What was your route to the top? I spent 13 years in private practice in few Boston law firms handling a range of business matters including litigation, employment issues, and various types of corporate work. During my entire legal career, I have been engaged in bar association work. In particular, I have spent the past 13 years on the board of the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts (WBA) and served as its President in 2011-12. Being engaged in the legal community and the advocacy work of the WBA has been critical to my career happiness and provided a community that fostered growth and success. In my last firm, I worked primarily with start-up companies. Seeing the challenges women entrepreneurs faced in getting off the ground inspired me to launch SheStarts in 2014 to support the growing women's entrepreneurship community in Boston. I met Nicole Sahin, the CEO of Globalization Partners, as a result of my involvement in the women's startup ecosystem in Boston. The company became a client and grew incredibly quickly. When Nicole asked me to join the company in 2016 as one of the first 10 employees, I was excited at the prospect of helping to build the company and work with some of the most talented people I have ever met. Because the company provides a global employment platform, it has been incredibly rewarding to not just provide legal advice, but to work across departments on building out our platform, which is a unique role for an in house legal department to play in a company.

What keeps you up at night? (i.e. What are your biggest business-related concerns?) Keeping up with the everchanging landscape of data privacy laws is something that we are always focused on here. In addition, because of what we do, staying on top of the employment laws in all the countries where we offer our platform requires constant vigilance and education. The other members of the legal team are all incredibly talented. If not for them, I would spend many more sleepless nights.

What is the best leadership advice you provided, or received, and why do you think it was effective? The best advice I can give to anyone is to be honest and authentic in how you communicate and interact with people. Leaders are not always going to have all the answers and it is better to show some vulnerability then to pretend otherwise. People know when you are disingenuous and it can lead to a lack of trust which undermines a leader's ability to lead.

Looking back, what do you wish you had known when you started out in the legal profession? That a successful legal career need not proceed in a straight line and that it will not go in the way that you plan and that is actually a good thing. A temporary “failure” can lead to success if you get yourself up and dust yourself off and learn to fail better. Having grit and resourcefulness is key to career happiness and success.