doesn't surprise me. It's wonderful to have someone be generous and want your organization to succeed as well. That's good. It seems like you foster that behavior because you're a generous and thoughtful person, so people respond to that.
Thank you. I don't know why anyone would want to live any other way.
It makes for a better life, but you have to have the courage to be that way. Vulnerability is one thing, but then it takes a certain amount of courage to be in that generosity space naturally because a lot of people say, “People take advantage of me if I do that.”
I had a very different view of associated involvement when I was running my practice group. I believed in granting associates as much access as I could to the client. If we were going to grow our practice group and the client only knew me and trusted me, then we were limited in the number of cases we could take on based on my capacity. You need your clients to know and trust your associates, even if you're thinking about it from a seemingly selfish viewpoint. I would always take my associates with me.
I hired them because they were smart, articulate, trustworthy, and of good character. Otherwise, why did I hire them? They should be the type of people that you could trust to have direct, high-level client interactions. I will bring them with me if I fly somewhere to meet clients or client groups. In that way, they can build their independent relationship and you have these offshoots. I would watch partners all the time.
An associate would return a phone call from a client that maybe was upset because they weren't getting a timely return call. Maybe someone was on trial and couldn’t get to them. The associate would get grimed because they talked to the client or be terrified because they were going to talk to the client. I would think, “That is so short-sighted.” Why wouldn't you want everyone to be the best that they can be? The only way that any of it grows is through exposure to things.
Structurally and organizationally, firms aren’t built for that kind of sharing.
Not yet. Banking on the law. We will also hold on to our traditional structure.
Hopefully, we'll shake it up a little bit at some point, but that's how the traditional incentives are, so I can't fault people for having that behavior because that's the behavior that's rewarded to some degree.
There's always hope for change.
That's true, but someone has to change it at the highest level before it becomes safe. I had a lot of autonomy because I brought in all my clients, so I wasn't working on it. If it failed, it was on me. I'm the one alone who suffered. I have the autonomy to make those types of decisions. When you have shared clients within a formal structure, you can't do that because not only is it not rewarded, but you'll get penalized because of it. The good news is there's always hope for change.
The key in the change and your discussion there was that you had a certain amount of autonomy in that realm because they were clients that you had brought to the firm. For change like that to happen, you need to have the level of responsibility and the value that the firm sees in you so you can do that. It’s important to have your clients to have that level of autonomy. People don't always realize that, but that's what helps.
You mentioned a few things about your skills as a trial lawyer and how that translated to running a nonprofit and being an executive. You talked about storytelling, persuading and gathering evidence, which is an interesting framing of what you need to do as a business leader and owner, but that's true. What else do you think of that translated as being, “This is what I did as a lawyer. Here's the equivalent or some transferable skill that I use as a CEO?”
A lot of my work towards the middle and end of my career was suing municipalities that cut that 14th Amendment, due process but then that also brought up arbitrary, capricious actions and some other realms. I was dealing with the intersection of politics, the law and private individuals. It meant that there were all these different things that the different groups cared about. The city council or the planning commission cared about something very specific. I had to figure out what they needed to report back that they made happen for me to get my deal done on my client's behalf.
What was the success of each stakeholder?
Success for a planning commission or city council was to identify what a speaking point was that they had when they were running for office or watch the land use and zoning public hearings to find out if there is a commonality of language. Was there some language that they used or something that they cared about? Maybe they cared about open space. Anytime they could talk about open space, they talked about open space.
I would sit there thinking how to make this about open space and give a win for open space. At the same time, I've got a judge who’s saying, “If it's not in the administrative record, it doesn't exist.” Creating the ability for the land use person to say, “It's all about open space,” is sometimes in conflict with what I want on the administrative record. My client needs this one thing to happen. I would sit there and orchestrate what scenario gives everyone what they need so my client can win at the end. At Project Hope, I'm dealing with the public education system.
I have the local principal, the local school board and the superintendent, but then I also have the California superintendent and national policies and regulations. To say that they have conflicting interests and agendas is an understatement. If I can get one thing done, what's the one thing to get done? I have to figure out what each of those constituents needs to be able to get that done but never dilute what my client needs because where we fail is when we take the kid out of the center of the circle and we put the superintendent in the circle.
There's the balance because you need to affect this that you want on the line for the client, but you don't want to change that too much to satisfy the needs of the other people.
It's better to wait until you can get it done right. That's my philosophy. I have colleagues and I know a lot of people that think, “Half of something is better than nothing.” The problem with that is it starts as 1/2 and it becomes 1/4. I haven't found that to be true. When you have a jury, you'll see all these different people that have different interests. The most fun in jury selection is trying to figure out what each person cares about and how you can bring together this group of people who care about different things but ultimately land at the thing that matters equally to all of them. I
It's very similar because you pay attention. You're up there, cross-examining a witness and looking out of the corner of your eyes, juror number four. Do they perk up? Do they look mad? To test your theory of the case and how it is that people are responding to it, I pay attention to what the people in power care about and what they're saying. It also allows me to hold them accountable for what they say.
I pay attention if what they're saying is something that I agree with that needs to happen for the kids. An example would be school closures during the pandemic. There was a lot of conversation about how disproportionate educational inequities in Black and Brown communities have devastating ramifications on the equity gap that's getting larger. The gap between homeownership for communities of color and White homeowners has never been this large of a gap in the history of our country. It's only getting larger.
I'm going to hold someone accountable when they're closing schools and communities of color. Students don't have access to Wi-Fi or a Chromebook and schools are online. Do you care about those kids? Is that a sound bite that you want out there in the media? I was able to use it effectively, but you have to listen to your point. When you're talking all the time, no one can ever say anything. Understanding that everyone needs a reason to put their hat on what you want and how you figure out what those are while never diluting what your client needs. My client happens to be an amazing kid experiencing homelessness.
That's a wonderful and succinct description of what it is to be a lawyer in representing our clients as well. It’s a different type of advocacy. You are a truly remarkable person. You are the right person for this particular role and you've done amazing things with it. I’m so happy to talk to you and hear your perspective on so many different things. I've learned a lot about good advocacy and also leadership from you in our discussion. I appreciate you sharing and being so genuine and authentic about your journey and what you've learned. I hope that what you said will come across to the readers and they'll learn a lot of good nuggets from your discussion.
Thank you. It is my joy. I'm very grateful to be exactly where I am and I don't take it for granted.
I'm so excited to see where you go next and what you do next for the kids that you serve, your new clients and your new advocacy position. I wanted to close with a few lightning-round questions, which I asked most guests. What talent would you most like to have but don't?
Paint.
Artist?
Yeah. Not my house. Specifically, watercolor. I would love to paint in watercolors.
I look at art this way. Everyone needs someone to appreciate the art. Even if we can't do it, you need an art appreciator. I fill that role quite well.
If I try it, I’ll send it your way.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself and others?
Have a small portion of the generosity of grace for everyone.
It’s a lack of integrity in myself. Whether I compromise or make a decision, we're talking about whether it's out of fear because fear-based decisions lack integrity. I was going to say fear, but it's not fear because it's healthy to have fear. When people say, “Our fearless leader,” I'm like, “I'm a psychopath.” I have fear. You don't want a fearless leader, but if you make a decision based solely on fear, that lacks integrity. You don't have the personal fortitude or character to make the right decision. Instead, you're making a decision based on fear.
I can be friends with anyone if they have personal integrity. What it is, own it. I can choose whether or not I'm going to spend my extra time with you or not, but I can respect you as a person. If you lack integrity, that's more than dishonesty to me. In the lawyer world, what they make as the reason why there are coffee table joke books about our profession is that there are a lot of lawyers who lack integrity. That was one part of practicing law that I didn't enjoy.
When you say integrity, do you mean words, lines and deeds all aligning or are you thinking of something else?
Words, lines and deeds align. It’s like when someone is intellectually or emotionally dishonest. We're seeing so much of that type of intellectual and emotional dishonesty with everyone. I wish it was only one, but it's with everyone. In doing the work that I do and particularly, I'll be candid with the school closures after a certain period. I understand it happening for a short period, but after a certain period to me, I thought decisions were being made that completely lacked integrity where people were saying one thing, they were doing something completely different and I had no idea what they believed because it was so different between what they said and what they did. That’s what I mean by that.
Who is your hero in real life?
I can tell you someone that I have. Both my parents have passed away and they both taught me so much. My mom taught me a generosity of grace, that I aspire to have a small portion of that generosity of grace for everyone. My dad taught me to always believe in myself in a way that I never would have gotten through what I went through without that.
I look at someone like Bono, to be honest with you. Admittedly, U2 is my favorite rock band. I've been on every tour since Joshua Tree. I haven't missed a single tour. Bono managed to piece together a president, Congress, the United Nations and the international community so effectively that AIDS looks to be eradicated within the next decades, if not sooner. He's a rock star who cared more about doing this one thing than he cared about anyone being right.
He pulled together all of these seemingly conflicting systems and individuals for the common good. Most people don't even know that he did that because he didn't do it for the praise. Unless you google President Bush and Bono, you would never know the stuff that happened around AIDS. I've watched him since the beginning of his involvement in that issue and I've learned a lot from the way he talks about the work and all that he's worked with.
He’s had a remarkable career and done things outside of the rock star arena for humanity. It's interesting to me that you see people accomplishing things, but you also see how they're accomplishing things and you appreciate that. Some people don't always pay attention to what is going on about how someone is making this seemingly impossible thing happen. It's the journey of that and the chess pieces for that's equally interesting to you, which is an interesting answer.
It's more interesting to me. The only way to make systemic change is to figure out how it's been made before and how you adapt former successes to current circumstances. I'm more interested in the process than the outcome. The sustainable stuff happens in the process and allows for more than a singular outcome. Those people that Bono put together on AIDS, I'm certain that they're doing a whole bunch of other things I don't know about. If you focus on the result and not the process, you limit the amount of impact you can have.
Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you like to have dinner with as a dinner guest?
I answered that and the answer was Bono. Authority Magazine asked me that question. Presently alive, it would be him. He would be a fun dinner guest. My husband teases me all the time. We were in Dublin, Ireland and went to The Clarence Hotel that he and Edge own together, which I knew he wasn't going to be there, but I was like, “Let's go.” I was seven months pregnant at the time and I said, “If I see him and he lets me give him a kiss on the cheek, is that okay?” My husband's laughing. He's also Irish and I'm Irish as well. He was like, “If he wasn't a rockstar, he would be another short Irish dude walking down the street.” I'm like, “No. He's one of the greatest poets of my time.” It would be Bono. He would be a lot of fun.
Last question, what is your motto, if you have one?
Anything can happen if you let it. It's funny because Mary Poppins says that in Mary Poppins the musical, but it's almost verbatim. It's similar to Nelson Mandela's, “Anything's impossible until it's done.” It’s from two different people, but the thought that you don't say something is impossible until you try to get it done. You have to believe that anything is possible for it to be so. That starts from that place with that type of abundance mentality of limitless possibilities.
It helps me recover from the setbacks because I haven't done it yet. It's not that it's impossible, but you haven't figured it out yet. It also creates this opportunity for amazing things to happen. I've seen things. Why in the world should I have been able to become a partner at a law firm or have this opportunity to lead this organization? A million different things could have happened in my life. I could have gone down in one million different paths, but that's true. I am much a pragmatic Pollyanna, so I do believe that anything can happen if we let it.
Thank you so much. You are achieving a lot of things that people wouldn't imagine would be possible through your organization as well. You're living your motto and making that happen for so many children in Orange County. We're so lucky to have you doing this work and you came to this part in your journey because it helps everyone and gives a lot more possibilities for the kids in the community. I’m looking forward to seeing what they accomplish and what they do in the world as a result of you assisting them in becoming the best that they can be.
Thank you. It's been an absolute joy.
Thank you so much for joining us. I so appreciate it. I learned so much from you. I enjoyed getting to know you.