Tell us a little about yourself, your practice, and how you came to Nixon Peabody.
Thirteen years ago, before I knew what Corporate Trust was, my life was quite different. I’m originally from Jersey City, New Jersey, and was passionate about Asian languages (Chinese and Japanese specifically). After college, I decided to head to Ann Arbor, Michigan, (Go Blue!) instead of back to Shanghai, and while there, former NP partner Greg Deschennes interviewed me and sold me on the firm. During my journey here as a summer associate and first year, I dabbled in different practices, but Global Finance fit my personality best. Years later, Nixon Peabody is the only place I’ve practiced as an attorney, and now I advise bank clients on structured finance deals—more acronyms and finance jargon than I ever knew existed. It's a fast-paced, transactional practice, with a small-but-mighty team, mostly in Boston and NYC.
What inspires you? Or why do you do the work that you do?
One of the reasons I chose to join NP’s Corporate Trust Team was to learn something I knew nothing about. I’m a lifelong student, and I like projects, so something opaque and technical like structured finance was intriguing to me. Why are parties investing in these deals? What are the terms of repayment, and what happens if one of the parties makes a mistake? How do you enforce agreements, and how do you help clients protect themselves, sometimes from risks they don’t even see? A lot of the work in Corporate Trust is anticipating problems and solving them before they arise, and the list of possible issues is never-ending. For some of us (mostly nerds), this kind of work is rewarding—like solving a puzzle.
What is your proudest personal or professional accomplishment?
One of my proudest personal accomplishments was running my first marathon a few years ago, the Boston Marathon. As an associate at a large law firm, in a demanding practice, one of the hardest things to maintain is boundaries—for many years, I put my work first, sometimes at the expense of my own health and personal life. Getting a spot in the Boston Marathon (thanks to an NP alum, no less!) taught me a lot of lessons—about training and consistency, but also about boundaries. With a marathon, especially your first one, there’s a rigorous training plan over the course of months, and if you want to be prepared, you have to do your runs. You can skip them if you like, but if you do, you won’t be ready on Race Day. Choices have consequences. So, for once, I had to prioritize something else and fit my life around it. It taught me a lot about prioritization and making time for the things in your life that matter. It also made me a better lawyer, since running has been immensely helpful for me in managing my stress and commitments. Marathon training has been one of my life’s great teachers.
As we honor Black History month, can you share one of your favorite traditions from your own heritage?
For many Black Americans, core to the kind of connection you have to your own heritage is where you’re raised. While many Black Americans are, ancestrally at least, from “the South” (i.e., the Southeastern US), our lives have often been shaped by the migration choices of our predecessors. Many of our grandparents or great-grandparents left the brutality and injustices of the South for the Northeast (like my grandparents did, via the Great Migration), or the Midwest, or the West. Others have very different stories, and since we represent an entire global diaspora, our stories are many. But one of the things that remains important to me is piecing together that history, knowing it, living it, and carrying it with me everywhere I go. Though I didn’t grow up in the South, it has been important to me to spend significant amounts of time in Elloree, South Carolina, and Sparta, Georgia, southern towns of less than a thousand people with difficult, painful histories (and presents), to try to understand the lives my grandparents lived. What they wanted from life, how their choices shape mine. I think for many of us, that connection to our history is important, and many of us try to “exist in the context of all in which we live,” to quote former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Are there black professional organizations that you have been involved in, and how have they impacted you/your career? How do you see these organizations making a positive impact for the constituents they serve?
I’ve been involved in many Black professional organizations throughout my legal career—in law school, I served as vice president of University of Michigan Law School’s Black Law Students Association, and while at NP, I’ve served on the board of the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association for a number of years. I’ve also started, run, or participated in various informal Black law student and lawyer networks throughout my career. Some of the people I’ve met through these organizations have become my greatest friends—some colleagues, others clients (or potential clients). For many of us, we’re positive examples for one another—we’re comrades, we’re reminders to keep going, to remain inspired. Often, many of us are used to being the “first” or the “only”—the first in their family to graduate college, or become a lawyer, or the only Black person they know who’s worked at X firm or Y institution. Creating the playbook for your life from scratch is exciting in some ways, but can be exhausting. Sharing space with folks with common experience can have a way of unblocking you, helping you reimagine what’s possible. This in turn has tons of ripple effects and potential positive consequences.
What advice would you give to young Black lawyers to help them advance in their careers?
Do the work and learn from it. To be a lawyer is to “practice,” and that means doing whatever it is that lawyers do—revising transaction documents, drafting motions and briefs, reviewing statutes and researching legal issues, and so on. I’m a big believer in working backwards: envisioning a long-term outcome—5, 10, and/or 15 (or 20) years in the future—and engineering every single step, process, and resource that you’ll need to achieve your objective. I have a penchant for breaking life down into checklists and formulas. But core to any good future as a lawyer is skill. I wasn’t necessarily sure what I wanted as a young lawyer, so I worked through multiple scenarios, but I knew I had to be a good lawyer. No matter what I wanted, my skills would be the only thing I had. So, I would advise young lawyers to be single-minded in developing their skills, whatever that means in a particular area of practice. How do you deliver excellent work product? How do you become the kind of lawyer clients want to work with the most? Those questions are paramount and central to the profession.
What inspired your desire to lead the Black Resource Group? What goals are you hoping to achieve in this role?
The Black Resource Group is a collective of talented Black attorneys at the firm with tons of potential and opportunities. Part of my interest is in figuring out how to realize that potential. Are Black attorneys being leveraged as much as possible to grow the firm? Are there opportunities that aren’t being seized, possible clients that members of the BRG could help with attracting? In general, numbers for Black attorneys in the legal profession have room for improvement at every level, whether associate or partner. Many words have been spoken and written about how much needs to change. How do we move things forward? There are a ton of things to try, though it will require hard work, discipline, and focus. I was most interested in bringing my perspective to the group and experimenting with what might move the needle forward (pun intended). I thank the group for their patience and trust!
What are some of the ways you have been involved in advancing NP’s commitment to DEI?
I’ve served NP in many ways over the years—I’ve mentored local (and not-so-local) law students and NP lawyers; I’ve spoken on panels and at conferences; I’ve written articles, interviewed candidates, served on boards, and so on. In all that I’ve done, as an NP attorney, I am always an ambassador of the firm to the outside world. In general, my efforts have been spent encouraging and supporting folks re NP—encouraging them to apply to the firm and supporting them when they get here, in whatever ways I can. Ultimately, whether a person comes to the firm or not, stays at the firm or not, my perspective has always been about making NP a viable choice for as many talented attorneys as I know. About making sure NP is a place where people want to practice law and spend their careers. Law firms are not for everyone, but for those of us that choose to work here (and are blessed enough to have the opportunity), I want Nixon Peabody to be as good a law firm as it can possibly be. And so, the work continues.
