Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Maria de Jesus Santovenia draws regularly upon the varied experiences she had on the way to the bench—except maybe for setting her junior high school standing broad jump record (7 feet, 4 inches) and perching on a unicycle in center ring at a Russian circus in the Soviet Union.

“I always look at my background and think that everything works out the way it's supposed to,” she said. “Everything you did before kind of leads to where you are now. I look at the skills and experience that I use here on a daily basis and a lot of it has to do with different things that I did along the way.”

Including, perhaps, having been her elementary school's sixth-grade spelling bee champ.