I spent last week in New York, visiting my in-laws. The day after we returned to California, my mother-in-law, Judith Winship, died after a long illness. She was 78.

She was a lawyer, admitted to the New York bar in 1980 as Judith Carlson Greene. She spent her career as an in-house lawyer, starting at Smith Barney and sticking with the company as it merged with Salomon Brothers, then Travelers Group, then Citigroup, where she was an associate general counsel when she retired in 2001. After retirement, she went on to serve as a FINRA arbitrator.

It's fitting that she never changed jobs—she was one of the most loyal people I ever met. She was also one of the fiercest. She wanted to be a lawyer her entire life, but her parents in Illinois discouraged her—there weren't many women going to law school when she graduated from college in 1963—so she became a school teacher instead. But after she and my husband's father divorced, she put herself through New York Law School, passing the bar at age 39.

She was incredibly proud of being a lawyer—to her, it was the finest and noblest of professions, and a central part of her identity. On Wall Street, she made her mark as a trailblazer and a fighter, with an unwavering sense of right and wrong. Granted, this didn't always make her the easiest mother-in-law, but she was an extraordinary person—an inspiration to me and so many others fortunate enough to have known her.

Godspeed Judith. You will be deeply missed.