How Did I Get Here?

It was never my intention to work for the State of California. I grew up in Sacramento, my mom grew up in Sacramento, my grandmother married my grandfather and came here from Fairfield.

I grew up surrounded by State workers -- my mom and dad, many of my aunts and uncles on both sides, and, slowly, my older siblings and older cousins. We refer to the State as "the family business." Like Michael Corleone in "The Godfather," it was never my intention to join the family business.

I had my first experience working for the State right out of college. I had some units to finish to graduate with my bachelor's, so I moved home, enrolled at UC Davis, and took a student assistant job my sister told me about with the California Commission on the Status of Women. This one thing would be pivotal decades later.

After that, I went off to law school and graduate school, graduated, moved to the Bay Area, clerked for a federal judge, then worked for large and small law firms, a non-profit, and a Fortune 500 public utility (guess which?). I moved to Mississippi to teach law, moved back to Sacramento, then moved to Denver to get engaged and took a visiting law professor job.

Then my visitorship ended. I didn't have a job. What I did have was bar admission to State Bar of California. That and family circumstances brought me and my then-husband back to Sacramento. After working for yet another small firm, I decided that I was done with long days, billable hours, and demanding bosses. I wanted a lifestyle change for the life I envisioned with my then-husband.

Enter the State of California.

I took a HUGE pay cut and started working for the State of California in a job classification I was overqualified for but grateful to have. Sixteen years later when I retired, I had worked at five different agencies advising board and commission members and developing a love for drafting legal decisions, writing legislation, ensuring ethics compliance, giving presentations for other agencies, and even writing a strategic plan that changed the trajectory of an agency.

Because I first started working for the State as a student assistant in 1985, when I returned in 2005, my pension formula was based on the pension formula in effect in 1985. Sweet.

I still worked hard, but I didn't have to worry about billable hours and numerous corporate clients. I didn't have to worry about students giving me janky reviews because they didn't like how I taught. All I had to do was provide sound guidance in the best interest of my client: the agency I was working for. The benefits were better than those provided by some of the higher-paying law firms I had worked for and those of the law schools where I had taught. Working for the State fit the lifestyle that I was planning with my then-husband.

The thing about life is that you want different things for your life at different stages of your life. Working for the State suited the life I was trying to build at the age when I joined State service.

This is how I got here.