Many an article has been written about the power of travel to be a life-changing journey. I recently read a piece in the Guardian from 2005 where Nigel Tisdall shares myriad trips which can create memories that live with you forever. He suggests spending six months traversing Asia, talking to the animals in the Kalahari Desert or swapping your house for a luxurious villa. While all the ideas sparked my keen interest, the likelihood of my participation in an intensive workout on a Kenyan beach with Wild Fitness is not likely an adventure I will undertake in the near future. Instead, I am looking forward to the adventure and personal growth ahead for me as I step into my role as the Executive Director of the King County Bar Association. Being selected to steward KCBA is an exceptional opportunity, and I am enthusiastic about the possibilities.
My career to this point has been a fulfilling and unique exploration of law and child welfare across communities. I have been lucky in that my professional path has aligned with my personal passions.
As an attorney I have served persons with disabilities, incarcerated youth, tribal members experiencing domestic and sexual violence, tribes exercising their sovereignty, and individuals experiencing a breadth of civil legal needs. In my varied and diverse practice, I became myopic about the needs of Indigenous children and families facing child welfare systems. Focusing my passion this way was a naturally occurring phenomenon. Many of us have come to focus our practice and I was lucky to be able to focus mine in an area of the law and practice in a culturally relevant and meaningful way. As a woman of Oneida descent, working to reconcile the impacts of colonization on the determinants of health for Indigenous children, youth, families and communities is both passion and duty.
When I became a foster parent, I was exposed to the experiences of the families of the children I cared for and the incredibly difficult climate that social workers face in their efforts to reconcile the impacts of colonization in their practice. It was then I chose to move from the practice of law to the practice of social work, where I would spend more than a decade leading teams and organizations working to improve outcomes through education, skill development and policy advocacy. My most recent experience was leading the Alliance for Professional Development, Training, and Caregiver Excellence with the University of Washington.
Deciding to make the transition away from child and family services was not born out of unrest, but rather from a place of wanting to return to the idealism and root of my decision to become an attorney in the first place: to protect the rule of law and ensure access to equitable justice. The opportunity to lead KCBA provided a path to do so as a leader, thought partner, and strategist in support of KCBA’s long history of seeking excellence, equity, and accessibility for lawyers, judges, and the law.
As I write this, I am near the end of my fourth full week in the role. While the strategic vision of our journey together is yet to be fully formed, I am looking forward to co-creating goals and a map to their achievement. Our first stop will be reinvigorating KCBA’s mission and vision. I am committed to meaningful engagement with staff and stakeholders, an assessment of our current cultural and organizational effectiveness, and centering the voices of those with lived experience in implementing our anti-racist statement. I share Karen Orehoski’s belief put forward in her President’s Page that “words alone cannot manifest our commitment.” To that end, I look forward to working together in the coming months to create actionable steps in furtherance of achieving our mission and vision.
In the meantime, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I remind you, “to find the journey’s end in every step of the road . . . is wisdom.”
