Growing up, I wanted to be a basketball player and a doctor (like Dr. J, as I used to say), then an actress, then a musician. Instead, I went to law school to be a public defender, came out a commercial real estate associate, spent the past decade in privacy and consumer protection and now find myself vying for a career in the arts. Life is funny like that.

It’s been a fun and unexpected development to see how twenty years of lawyering feeds into my relatively new (but all-consuming) passion for screenwriting. It was a real aha moment to hear one of my non-lawyer colleagues describe my legal job as an intensely creative undertaking. I had never thought of it that way but she’s so right!

Being a good lawyer is all about seeing different stories in your head and helping your client get to the best one. Both counseling and storytelling involve filtering through massive amounts of info to create something concise, cohesive and actionable.

When I first started writing, I couldn’t believe I’d “wasted” twenty years on the law. But now, a few years in, I’ve realized how much those years fuel my creativity. I’ve done so many interesting things and met so many interesting people. I’ve lived a life and have no shortage of stories waiting to be told. None of those things were true in my twenties so I’ve stopped kicking myself over the whole thing.

Bar Admissions

-Illinois, 2006 (inactive)

-California, 2011 (active)

Education

-J.D., Northwestern University School of Law, 2006, cum laude
-B.A., Italian & English, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2003, High Honors & Phi Beta Kappa

Other

Certified Information Privacy Professional-U.S., 2013.

I don’t do social media but you can find me on LinkedIn.