These Four Women Helped Shape My Legal Career

I was recently asked about which women in my life helped to shape my career. It was an idea I was drawn to because it is something naturally prevalent in most women lawyers’ lives, but it really doesn’t come to mind until someone sits down to take note of it. When I did just that, I discovered that there were four amazing women who helped make my career what it is today.

In Dallas in the 1980s, I grew up an only child who watched the struggles of my immigrant parents every day, particularly my mother’s. My mother, Maya Palnitkar, was an immigrant to Texas in 1979 from Mumbai, India. The valedictorian of her graduating class at the University of Bombay, she spent 30 years as a research scientist at UT Southwestern.