This is my 27th year here.

My title is Supervising Attorney, but I believe my role for each of those days in those many years is to share what I know about advocacy from both the client and the legal perspective. Also, my role is to ensure that individuals with disabilities receive competent and effective help and that includes raising the level of advocacy service with the staff members I work with when warranted.

I’d like to believe that my role is to share what I know with the people I work with so we can represent and help clients. Although I’ve had different titles, I have always held that belief.

A lot of my career at DRC has been in the mental health field and I have family members with severe mental illness. I am quite familiar with the stigma that attaches to having a diagnosis. I’m familiar with the service system and the challenges.

“Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories.” This is a Netflix series that I happened to watch about a person who runs a diner that opens at midnight and the different individuals who show up and tell their life’s stories. It’s well-done and interesting. There’s also a cooking lesson at the end of it.

The resources and opportunity to effectively help individuals who want our help. It’s rewarding when you can help somebody who wants our help. I don’t ever want to come from a position of telling somebody what they need to do or need to have. The client directs our work. A lot of the theories like client-centered work encapsulates that idea that the client has ability, including directing the work.

You can be kind and compassionate, but also a force to reckon with. My personality is kind and compassionate, but there are times that you have to kind of put on that hat to speak out because the world isn’t always nice. You have to kind of hang in there and stay in there to get the right outcome.

Early in my career here, I worked on the class action case called Emily Q that established therapeutic behavior services under EPDST and I was greatly impacted by the courage of the named plaintiffs. From that successful case, I realized that we can have a great and positive impact on our client’s lives.

We have the privilege of advocating for people with disabilities who want our help. The mission of DRC will exist far beyond any of our time here. “Existing beyond our time” means that I want to share what I know to younger employees so they can carry on the work. This thinking helps me to frame my days, weeks, months, and years here.

I’ve been described as someone who is thoughtful, kind, and generous but who is challenged by not having common-sense! I have a deep ability to relate to diverse people and have an uncanny ability to sense people’s needs.

Playing tennis, thinking about tennis, and teaching tennis. I’ve just recently been certified to be a tennis coach and have been asked to be an assistant tennis coach for a local girls, and boys, high school team. I want to teach individuals tennis so they can play this amazing sport for their entire lives. I had great coaches who were important figures and positive influences, so I’d like to use tennis coaching in that way too.