THE WHY BEHIND RESEARCH THREADS

"My parents did an incredible job of instilling the idea of equality in me. Being the mixed-race daughter of a first-generation Korean woman and of a white man who overcame being born into a poor household with an abusive father, it was a priority for them that I inherently understand a simple truth: I am not less than anyone else. Period. They were so successful in imparting this radical ideology that I was a junior in college before I realized the gender pay gap even existed. It was 2006 when I became aware of the fact that, at the time, women (on average) were getting paid $0.77 to every dollar a man made.

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I was floored. Up until that point, I naively believed that gender equality across the board was somehow “taken care of.” I thought the hard-working feminists who came before me had already solved that problem. More specifically, I assumed gender inequality was not anything I myself needed to be concerned with. It’s not hard to imagine the various levels of surprise I traversed over the next several years as I began to realize how gender inequality was only the tip of the social issues iceberg.

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Eleven years later, Philadelphia passed the Wage Equity Ordinance effectively banning employers from inquiring about an applicant’s salary history. At the time, I was a consultant managing the HR system my company relied on for recruiting candidates and onboarding new employees. Since the new law directly impacted the application process, my team was tapped to discuss the company’s options regarding how to integrate the new law into our system.

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The first meeting to discuss how to handle the new law included several members of senior leadership within our HR organization and from our legal department. The display of strategic gymnastics that unfolded over the course of an hour was an extremely eye-opening experience for me. Suggestions such as having two separate applications (one for Philadelphia and one for everywhere else) or making the “expected salary” a required field on the application were debated. Discussions around how to legally frame questions to encourage potential candidates to share their salaries ensued. The main objective was pretty clear: without breaking the law, keep the new process as similar to the old process as possible. Only a single voice in the room advocated for changing the culture of how the company should approach compensation rather than searching for loopholes to skirt the new law. Spoiler alert: that voice wasn’t mine.

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This meeting was my first real-life insight into how legislation, specifically on a local level, is sometimes the only avenue towards accountability and consequential reform. Over the next four years, I gained a deeper awareness of how companies poured money into lobbying against reform for issues I cared about – companies I worked for as an HR professional. During this time, I had some of my biggest career growth. I was developing and implementing processes that positively impacted countless employees. I was providing demos to executive leadership and audiences of thousands. I was consistently achieving “Exceeds Expectations” and “Outstanding” on my annual reviews. Even with all of this traditional success over the years, a single question relentlessly ate away at me: am I using my skills in the best way I can?

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2020 was a doozie for a multitude of reasons and not a single soul survived it unscathed. It brought unsolicited clarity to more areas of my life than I can count, yet the intense head and heart work it forced is what compelled me to answer the question I could never quite shake.

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By November of 2020, I knew I no longer wanted to use the skills I have spent decades crafting to serve a corporation. I finally understood that I wanted to use my skills to serve my community and my country. The moment this realization crystalized in my brain, it felt like all of the threads I had been weaving with over the course of my life were finally coming together to show me the bigger picture of my personal tapestry: my vocation.

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Since I began this slightly insane yet truly exciting journey of applying to law school, I’ve been asked what exactly do I plan to do with my law degree. My answer is that I’m not exactly sure yet. I’m pretty confident I know what areas of law I want to explore and I have an idea about what kind of work I’d like to pursue, but if life has taught me anything so far it’s that nothing is ever set in stone. My three years of law school are going to expose me to a myriad of people, experiences, ideas, and environments that will only make the tapestry I’ve been weaving bigger, brighter, and more robust than I can even begin to imagine. I can’t predict how everything will shake out but I am absolutely certain about one thing: I can’t wait to get started."