Marisa Cianciarulo
00:52:24
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Show Notes
Marisa Cianciarulo, Dean of Western State College of Law in Orange County, California, discusses her journey to academia, her role managing faculty, students, and various stakeholders as a law school dean, and the importance of female role models in her career development.
About Marisa Cianciarulo
Marisa S. Cianciarulo is the Dean of Western State College of Law. Prior to joining Western State in 2023, Dean Cianciarulo was a tenured professor of law at Chapman University Dale E. Fowler School of Law, where she served as Interim Dean (2021-2023) and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs (2017-2021), and taught Civil Procedure, Gender and Sexual Orientation and the Law, Refugee Law, and Remedies. An expert in immigration and refugee law, Dean Cianciarulo practiced immigration law in the Washington, D.C. area, served as a staff attorney with the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration in Washington, D.C., and served as the Reuschlein Clinical Teaching Fellow in the Villanova Law School Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services from 2003 until 2006. Dean Cianciarulo’s research focuses on reproductive freedom, vulnerable immigrant populations, and the intersection of gender and immigration.
Transcript
Welcome to the show, where we chronicle women's journeys to the bench, bar, and beyond, and seek to inspire the next generation of women lawyers and women law students. I'm very pleased to have with us on the show, the Dean of Western State College of Law in Orange County, California, Marisa Cianciarulo. Welcome to the show.
Thank you very much for having me, MC.
Childhood Dreams: The Early Spark For A Legal Career
You have a career that bridges law practice and academia, and now law school administration, and a couple of different schools. That's an interesting and wide-ranging path. I'm looking forward to exploring that. I start with the very fundamentals of how you decide to go to law school. What did you think you would do with the law when you went there?
My path to law school started very early. I grew up in the '70s and '80s at a time when classmates, especially boy classmates, would still disparage women as leaders. I saw the law as early as the age of twelve, as a path to doing something with my life that I would respect, that others would respect, and where I could make a difference in the world. I never deviated from that. It was what I wanted to do since I was in sixth grade. It took on many different changes over the years in terms of what that looked like and what it meant like to me. I stayed true to that desire to have a career in the law. I've never once regretted it.
Law is a path to doing something with your life that you would respect and others would respect, where you could make a difference in the world.
Were there any women lawyers or lawyers that you knew or saw in action that impacted that so young? I know in my mind, I have no idea. Like you, I had a very firm conviction and decided that was what I was going to do very early. I honestly don't know how I came to it because I didn't know any lawyers. I was wondering about your experience.
Sandra Day O'Connor: A Powerful Inspiration For Women Lawyers
I didn't know any female lawyers. I knew they existed, but there were none in my family, none in my immediate sphere. I was mostly inspired by more national and international figures. One of the leading international leaders at the time was Margaret Thatcher, when I was a kid, and Sandra Day O'Connor had been appointed to the Supreme Court. I was so amazed and inspired by Sandra Day O'Connor's appointment, but also very impacted by the fact that she was the first woman to be a member of the Supreme Court, and that I was seeing that in my lifetime. Even at that young age, it felt to me like something that should have happened a long time ago. It should have been a historical event for me, and not a current event.
Her appointment is quite inspirational. Overall, it caused a lot of women to choose the law.
That was part of it, for sure.
She carried that mantle so nicely, too. She's an understated lady, but very powerful in her role.
Also, what she went through to eventually become an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, graduating from law school, and not being able to find a job as a lawyer, and the stigma against women as lawyers, against women as professionals. That was what I grew up with, too. It was something that resonated with me strongly as something that needed to change.
She and Ruth Bader Ginsburg had both had that issue. When you think about how many women law students there are now and how that isn't an issue, think about how much that has changed in our lifetimes. It's pretty amazing.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an incredible role model and inspiration for me, not just the fact that she was appointed to the Supreme Court, but the causes that she advanced and what she did for the advancement of women's rights as an attorney before she became a Supreme Court Justice. That took it to a whole other level for me when she was appointed. It was this great historic moment when Justice O'Connor was appointed.
When Justice Ginsburg was appointed as someone who, not just as a woman Supreme Court Justice, which was incredible in and of itself, but as a woman who advanced women's rights as a woman lawyer, that too. I was a little older when that happened, but it very much had an impact on me. I was very proud of that accomplishment. Seeing someone like that being recognized made me proud of being a woman in a country where that could happen.
I think that's a good way of putting it, the evolution and the difference between the Justice O'Connor appointment and the Justice Ginsburg appointment. All of the strong work that Justice Ginsburg had done on behalf of women and girls prior to the bench, her advocacy in that regard being so successful in that at the US Supreme Court, the same court that she was about to join, is pretty remarkable. She was quite effective as an advocate.
She was brilliant.
What you're saying echoes with some of the guests, like Judge Dorothy Nelson on the Ninth Circuit. She had some of the same perspectives about, “If I'm a lawyer, I can help make things better in a more effective way. People will listen to me if I have a law degree, as opposed to not. I can help my community always, with or without a law degree.” Having that degree and then becoming a judge in her case impacted, she thought, her ability to effect change in the world. Seeing that connection between the law degree and the possibility of doing that, of having more of an impact, is something that a few people have said early on. That's something they saw, the connection between that.
Law School's Impact: Female Professors & Shaping Legal Identity
I went to Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, DC. It was a law school founded by women before women could even vote. One of the things that stood out to me was that half of my professors, in my 1L year, were women. My civil procedure professor and my property professor were both brilliant and renowned scholars in their respective fields, both of which advanced women's rights and LGBT rights. It was defining for me. I equated law school with women professors.
When I eventually became a law professor myself at a school where no women were teaching in the 1L curriculum, I asked if I could teach in the 1L curriculum. That's how I started teaching civil procedure many years ago. It stood out to me that we didn't have women teaching in the 1L curriculum, whereas when I was in law school in the '90s, it seemed perfectly normal to have female professors teaching me property and civil procedure.
That's interesting. You think about timing, and you think they're looking at the trajectory from even O'Connor to Ginsburg. It should happen. Of course, they're going to be women law professors, but time alone may not be the answer to that. You could be in different scenarios in one school. You don't have professors in that first year curriculum, and in another year, you do, who are quite influential. I think at that point, especially in the first year, that's a tough year. A lot of people will say, “This isn't for me,” after the first year. Keep people in the game, seeing that having that influence can be helpful.
If you feel like an outsider as a law student, that carries over into law practice. I never felt like an outsider as a law student, at least not as a woman. Joan Williams was my property professor, Nancy Polikoff was my civil procedure professor. These are nationally recognized scholars and advocates. I saw them as they were so much more brilliant than I could ever aspire to be, but they were women who had done this and who were having a daily, immediate impact on my life as a law student. When I saw ten years later that there weren't women in the school I was teaching at in the 1L curriculum, I thought that could make a difference in how someone sees themselves as a lawyer.
Prior to teaching, though, you were in law practice. What did you do in practice? How does that relate to your academic focus now?
Real-World Law: Immigration Clinic & Direct Client Representation
I have to credit my law school with that, too. American has one of the best clinical legal programs in the country. I was fortunate enough to benefit from that. I was in the International Human Rights Clinic as a third-year law student. I thought I was going to be doing international impact litigation and writing briefs. The next thing I knew, I had an asylum client from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was a political activist and a torture victim who was applying for asylum in the Baltimore Immigration Court. I didn't even know there was such a thing as an immigration court. I didn't know anything about immigration law. My only reference for political asylum was Central American refugees during the '80s, with the Central American civil wars. This was a completely new and unexpected turn of events for me.
I ended up with this client, and I immediately fell in love with the work of 1) Direct client representation, as opposed to impact litigation, and 2) Working on behalf of people fleeing persecution and seeking refuge in the United States. Everything about this was immediately and deeply compelling to me. I did that case with my clinic partner, Ian Macdonald, who is still an immigration lawyer in Atlanta. I did that case.
We took on two others during our year in the clinic, which was unusual, but we were rocking the clinic. We loved it. We were killing it. The clients were amazing. All three of our clients were from the Democratic Republic of the Congo that year. I had a fourth one over the summer who was from the neighboring Republic of the Congo. I got a lot of experience in a very short time and immediately took a job with a Catholic charities organization doing indigent deportation defense in the Washington, DC area.
There's a connection between using the law to make a difference. That is the value of exposure to different kinds of law in law school and to the clinic experience, too.
It's a tremendous testament to the clinical legal education experience and also to what law school and the education office offer. I went from a twelve year old who was mad at my classmate for putting down women leaders to someone who saw law, not as a way so much to get something for myself in terms of respect and financial independence, but who could have an immediate indirect impact on someone else's life, someone who was escaping things that I couldn't even imagine when I was twelve. That's a lot of change over ten years from when I was twelve until I started law school.
That's a lot of growth and expansion in perspective, but I think there's a common thread, too, in that you're seeing the law as an instrument to help people who need help and to be able to make a difference through the use of the law as a tool or instrument. That's similar to what you were thinking about originally, and that you're like, “This is how we can make things right even on an individual level.” That's so neat that you ended up going into the subject area of your clinic experience. It's amazing.
I was very lucky to be able to get a job while I was still waiting for bar results, doing exactly the type of work I was doing in the clinic, on a much higher volume scale. It went from being a class to being my life. That's what I did for several years.
It's good to have that experience to bring to your current role in teaching and your deanship as well. Tell me how you came back to academia.
Transition To Academia: Teaching, Research, & Scholarship
I saw a clinical teaching fellowship at Villanova, and I was familiar with the person who directed their immigration clinic because she is also very well-known in the immigration and refugee world, Professor Michele Pistone. Another colleague of mine from American, Beth Lyon, was a clinic director at Villanova. They had a farm worker legal aid clinic there. It was home for me. I grew up in the Philadelphia area. I moved back from DC to Villanova and started teaching in exactly the same type of clinic that led me to a career in immigration and refugee law. That was a perfect transition because it incorporated so many aspects of the practice that I loved.
I was still representing clients, still going to court, but I was also supervising students who were going to court, interviewing clients, and learning how to do all of the things that you need to be able to do to represent asylum seekers and people seeking other immigration benefits. It was perfect, but the other thing it did, and this was key for anyone who's thinking about a career in academia, it gave me the opportunity to pursue research and scholarship. I was able to hire a research assistant, and I was able to carve out time for myself to start to explore this world of research and scholarship. I loved it.
It was very brand new to me. I had done it on the International Law Review at American. I'd written an article, I had done all the spading or whatever they call it when you go through other people's articles and edit them, but I never saw myself doing that for myself as part of my job. It was something you did in law school. This opportunity to do it as something that could inform what I do, but also what I do, informing my writing, was pretty magical. I was able to write two full-length law review articles in the three years that I was at Villanova. That's what eventually brought me to a tenure-track position.
The writing and publishing are so key to what the academic role is, but also to advancing, obtaining tenure, and getting on a tenure track. It's important to be able to have that work. Also, the point you made that is interesting is about you teaching in a clinic. The experiences from that, that you were seeing, let's say issues developing from the actual practice that you could bring into the more in-depth academic discussion in the law reviews, that seems like a nice informing, back and forth.
It was. I've always written more on the practical side. I think it's because of that background in practice, in direct client representation, I like my articles to be accessible and useful on a practical level.
I could see where that would help if there are developing issues, because sometimes, when you're advocating, you're seeing the client you have in front of you and the issues you're dealing with here. If you can understand how that fits into larger trends, or your client isn't the only one experiencing this and trying to figure out the bigger picture and where that case fits in, that article could be helpful.
My articles tied in a lot of the things that drove me to law school in the first place. I've always written on the intersection of gender equality, immigration, and advancing women's rights in immigration. I've never lost sight of that. That's always been important to me, it continues to be important to me, and it's informed most of my scholarship.
From that fellowship, you went fully into academia. Tell me about what it's like to be a full-time law professor, and what advice you might give to folks who are thinking about that.
It's very exciting and rewarding to be a full-time law professor. I started off in a clinical setting. Even after my fellowship, I accepted a tenure-track position at Chapman University and immediately started a clinic there focused on vulnerable immigrants, victims of violent crimes, including domestic violence, human trafficking, rape, sexual assault, and child abuse. My students' clients were applying for various benefits, including asylum, but there was an array of other immigration benefits they could apply for as well. I started off doing that and teaching related seminars. I taught a seminar in refugee law. I taught a seminar on gender and sexual orientation in the law.
It's very exciting and rewarding to be a full-time law professor.
It was that noting, you don't have any women teaching property, contracts, pro, or torts. Why don't you slot me into one of those? They did. That was one of the great things about being at a school in a tenure-track capacity is that, as a tenure-track professor, if you're at a school that emphasizes mentoring and helping you take those steps towards tenure, they will be open to that. Anytime I asked to do something new, they were the vehicle for making it happen.
The next thing I knew, I was teaching civil procedure and thinking I could never do this as well as Professor Polikoff, but I loved it. I had so much fun. I still teach it. I teach it as a dean. It's such a good way to get to know students. When they enjoy your class as a 1L, they want to take your other classes. All of a sudden, I saw growth in my refugee law seminar, in my gender and sexual orientation and law seminar in the clinic. They got to see that other side of me, my research side, and my practice background side. It was great.
That's right. Sometimes, students enjoy your teaching. Their enjoyment of that can cause them to get some new experiences, take other topics, enroll in your clinics, and things like that. The dean experience, you were Interim Dean at Chapman, and now you're Dean at Western State. What is that like to transition from a faculty member to this very important role for each of the schools on a much macro level?
From Professor To Dean: The Surprising Path To Leadership
It is surprising. It was a surprising trajectory for me. Just like being a law professor was, it was never something I envisioned. I gave it a try. I gave teaching a try and found that not only did I like it, but my students seemed to like learning from me. That made me pursue it as a tenure-track thing. The same thing happened there. I enjoyed it. The students enjoyed learning from me. When I had the opportunity, which came out of nowhere to be an Interim Dean, I had been serving as an Associate Dean for about four and a half or five years when that happened.
The deanship was an incredible new opportunity to work with the administrators at a law school, the people who affect the daily lives of our students in important ways, the Career Services Dean, the Dean of Students, the Dean of Admissions, and the Registrar. For the first time, I got to know these amazing, talented people. We inspired each other. They wanted me to continue being a dean. When the opportunity at Western State came up, I found that it was the same thing there. They wanted me to come on board. I wanted to be part of that team. Every day, we inspire each other. It's the opportunity to work with incredibly talented people.
Here, for example, I have a Dean of Marketing and Alumni Relations. His skills with social media, marketing, working with our alums, and keeping them connected through our social media, I don't have that talent. I take my cues from him, and I promoted him. I'm like, “This is incredibly important what you do. Let's make that official and have you play a more recognized role.”
Same with our Dean of Students. She's been here 40 years. She knows Western State inside and out. Our Dean of Admissions has been here for twenty years. She's an alum of the school. What I enjoy about it is being able to make a team that's already talented feel like they are seen, respected, and celebrated, so they want to do this for another twenty years. They feel excited and enthusiastic about what they're doing every day. That makes a difference in our students' lives.
I didn't realize how long-tenured the team is. I do know, and everybody may not know this, but the role and the importance of the Western State in Orange County, historically, is so important. It was the first and only law school for a very long time. That also allowed people who wanted to go into law as a second career to do that, going to Western State. It's such an important part of the fabric in Orange County, in terms of growing the legal profession here. It has such an important historical role in that regard.
Western State College: A Legacy Of Access & Opportunity
You're right. It has always been and continues to be a school of access for people who would otherwise not be able to pursue a law degree. We have a true night program for people who are working during the day or taking care of their kids during the day. They come to law school at night part-time. They finish in four years instead of three. We are the least expensive law school in the state. We are very generous with respect to scholarships. One of the most amazing things about Western State is our alumni. We have about 12,000 alumni. We have 150 alumni on the bench.
The overwhelming feedback I get from them is that they are grateful to Western State, that Western State provided access to them to something that they otherwise would never have seen themselves doing, either because they were first gen and came from a family that was trying to make ends meet or come from an immigrant family that valued education. They didn't see a law in their future as something that they could do. Many different sectors of our society came to Western State, and the school provided them a way to achieve their dream of becoming a lawyer.
Going with your theme earlier of women's progress and access is that some of the very first people I knew when I was growing up here in Orange County, who had become lawyers or were going back to school to become lawyers, were women who were able to do that because they could attend Western State. They could have their current career or take care of other things they needed to take care of, and then have school at night. It was instrumental in many women, many of whom eventually joined the bench in Orange County and became very influential lawyers in the county. They were able to do that because of Western State.
That was important to me to be part of that. We continue that tradition. We have an incredibly diverse student body, students from all over California, from all different walks of life, all different backgrounds, lots of first gen, lots of first generation, and not just law students but first generation Americans.
It seems like it's such a good fit, the law school itself, its history, your interests in academia and teaching, and having the law benefit folks.
Very much. It's a good match.
What surprised you the most about being in a dean role or being in an administrative role? One thing you do have to balance and sacrifice is the teaching part. You can't have the teaching load that you would if you were a full-time tenure-track. You have to balance that out, but you're able to deal with students and make an impact in their lives in a different way in the administrative role. I still think you have some idea of what some job will be, and then when you're in it, you discover that it's different. What do you think about being a dean and what it is actually like?
Before I was an interim dean, I was an associate dean and was dealing mostly with the faculty, and I was still teaching. In terms of what I expected a dean to be, I didn't know. I had no idea, and it was something I never saw myself in. It was something that would be all politics all the time. As it turned out, there's a lot of politics, but it's not so much politics as recognizing that people want to be seen and heard, and that means different things to different people. Once I moved past my preconceptions about what it would be and looked at it for what it was, I was like, “This is something I do.” It taps into a part of me that I think made me want to be the kind of lawyer I was in the first place.
People are teaching. They're not in this for the money. They are doing this because it's a calling for them. Different things motivate different people. I like finding out what that is and putting a spotlight on it for them. For some people, it's their research. For some people, they're going to win Professor of the Year every year because they connect with students so well. Whatever that is, I like to find out what it is, highlight it, and make that person feel seen, heard, respected, and celebrated.
Once I saw that as a big part of the job, I realized that's why people like me are in this job. That surprised me, too, the fact that people liked me in the job, wanted me to keep doing it, and wanted me to be part of their teams. I was like, “Why?” I couldn't quite figure that out at first, and then I realized I recognize up front that I shouldn't be taking credit for things that other people are doing.
It would never even occur to me to do that, so I never look at employment outcomes and bar pass outcomes or admissions outcomes and say that's all me. No, that is my team, that is my professors, and those are our students who made these things happen. I think my job as the dean is to help people recognize their own talent and give that talent an appropriate outlet. Sometimes, it's not working, so we fit someone in somewhere else, surround them with different people, and see how that works. It's a lot of moving parts. The other thing is working with a budget.
That's right. Let's come down to earth a little bit here.
It's about numbers. It's about money and doing what you can with what you have and looking for new resources to do the things you want to do. That takes a village, and I have an excellent village that helps me do that. There's a lot of practical stuff, which I'm a practical person. I like law practice. I liked putting together my evidence, finalizing my documents, doing my interviews, and getting things done. At the end of the day, it was important to get those things done because there was a bigger picture that it was all supporting. That's a lot of being a dean. It's getting things done with what you have and with the people that you have around you, and making the most of all of it. That's what I like about it. I think that's also what I'm good at.
The Dean's Role: Balancing Budgets & Inspiring Teams
When you're describing it, I was thinking there's an administrative aspect, but I feel like there's management, but also an entrepreneurial, almost like a social entrepreneurial aspect to it in terms of managing the team that you have, and also the students' experience. Also, you're like, “Look, we have a budget. We have to work things out. We have to make this ship keep going forward here.”
Staying afloat and moving forward. That's what we're doing. Sometimes, those are hard conversations to have with people. Someone comes to you and says, “Why are we doing things this way?” I have to say, “Because that's what we have the resources for.” If we can get additional resources, then we can change things. That's something I'm constantly working on as a dean. I'm okay having those conversations. I always realize someone is coming to me because they want to be seen and they want to be heard. They're not coming at me to attack me or having a problem with me. They want to be seen, and they want to be heard.
Someone comes to me because they want to be seen and heard. They’re not coming at me to attack me or cause a problem. They simply want to be seen and heard.
That's a good way of framing that and thinking about that in not just a dean position. In a lot of different ways, if you're managing anyone in any setting in a law firm or working with clients, recognizing that in people and figuring out what that is that they need and how to communicate that to them is such a valuable transferable skill.
Also, it's not something that you always have the opportunity to develop as a law professor because you're isolated as a law professor. You're pretty much your own boss, as long as you're showing up for class, teaching what needs to be taught, and meeting your dad, but doing what needs to get done. You're a team of one. There's this whole other aspect to legal education. It's a lot more teamwork, team building, and doing what I used to do, but in a different setting.
That's what I was going to say. You mentioned it yourself of the practice and the clinical experience rounding out your skills for the dean position.
That’s true. For people who are aspiring to do that, having the academic experience, writing is probably the hardest thing for any lawyer. Anyone who does it, who didn't automatically gravitate towards that in law school, but explores that, getting comfortable with it, being confident about yourself, that's the hardest part of it. That's the key. I didn't go to a top fourteen law school, and that's where most of the legal academy comes from. It was having two well-published articles when I went on the market that got me the interviews. You're able to show who you are as a teacher, and then you can be a scholar. From there, it's using that practice background.
One of the challenges in law school education is the clinical experience. The clinics are valued, and the practical part of training is valued, but it's not often that you can find a tenure-track clinic teaching position. That might be changing now, but the practical teaching and the clinic teaching are seen, at least in the past, as something somewhat separate from the more traditional civil procedure and whatever you would be teaching subject matter-wise. It's nice to see that changing a little bit, but there's still that.
Navigating Academia: Publishing, Practice, & Overcoming Barriers
There's still an emphasis on doctrinal teaching and also on where you went to law school rather than what you bring to the table. That's a huge barrier to getting a job as a law professor. I'm super fortunate that I was able to overcome it, but you can't overemphasize it. It's a big barrier.
It's still part of it. That's why I want to mention that. Your suggestion of publishing before you're on the market, before you go to apply to teach, is helpful because if anybody has questions about whether you can do something, you’re like, “I did. Here it is.”
You can talk about it, and you're excited to talk about it because that's how you apply for a teaching job. You talk about your scholarship to the faculty. That helps them see like, “This is someone enthusiastic about this and has a research agenda that they want to pursue. That's going to bring a lot of prestige to our community.” You like that, and that makes sense, but it's also nice to have the practice background and be able to say, “This is what it's like when you're representing clients.” It's nice to have the two. The legal academies have changed to the fact that they are very much looking for a practice background when they hire professors. They want both.
I've seen that evolution. I would say in the last ten years or so, there has been an interest in people who have had significant practice experience before coming to teaching.
I think it is a very good thing.
It's a great combination. You have the intellectual curiosity and the interest in delving into research areas and writing about them. You also have this real-world practice experience, which, together, enriches things for the students. They're always curious like, “How does this actually work? What happens in actual practice?” More and more, there are some questions like that. That comes from the clinic experience being more and more part of their experience as law students. They know how to ask questions about how it works.
Also a changing model in law firms, where before there was an expectation that your law firm would train you, and that has flipped. Now, the expectation is that you're going to come to the law firm already knowing how to file a motion, how to write a motion for summary judgment, and how to write a pleading. There's a much more practical emphasis in law school teaching.
That's right. There has been a change in where the training comes from and when it happens. That's different from when I was in school, and clinics were starting at that point. That's so important. I tell the students in the appellate clinics that I teach, especially in the Ninth Circuit clinic, “This makes supervisors' lives so much easier in law firms because if a client asks, or they want to tell the client this is not this person's first brief. This is not their first argument. They have done this in the Ninth Circuit, where many lawyers have not even briefed or argued something for many years into their practice.”
Lightning Round: Personal Heroes & Life's Grateful Moments
Having that makes it much easier for them to get more immediate experience once they get into practice, and therefore to advance faster. It is symbiotic. It's amazing some of the experiences they can have in school, in the clinics. Thank you so much for being part of the show and sharing your thoughts about academia, being a dean, and what's involved with all of that. Hopefully, somebody might be inspired down the line to become a professor or to become a dean. Usually, I end with a little lightning round set of questions. I'm going to ask a few of those. The first one is, which talent would you like to have, but don't?
Singing. Does that count? Is that the kind of talent you need? I wish I could sing. I've always wished it.
I always think about the art side or the music side. There are people who can do things, and then they always need people who appreciate what they do. I put myself in that category, the art and music appreciator. That's important. You play an important role still. Who are some of your favorite writers? They don't have to be legal writers, just great writers.
I have read constantly my entire life, so I always loved, even as a kid, E.B. White. I loved Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery. Those are like my childhood ones. As I got older, defining books for me were To Kill a Mockingbird, The Handmaid's Tale. So many, I don't think I could name any particular one. Maya Angelou was incredibly inspiring for me.
That's so interesting to hear you say, when you said Anne of Green Gables and To Kill a Mockingbird, those were my progression, too. It's so interesting to hear you say that. Who is your hero in real life? Someone, as opposed to someone you've seen.
That's another hard one to pick. So many people have inspired me in many ways. Let's see. I would say he's still my friend and clinic professor, Elliot Milstein. He is one of the founding law professors of clinical legal education, and a brilliant, funny, empathetic person because he's been so accomplished in his life. He was the interim president of the university. He was the dean of the law school. He was president of AALS. He inspired me. He saw something in me. For someone who's done so much and who's still my friend, it's awe-inspiring for me. He comes to mind for sure as one of my heroes.
It sounds like inspiring your trajectory, too, which is cool. It's always neat to have people see things in you that you don't yet see in yourself and to encourage you to do things.
I would have to put Michelle Pistone for sure as a hero. She was the first one to hire me. She hired me as her fellow and put me on this amazing path in the academy. Like me, she was a mom. We both have two kids and juggle all of that. I took so much inspiration from her. She did it. I was like, “I'm just going to do it.” She showed me it could be done. She is heroic and has done incredible things in legal education and clinical legal education, and also beyond, with technology and developing alternatives to legal representation for people in legal deserts. She's an incredible human being.
For what in life do you feel most grateful?
Meeting Michele and Elliot. I'm incredibly grateful for my husband, my kids, and my parents, who invested so much in my education. We don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, but the one thing that they made sure was that I had the education I needed to do whatever I wanted. They made that happen. I'm incredibly grateful for that.
I think about that, too. That's so important. Families and parents who recognize the value of education in opening opportunities for their children and do what is necessary to make that happen. I think often about my dad, a father having that perspective for a daughter, especially not in the current day, but long ago, makes such a difference.
They're not seeing a difference between a daughter and a son and saying, “Both of you need to have the best education possible, and you need to do the most you can in that regard.” To have them support you in that, not seeing a difference between that, helps with confidence as you go out into the world. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you have as a dinner guest? This could be anyone who's still with us or not with us. It could be a group, so more than one person.
I always would have liked to have had a conversation with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She would be there. I'd honestly love for her to meet my late grandmothers, see what that conversation would look like, because they were also very encouraging of me, but never foresaw that a woman could do the things that my sisters and I do. That wasn't part of their world. I think those different backgrounds, different generations, and yet the strength of all of those women in one room would be pretty incredible. The conversation would be very interesting.
I like that. I think that sometimes, the individuals, of course, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, would be amazing, but having the group would be a very interesting discussion. As you said, to see very strong women from different eras and different backgrounds together would be cool.
I asked my grandmother once. My grandmother was born in 1904, so she lived a very long life. I asked her once when I was a little kid, and I said, “Do you think a woman could ever be president?” She said, “No, I don't think that. I don't think women are strong enough for that.” This was a woman who lost her husband when my dad was only seven, and her other kids, I think, were twelve and fourteen. She had twins, my twin aunts, and my dad and my other aunt, and she raised them alone and worked her whole life.
I thought, “Who's stronger than you?” I also asked her, “What if I were running for president?” She said, “Of course, I'd vote for you.” Because of how and when she grew up, the way she saw strength, what that meant, and what leadership meant are so different from how I see it. I look back at her and what she did, and she is one of the strongest people I've ever known. I wish we had more leaders like her. I wish more women saw themselves as leaders and saw the things that make them strong, but are told that make them weak. I wish they saw them as strengths. My great wish for future generations is for women to see what has traditionally been called weaknesses, strengths.
I also think that's so interesting that people who are strong often don't see themselves that way. They'll say, “I did what had to be done.” You do it as opposed to seeing a pretty strong person to get through all of that. All right. Last question. What is your motto, if you have one?
I don't have one. I have a philosophy, which is to try to do the right thing. I guess it's, “Do small things with great love.” If that was a motto, it would be that. A number of people have been credited with saying that. It probably started with Saint Teresa of the Little Flower. That was also something that Mother Teresa would say a lot, her namesake.
Try to do the right thing. Fo small things with great love.
That's beautiful. Thank you so much. It's a beautiful way to end, and everyone can take some inspiration from that. Everyone can do something about that right after the show. That's great. Thank you so much for joining and for having our chat.
Thank you for having me.