ALEX POWELL: You finished your JD at age 22. The $5 million defense verdict. One thing I figured out is that the only way to judge my accomplishments. Lisa, you were voted most likely to be the first woman president in fourth grade.

LISA SPARKS: It was interesting because at that age, nine maybe, we still have kind of crazy ideas about what we want to be when we grow up. I think at that point I maybe wanted to be a ballet dancer, which is not the most realistic goal for the average person, certainly not me. And I think a lot of kids at that age want to be a musician or a professional athlete or those sort of larger-than-life kind of occupations. But being voted most likely to be the first woman president in my class was a little bit of a turning point, I think, and got me a little bit more interested in thinking about higher education and pathways to a more professional career.

I come from a long line of very smart, hardworking, successful, accomplished people who don't necessarily look that great on paper. My brother and sister, who are older than I am, both have been super successful, probably more successful than I am, and they both completed their GEDs and went into the workforce early and built up their professional reputations in the workplace rather than with a transcript. And so obviously I was on a little bit of a different path. I was really dedicated to school, from elementary all the way up through high school.

And as I was getting to that age and I was starting to work myself, I was struggling a little bit balancing a full-time job and full-time high school with advanced placement classes and all of that. And I had this one administrator who took a bit of an interest in me. Her name was Sandy Thomas. She was vice principal at my high school, and she put me on a special project that had to do with figuring out the schedule for the school for the following year, which was a complicated task on a DOS-based sort of -- I think it was an [UNCLEAR: ASCII database] system that tried to reconcile all of these conflicts and what students had asked to sign up for and what was available. And she sort of interjected some mentoring in there, and she felt really strongly that I should go to Virginia Tech. And I still don't know why. Honestly, that is not a school that I ever seriously considered. But whatever it was, just having some of those conversations about the timing and expectations and putting the pieces in place was super helpful.

And I was in a cohort of students at my very, very large high school, but in a subgroup of maybe 35 or 40 kids that were all gifted and talented and tracking. Many of my classmates went to Ivy League schools. Many of them had full rides, a couple are physicians now and people doing really spectacular things. And so being in that group, that's where everybody was going. That was sort of the assumption, and I just sort of followed suit with everybody.

But in terms of figuring out for myself, I read a lot. And I joke all the time that so much of what I figured out was by reading the college catalogs, which I don't think anybody publishes anymore, but they were definitely a thing 25, 30 years ago. Even my path to law school -- people ask about how I got to law school early. Well, the University of Baltimore published a paperback catalog at the time, and I read it cover to cover and there was a program in there and I found the application and I filled it out and I submitted it. I didn't invent anything. I just read the catalog.

ALEX POWELL: There's a theme with your initiative. You determined that reading through this college catalog, this is the future for me. This is what I want. You also -- your family also very successful. Not in the same field, but success looks different to different people.

LISA SPARKS: So I think that one of the big things I saw with my older siblings, with parents, was really hard work and dedication and taking ownership of your job. Even when I was really young, working at Pizza Hut, which coincidentally my brother and my mother had also worked there at times before I did, and just really taking responsibility and asserting yourself and learning more, doing more, moving up. And that has paid off in dividends over the course of my career. Certainly, as an attorney, if you don't take ownership over your files, you're not practicing in a competent way.

ALEX POWELL: You finished your JD at age 22. Summa cum laude.

LISA SPARKS: The way I accomplished that was actually pretty straightforward. So Sandy Thomas had recommended to me that year that I was working for her -- I think it was just a semester I worked for her during a class period -- that I considered the parallel enrollment program. So instead of going to high school my senior year, I went to community college, and that's a pretty well-established program today. Maryland high school students can go for free. I had to pay 50% tuition because we're going back a couple of decades.

And then at the end of my college career is when I found that magic page in the UB catalog that said I could do the same thing with college and law school. So I shaved off a year by doubling up from high school to college, and then I shaved off another year by doubling up from college to law school. So the whole deal -- college and law school -- 5 years. So I only took normal course loads. I just managed to get classes to count for double things. So my first year of law school, all of my 1L classes, completely normal schedule, also were credits towards my bachelor's degree. I walked with my bachelor's after I took my first year finals.

I was definitely the youngest person in the class at the time. I think the average age at UB at that time was about 31, which is pretty typical. The law school has a lot of traditional students coming right out of college, but it also has a lot of non-traditional students coming after a master's degree, a couple years out in the working world. And so I was the youngest in the class, and my study partner was a retired police officer. And so he was one of the oldest in the class. And they jokingly called us the bookends of the class.

ALEX POWELL: What is it like to attend a law school, graduate not only summa cum laude -- I believe you were the valedictorian, weren't you?

LISA SPARKS: I was. Yeah. For both my UB degrees actually.

ALEX POWELL: To succeed at that level and then to go back and teach. What fueled that decision?

LISA SPARKS: So when I was in my clerkship after I graduated, I had picked up an adjunct teaching job at the community college in the paralegal program there. I was actually hooked up with that through that study partner of mine. He had been teaching at the community college for several years, and I started teaching legal research and writing to undergrads. And that was a great experience to get in the classroom. Picked up a few other courses there over the time period. It was also a great way to supplement my law clerk income because that has never been the best paying job in the world.

And I got a call from Jack Lynch, who was the associate dean of academic affairs at the time. I knew Jack, but I had not taken any of his classes. And he called me totally out of nowhere when I was practicing at Whiteford Taylor Preston in 2010. And he asked if I'd be interested in teaching commercial law at night. And he had no idea that I had been teaching at the community college. All he knew is that I'd been recommended by Judge Smalkin, who was one of those professors that I was really close with and had somewhat stayed in touch with, along with [UNCLEAR: Byron Berkin], who I also was close with and stayed in touch with throughout the rest of his life.

And so I met with Jack. He came downtown. He bought me a sandwich at the old Java Joe's on Baltimore Street and we talked about it, and then he shipped a copy of the book to my house and told me I'd start teaching in the fall. The call came to me, which is so interesting because I've had dozens of people ask me over the years, "Oh, how did you apply? How did you get to do that?" I think it was really happenstance. They needed somebody and they couldn't find somebody. And so Judge Smalkin said, "Well, what about Lisa Sparks? She was a good student. She liked my class. Maybe she could do it." And I just happened to pick up the phone when the call came.

ALEX POWELL: I remember that class was pretty late when I took it. It was commercial law. After working at a law firm all day, you would come on campus and then teach.

LISA SPARKS: I remember the first semester I taught. It was the evening program and I think I was actually on the late shift teaching 7:45 to 9:35 at night. I was in the old law building, which, some folks will tell you is the new law building, the one that was built in 1980. For me, it's the old law building. It's the one I attended classes in. And that's the first couple semesters I taught over there before the new one was finished. I still remember I was in room 207, which was the class that I was in for my very first law school class. That was torts with [UNCLEAR: Bob Lande] on Monday mornings at 10:00. So that was class number one when we started in August.

And I was the youngest person in the room. I had a room full of evening students. I was 25 years old and I was the youngest one there. And it was definitely a little scary. I had been in the classroom, but teaching at the community college was a little different. The classes were smaller because I was teaching research and writing. It had a little more of a workshop feel to it. And so lecturing was a whole different ballgame.

And I had the textbook that was recommended to me the first semester, and I tried to sort of capture the essence of the way Judge Smalkin taught me that subject, and it was okay. It wasn't great, but it was okay. My class was observed by a full-time faculty member who gave me some feedback. Then I taught it again the next semester and I tried a different book which was an absolute disaster. I was trying to save the students some money, so I switched to a loose leaf and it was just terrible. So then I went to a different book altogether that was more similar to the first one but had great problems in it. And that third semester is when everything really fell into place for me. So I had two good semesters of teaching notes, and every night after class I would capture what happened in the class period so that I could make adjustments the following semester. And I got a really good problem set, and from there on out it just kind of flowed.

I've actually been at UB now in some capacity or another for 23 years. I started as an undergrad in May of 2003, then went right to the law school. Then I joined the law alumni advisory council when I graduated. Then I came back to teach. I adjuncted for several years before I was the full-time practitioner in residence, then back to adjuncting in the alumni society. And I have a lot of really amazing memories, but maybe one that stands out is an early memory of taking a field trip to the Supreme Court when I was in undergrad.

ALEX POWELL: I've been there since. I've been sworn into the Supreme Court bar. I've had a couple of petitions for cert. I've never actually argued there because I was successful opposing them.

LISA SPARKS: I touched on that a little bit, but we went as a group. It was the jurisprudence club, my undergraduate program, and somebody got us in. I don't even remember who it was or how they did it, but somebody got us in. I think an alum of the jurisprudence program was actually like a security guard at the Supreme Court or something. I think that's what it was. And they were arguing whether student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy that day. So it was such a coincidental day for a bunch of college students to be visiting.

But I think that was really the first time that becoming a lawyer felt real and felt like it was within reach for me -- was that day in undergrad, going to the Supreme Court and listening to an argument and meeting some staffers there. And it just really started to be tangible at that moment.

LISA SPARKS: When I got the opportunity to interview at Whiteford, I was clerking for Judge Eyer and I was looking for a job, and it was not a good time to be looking for a job.

ALEX POWELL: What year was this?

LISA SPARKS: 2007. It was December of 2007. I had taken the bar in July, started clerking in August, started applying for jobs earnestly right away, and nothing. There were no listings. Back then we still had job ads in the newspaper, believe it or not. And the Daily Record had nothing. Secretarial jobs would say "JDs need not apply" in the job ads. The large firms were rescinding offers. Every level of government -- federal, state, and local -- were on hiring freezes. No natural attrition meant no openings at the bottom. It was just a terrible time to be starting a career.

And so I had done informational interviews at a few firms that fall. They did it as a courtesy. Judge Eyer had worked at Whiteford, so of course they're going to give her clerk an informational interview. And I had met with them and they were really nice, and they're like, "Yeah, we just don't think we're going to be hiring anybody, but thanks for your interest."

And then magically somebody quit in December and I get a call from their recruiter who said, "Hey, would you like to come in and interview with the construction and surety department?" I'm like, "That sounds amazing. I would love to do that." And I scurried downstairs to the basement of the Court of Appeals building to look up surety because I didn't know what it was. I had heard it. I had seen the word. We've all seen the word because it's the S in the statute of frauds, which we all learned in contracts and for the bar exam, but I never really stopped to think about what it was. And so I looked it up and I chatted a little bit with the law librarian and got enough of an understanding to go on the interview. And it took a really long time, but I did eventually get that job. And I had people asking me, "Construction law, is that really what you want to do?" Well, I really would like a job. So sure.

ALEX POWELL: Yeah, 2008.

LISA SPARKS: Right, in 2008, a job -- and a job at Whiteford. It doesn't matter what kind of practice area it is. You're going to take that and be excited about it because you're going to get great training and great experience and you can always pivot to something else later.

But it turned out that I really liked it. And a couple months in, I realized, yeah, this construction stuff's pretty good for me. And suretyship was so much fun. And I loved practicing suretyship. And I kind of feel special because not a lot of lawyers still, even in practice, understand what suretyship is. And I can say that I have a pretty good working knowledge of a variety of surety and fidelity concepts. And my last federal trial was actually a surety case. And I feel that that's just a little extra skill I have.

ALEX POWELL: How did that trial go?

LISA SPARKS: We won. It was a $5 million defense verdict. It was a great way to sort of cap off my federal trial experience.

ALEX POWELL: So it's 2008, the market's collapsing, and you're building a practice in construction litigation. Describe what a construction dispute actually looks like to someone who's never set foot on a job site before.

LISA SPARKS: So in 2008, when I first started, it was a lot of bankrupt projects and bankrupt parties just trying to scrape things together and get them done. Bigger picture though, construction disputes run in two basic categories. One is problems with the work. It's defective. It's delayed. There's a dispute between the design and the construction, but there's something physically wrong with the work. Or the other flavor is just money. The work's done and somebody hasn't been paid. The loan wasn't enough to cover the cost. Owner went bankrupt, contractor swindled the money and didn't pay the subs, or there's a bunch of extra work and nobody can agree to how much it's supposed to cost. Sometimes, and perhaps the most interesting cases, have a little bit of both where there's some meaty substantive issues about the construction itself and also some financial dispute. But that covers the gamut on most construction litigation -- it's either you didn't build me what I asked for, or you didn't pay me for what I built.

LISA SPARKS: So one thing that really stands out to me -- and it has to do with building that book of business -- I was at a networking event with the subcontractors association, and I did a ton of networking at this point in my career. I had enough experience to really sell myself, and I needed to build up that book of business. So I was out probably two nights a week at industry events, and American Subcontractors Association was one of them. It was at Cross Street Market. It was an all-you-can-eat oyster event at [UNCLEAR: Nick's]. They used to do it every year. It was a great event. [UNCLEAR: Nick's] isn't there anymore, so it's not a thing. But it was always a lot of fun, always well attended.

And I was there and I'm chatting with this particular subcontractor and I recognized his name. And it clicks for me why I recognized his name. I had actually litigated against him when I was at Whiteford. We represented his surety and there was a deal that went bad, and he was a subcontractor to this general contractor who was an absolute disaster -- who is, I think, the only party I can say I've litigated against working at three different law firms because this GC was such a problem and they've gotten themselves in a lot of trouble.

We're catching up and we're talking about how bad this other guy was, and he's not mad at me. Like, he knows I was just doing my job in defending the bonds and that it wasn't personal to him. And he's telling me about everything he has going on and he's expressing some frustration with his current attorney. And I've never been one for a hard sales pitch, but at the end of the conversation, he goes, "Do you think that you could help me with this project instead?" And so he goes from being the opposing party to my client in the span of a 30-minute conversation. And I subsequently helped him out with a lot of different things for his business. And he actually lives on my side of town. He has a little farm. Still to this day, even though I'm out of practice, we catch up once or twice a year. He gives me a little bit of produce. I would love to see him continue to succeed as a subcontractor.

ALEX POWELL: While you were still a partner at Wright, Constable & Skeen, you were simultaneously serving as general counsel at a corporation as well, a software manufacturing corporation handling IP and trademarks and M&A. That's a totally different world.

LISA SPARKS: When I finished up my four-year run as the practitioner in residence at UB, I had to make a decision about where I was going to go -- back to practice full-time, into another maybe academic or staff position at the law school, or something different. And before that decision was fully on the table, I got an unexpected phone call on a Sunday morning from a former employer of mine, the software company. I had worked there tailoring custom databases back in high school and early college, like 2002 time frame, 2003 maybe. And they had reached a breaking point where they were so big and doing such a high revenue with several different companies under their umbrella -- they had bought out several of their competitors -- that their outside counsel was like begging for help and they needed more than he could give them. And I had worked with this outside counsel previously and he knew of the connection. And so the owner of the company and the outside counsel got their heads together and the owner of the company called and said, "Hey, do you want to come back? Do you want to come back and work for us again? We really need some legal help."

And so I said, "Well, I'm actually wrapping up this teaching job, and so I do have some time available. I still have a part-time law practice. I'm not full-time available at the moment." And that was perfect because they weren't looking for a full-time hire. They needed more than outside counsel could give them, but they weren't quite sure they needed full-time help yet. So I went back to work for them for the second time in my life on a part-time basis as their first in-house counsel and handled a huge variety of things. I remember there's a giant wave of data use agreements that had to be done. They handled a lot of healthcare data, and so I was negotiating those with hospitals all over the country for a new software product that they were implementing. And I got caught up on everything that was going on with the business, and there were a couple months there that I thought that I was going to wrap up my private practice and I was just going to be a software lawyer for the rest of my life because it was a great company and a great job and really good people. And since I had worked with several of them before, it felt very comfortable. Software companies are notoriously casual, so that was really nice too.

But then just as soon as I really got cozy, they received a unicorn private equity-backed offer for buyout. And so I wound up spending the next year, year and a half supporting the divestiture of most of the assets. They did retain some assets and a few employees. So I stayed on for six or eight months after the closing on the M&A deal to rebuild what was left of the new company. And then at that point, I just went back to private practice full-time because they were essentially a startup again after growing for a few decades and being really the top of their market. They were back to being a startup with a core really niche kernel of useful technology but no product. And they didn't need a lawyer full-time. So I just saw myself right back to private practice. At this point, we were in the throes of COVID and I had plenty of work to do from my other clients, and it was the perfect time to make that transition.

ALEX POWELL: And now, Schuster Companies -- you walked in as chief administrative officer, not general counsel, not a legal role. Talk about day one.

LISA SPARKS: Schuster had been a client of mine. They were not a client I developed myself. They were a senior partner's client, and he had been involving me in a lot of his cases so that I could build client relationships and take over his book of business when he retired -- which I've ruined for him. He's not yet retired. He's well into his 80s because I'm no longer there to take over his book of business. But I had built a relationship with Schuster in handling their work.

And eventually, in 2022, they decided that as part of their succession planning and transition of certain executives into retirement, that they wanted to bring an attorney in-house. They had never had a truly in-house attorney before. They had had an outside attorney who worked only for them, but it was a little different relationship, and they wanted somebody that they knew and someone that they were familiar with, and I fit that. So they gave me a call. We talked over a period of about 3 months to work out all the details and so that I could get comfortable with the idea of closing up my book of business, which was really scary after spending a decade and a half building it.

So I come in day one and I actually think I'm coming in to be the general counsel, because this is not a situation where there was like a job ad that I responded to with a resume and went on an interview. They just called me out of nowhere and we had a few conversations and talked about the status of the business and where it was going and what risks they needed to manage. And I'm thinking, all right, I'm just going to be their lawyer. And I get here and the chief administrative officer -- she's also the chief financial officer -- has been with the company for almost 40 years. And I'm thinking that she's my boss, that I'm working for her. And she sits me down and she says, "Well, this looks like it's going to work. So I'm going to retire and you're going to be the CAO now." Day one.

ALEX POWELL: That was your first day in the office.

LISA SPARKS: Yep. I wasn't even really sure what CAO meant, right? That's actually not the most common C-suite role, right? There's CEO, COO, CIO, CFO. So chief administrative officer is a lesser-used C-suite title, and it really could be whatever combination of management and oversight a company really needs.

For us, I would say it's everything that's not the money or the actual operations of making and pouring concrete. So I touch risk management obviously as an attorney, human resources, employee relations, labor, philanthropy, real estate, insurance. I do interface quite a bit with our finance team. My office is physically connected to our controller's office. We have a window that we can poke our heads in, and I work super close with that team. Frankly, the CFO, the controller, and myself almost always are in the room together when decisions need to be made. But it's a little bit of a catch-all for things that aren't operations or finance.

ALEX POWELL: How did that differ in terms of the skill set from practicing law or even serving as general counsel?

LISA SPARKS: Being in business is totally different, and I was not fully prepared for it. In some ways it's been easier. When I was outside counsel, I could give advice and recommendations until my face turned blue, and clients frequently ignored it. And that was their right to do, right? I gave them the advice and they still did what they wanted to do and then they'd come back and I'd say, "Well, I told you so." And that's just what happens.

But here, in this role, with a few exceptions of other folks who are peers or superior to me in the organizational structure, I have the influence to really implement my advice through the teams that I work with. And so the managers of the departments that are under my umbrella, they need to follow through on the things that I recommend based on our risk management and other business strategies. So that's been great -- actually being able to implement the things that I know are going to help my client because I have that level of influence being part of the client rather than being an outsider.

LISA SPARKS: Some of the things I was not prepared for is the sheer amount of people situations and how difficult they are. Having to terminate people and having to lay people off when work is slow or weather is bad -- these are human people that you know. And it's different when you're outside and a client calls and says, "Yeah, I got to cut payroll by 20% because the work's just not coming," and you help them through the analysis to see what they need to do to comply with the law. And that is totally different than looking at a list of names of people that work for you and having to make those decisions. It's a different level of scary knowing that the work you do and the decisions you make impact whether a thousand or more families get a paycheck this week.

ALEX POWELL: Making decisions for the remaining employees at the company to make sure that they have jobs as well. The company as a whole and the other employees. It's a very difficult job. No question about it.

LISA SPARKS: Yeah. And I've always been a worker bee. So being in the room and selecting health benefits, structuring a 401k plan, and choosing investment options -- all of that has been totally new for me. And it's been a steep learning curve.

But luckily, the folks I'm working with have been here for a long time. The CFO has been here almost a decade. He was an outside auditor to the company before they poached him similar to the way they poached me. The controller has been here 25 years. The director of human resources, that manager under me, has been here 20 years. And so they have so much longevity and institutional knowledge that it really helps. But it also helps that I have experience in other organizations and I can bring in perspectives that they may be a little blinded to after being here for so long.

ALEX POWELL: Right, a fresh perspective, a deep institutional knowledge. The CAO who preceded you, you said she was there for 40 years, so that's big shoes to fill. Lisa, Rosie the Lawyer -- you and Wendy Gist built this from scratch in 2013. 20 high school girls from Baltimore City, visits with Baltimore City judges. Tell me about the charitable work that you did.

LISA SPARKS: So the Rosie program was so magical because it came about in such an organic way. Wendy, who was our marketing director at the time -- she's actually working in student affairs at the University of Maryland Law School now, which is no surprise that she would wind up in legal education. She joined the law firm, Wright, Constable & Skeen, and she's meeting all the attorneys and figuring us all out. And she's looking around and she's like, "Wow, you've got multiple women here doing construction law. You've got a woman here doing maritime law. These are really strong, powerful women attorneys and they're working in fields where there aren't a lot of women." And that was the whole inspiration for it -- really introducing these practice areas that are not where women usually wind up to a new generation of potential lawyers.

And we didn't expect every one of those girls to become an attorney or to wind up doing construction or maritime, but we did want them to just know that that's an option out there. Just to have the experience of adding to their understanding of the realm of possibilities, because sometimes in Baltimore City and other underserved areas, they don't know what can happen. They look at a very limited world, very small scope in front of them.

So we brought them in for multiple sessions. One was in the office, just to meet all of the women attorneys in the firm and listen to their stories and hear what they did every day and what was fun and what was interesting and what was challenging. One was a visit to the Baltimore City courts. We would meet with [UNCLEAR: Judge Carrion] in the circuit court and Judge Diana Smith in the district court. Both of whom were incredibly welcoming and both of whom had amazing inspirational stories. And then the third session was always a meal with an etiquette lesson, and we would bring an etiquette professional in to try to give these young women an opportunity to gain some polish in the way they conducted themselves. They would learn to shake hands properly, how to introduce themselves, how a proper table setting looks so they know which fork to use when they're at an event, and just how to conduct themselves in a business setting. Because these young women were the cream of the crop that Baltimore City had to offer. And they were going to go to college and get scholarships and have internships and amazing opportunities, and we wanted them to get as much out of that as they possibly could.

ALEX POWELL: That last Rosie session around March 2020 -- and of course we all know what happened after that. That was days before the world shut down. And also that program has now evolved into something else.

LISA SPARKS: Yeah. So I actually have a pretty distinct memory that we did not do the handshaking exercise in that last session because we were starting to hear some buzz about there's some sort of virus going around and don't touch your face and don't touch each other. So we cut that little bit out, but we still had a session where we talked about opportunities in the law and what it means to be a lawyer and how lawyering is a helping profession. And we went to the courthouse and visited the judges, and Judge Smith used to let them all get up on the bench and bang the gavel, which was always great fun.

And so unfortunately, the following years the school day was heavily disrupted by online learning and changed schedules, and so we were not able to do Rosie after that. And it has not come back to life in its original form, but we worked so closely with the CollegeBound Foundation in setting up that program. They supplied all of the participants to us. They sort of cherry-picked the young women from the schools that they served that had either shown an interest in the law or maybe just would benefit from the opportunity to meet with professional women and branch out a little bit.

And for those that don't know, the CollegeBound Foundation in Baltimore is run by an attorney, [UNCLEAR: Cassie Motz]. And so she would always come to the programs, other staff members would come to the programs, and they really got to see what we injected into the program. And I think some bits and pieces of that have lived on in the way they mentor those young women and the connections that they make. Certainly the Law Links program, which we worked hard to enroll interested students in, is still alive and well and is hosting CollegeBound students each summer.

ALEX POWELL: Lisa, you're a litigator, construction lawyer, JAG captain, CAO, and alumni association president.

LISA SPARKS: I don't think I've ever put it in a list like that before. Those things have happened over a 20-plus-year period and not necessarily all at the same time, but every opportunity that I've had has largely been a matter of being open when something was offered to me.

So I got into the Maryland Defense Force and served in the Maryland military by virtue of Judge Smalkin, who wanted me to be his research assistant when I was in law school and help him rewrite the Maryland military article of the annotated code, which I did. That's my one and only legislative drafting exercise. I have the little signed certificate and the fancy pen from when we went to Annapolis for the bill signing. Although when I look back at it, he got me my clerkship. He got me my first job at Whiteford. He got me a commission in the Air Force JAG, which I could not pursue due to some childhood medical issues. He got me into the Maryland Defense Force. And he got me my teaching job at UB. So quite a few of those things are attributable to his efforts and his interest in my career, which is just incredible.

And I think the only reason he took an interest in me is because I showed up for his class every day on time, prepared, and ready to participate, which doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that it was an 8 a.m. commercial law class. And not everybody was on time or ready to participate at 8 a.m.

LISA SPARKS: But I was excited about it. I love the subject.

LISA SPARKS: And his mentorship has opened so many doors for me. But I've also just said yes when the call comes. When Jack Lynch called to offer me the teaching position that Judge Smalkin recommended, I said, "Yeah, let's try it. That sounds awesome." When the software company called and said, "Hey, do you want to come back and be our in-house lawyer?" I said, "I've got some -- I'm going to have some time when I wrap up this teaching gig. Let's see how it goes." And not everything works, right? I've tried some things that did not work, and that's okay too, because I still learned something from them. But -- open to take the opportunities when they arise.

ALEX POWELL: Lisa, there's someone listening to this right now that grew up the same way that you did. Tell them what you know now that you may not have known then.

LISA SPARKS: So one thing I figured out as I've reached middle age is that the only way to judge my accomplishments -- other than having Alex Powell list them in a public way -- is to look at the delta between where I started and where I am now. And I do think that that delta is pretty big. If I compared where I am now to where somebody else is, I may be behind them, neck and neck with them, or just ever so slightly ahead of them. But that's not the metric.

The metric has to be where you started and where you got, not where you are compared to where someone else got that maybe started with a lot more resources than you did. Maybe started with a leg up or a job or seed money from a parent or an inheritance or some sort of legacy admission to something. You can only compare yourself to where you started and where you managed to get on your own effort.

ALEX POWELL: Thank you for your time, Lisa. I appreciate it.

LISA SPARKS: Thanks for having me on.