From our Outgoing Board Members: Jeanine Lee

We’ve asked our outgoing Board Members to share their reflections about TCDIP’s impact on their careers and organizations. Our first post is from Jeanine Lee, who retired from Stinson LLP at the end of 2019. Many thanks to Jeanine for her years of service on our board, and her dedication to our mission to attract, recruit, advance and retain attorneys of color.

A few years ago, around the time I joined the TCDIP Board, there was a General Members meeting in which we participated in a small group exercise.  The group members took turns introducing ourselves by describing where and how we grew up, and how our backgrounds informed our approach to diversity and inclusion issues.  As the group talked, I wondered what I, a white woman who grew up in a small town, could add.  Then, to my surprise, I heard myself describe my feelings of isolation when I started college.  My dad was a construction worker, I was the first in my family to attend college, and a year earlier my eldest brother had died of cancer.  No one at St. Olaf College could possibly relate to or understand that package of experience, or at least that’s how I felt.  Describing those feelings to a relative group of strangers was a light bulb moment for me.  

Around the same time, I read this New York Times article. The discussion of “psychological safety” as a crucial element for successful teams resonated with me, and the work that TCDIP does.  To succeed, in a law firm or a corporation and in a legal community, we all need to feel safe, and the best way to foster that environment is to openly embrace our genuine selves. Feeling vulnerable is not the easiest thing in the world for lawyers, but it is essential to our efforts in promoting diversity and inclusion. I’ve worked hard since my “light bulb moment” to being open about who I am and where I am from, in order to make others around me feel safe to acknowledge their true selves.