There are times in my life when things have aligned in such a way that I had no other option than to acknowledge God’s hand in the thing. My career is one of those things.
Years ago, when I was a senior in high school, I blew out my right knee. I have gnarly scars from the accident and surgeries that I undertook to repair the damage. My final surgery was July 5, 1988.
While all my friends were preparing for college, I was preparing for a year of PT so that I could learn to use that leg again, which was mostly atrophied from all the casts and braces. Not to mention, they removed a portion of my quad muscle to create the new ligaments I needed in my knee. The 1980s were the height of the AIDS epidemic, and my doctor, Dr. Dominguez, was not only the orthopedic surgeon for the Bears’ football team, but he was also cutting-edge in his field, using this technique.
All that to say, I was not on my way to my freshman year of college.
Now, injury and recovery aside, I probably wasn’t on my way to college anyway. Neither of my parents had attended college. My father hadn’t finished sixth grade. His father died when he was 11 years old, and the need to work to help support his large brood of siblings outweighed his ability to finish his education.
My mom did manage to finish high school, complete with her ‘hope chest’ filled to the brim. All the things she would need to start her adventures as a baby-bride. My mom was married just weeks after graduating to her first husband. That marriage would last only six months.
Suffice to say, college wasn’t a topic in our house.
Junior year of high school, all my friends were buzzing about college trips. For me, I came to understand that ‘college trips’ equated to a day or two off from school, excused. So, I went to my counselor’s office and asked Mr. Detzner about this college “thing.” Bless him for trying to explain to me how college credits worked without showing his shock that I literally had no idea there was more school after school to pursue.
Now, though I wasn’t being prepared for a college career at home, what my mother did insist on was that I take a typing class. She was a secretary and had been able to support herself, and help support our family during some pretty lean years because she could type hella-fast. I, on the other hand, was pretty snarky about the suggestion that I take typing.
“I don’t know why I need that? It’s not like I’m going to wind up a secretary like you did…”
I lost that battle, and first hour junior year, there I was plugging away at the keys. I picked up typing rather quickly. I played piano and so my fingers were pretty nimble. By the time the class ended, I was testing at 78 wpm. This was on a Selectric typewriter.
The summer of 1988 passed quickly, and all my friends, including my then-boyfriend, packed it in and left for college that fall. I was pretty devastated, and I walked around for weeks on end with a chip on my shoulder.
I continued rehabbing my leg, and during that year, I landed a receptionist job at a company that made electrolytic capacitors. I still don’t know what that is, exactly, but it was a nice company and a pretty cush job that, for the time, paid pretty well.
Just about every weekend I had a routine where I packed up the car Friday morning, and after work Friday evening, I drove the 150 miles to Champaign, Illinois, to see my boyfriend at the University of Illinois. I knew that campus as if I attended there myself.
As spring approached, I decided I would do something brave. I applied to a state school, and was accepted. I remember being so excited. I ran down the stairs to the kitchen to show my mom the acceptance letter. She read it. Then she looked up at me and asked, “How are you going to pay for that?”
My parents had no intention of paying for my college. It wasn’t that they were against me going, it was just not something they thought about, or felt obligated to do. They hadn’t paid for college for any of my older siblings.
Over the year of working, I had managed to save just enough for about a year of school. So, the next fall, once my knee had healed, I arrived on campus at Illinois State University.
The journey lasted exactly one year.
There are many reasons my college experience was so short-lived. The easiest to share is that I ran out of money at year’s end. So home I came, with an even bigger chip on my shoulder. I had such an attitude of entitlement. I’m embarrassed reminiscing on it even now.
My dad finally had enough, and one day, he sat me down and asked me a question that, at the time, I couldn’t imagine would have such a profound impact on my life.
“What if you never get to go to college? What are you going to do with your life?”
What if?
It took me a while to chew on that question and come up with an answer.
Law.
I had always been fascinated by all things legal. I took an ‘intro to law’ class in high school, and I excelled at writing briefs. I was in debate–turns out, I was a master at sharp-witted arguments. I was smarter than the average bird. I would have made a great lawyer, other than that pesky college requirement.
But I could type.
I began applying to law firms. In the old days, you grabbed a newspaper, opened the want ads, and began to mail your resume. I looked pretty good on paper, I guess, because I was called for nine interviews.
One by one, I was rejected. In the eighth interview, they asked if I knew how to use a dictaphone. I lied. I had no idea what the pedal was for, and so I kept pressing the “back” button on the tape recorder when I missed a phrase I needed to type. After many snickers, the gal I was interviewing with thanked me for my time and showed me to the door.
I had nearly given up when I went on my last of the nine interviews. The last one was for a small, general practice firm. I met with an attorney named Brian first. He managed to ask me how old I was, if I was married, and if I was going to have children. I was 19 years old and wondering if he was a real lawyer or just pretending, because I was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to ask me those things. It was a different time, and long before the “Me, too” movement.
After Brian, I met with Don. Don was the owner of the firm. Don had experienced a bit of fame by this time. He was the founder of the 1-800-Dial-DUI phone number. That was his specialty.
Don and I hit it off in that interview, and he offered me the job on the spot. He asked me what I wanted to make as a legal secretary. I hadn’t even thought about it. Nor was I quick at math. Writing had always been my stronger suit.
“$9 or $10,” was my reply. “$9 it is,” he replied. Another valuable lesson learned in this journey. I never did that again.
After three years at Ramsell & Associates, I had moved up to paralegal. I loved the work and decided I was ready for the big leagues. I applied to Baker & McKenzie. At the time, they were the largest law firm in the world. Their shiny office sat right off the lakefront in downtown Chicago. I landed that job and started building my resume.
After a few years, I moved to Phoenix. I met Frank there, and we married. We started a family and bought our first house together. In 2001, after 9/11, Frank’s job fell out, and we landed a new job in Colorado. So many adventures in our young lives.
After we settled in Colorado and our kids were school-aged, I decided to return to work. I found a job on 2nd shift at Holland & Hart. Another good-sized firm in downtown Denver. I started in the Word Processing department, eventually supervising the department and later, moving to a secretarial job on the desk of one of their tougher attorneys.
From there, I grew into a paralegal position and moved on to another firm.
One day, I received a call from an attorney I knew at H&H. She was calling to let me know there was a position open for a paralegal in a corporate, in-house setting in the Denver Tech Center. Much closer to my house (read: half the drive time). The problem was, I was really happy at the firm. They treated me well. We worked hard, and the firm provided hot breakfast every Friday, gave us tons of swag, and we got a bonus equivalent to one-week’s pay at Christmas each year. I felt like I was living large.
The attorney kept at it, and said something that has stuck with me all these years. “It’s worth the conversation.”
So, I took the interview.
In January 2012, I walked into Air Methods and into Crystal’s first corporate office. Someone thought it was a good idea to let Crystal work solo for a year as she was learning the ropes at being a young General Counsel. She was 33 when she landed that job. For those of you not in law, that’s pertty crazy. GC’s generally start in their 50’s after years and years of in-house experience. But Crystal is an outlier. Wicked smart, and she was at the right place at the right time and found the right opportunity. Much like I was about to.
We chatted over reams of printed paper on her desk. It was a casual conversation. But I could tell I was needed here, which spoke to my service-oriented side.
It was a few months before I actually started the job, as there was some reorganizing they needed to do in their senior staff, but once I started, I never looked back.
It was an exciting time, those early years together. Crystal was learning how to build a team, how to manage people (not her favorite thing at the time, she really just liked to put her head down and work). Fortunately, I was pretty self-driven and didn’t need a lot of managing. Together, we went from she and me to eight employees over the next few years.
That was three companies and 13 years ago. During our time together, I went from paralegal/executive assistant, to paralegal, to legal operations manager, to director of administrative operations to my new role.
Chief of Staff to the CEO and General Counsel.
I absolutely belong here, but I shouldn’t really be here. I don’t say that out of some sense of false humility. I say that out of fully understanding that I don’t have the formal credentials that most CoSs have. I don’t hold an undergraduate degree, let alone an advanced degree, and that’s usually the starting point for this particular position.
But every so often, things divinely align, right place, right time, right people, right opportunity. And a little hard work along the way.
I am excited for this new adventure. I have so many ideas of how I can support the executive team and my reports in this new role. Crystal supported me in joining the CoS Association, and I’m enrolled in their certification course, which ends in a capstone project. Feels a little like college after all.
I am thankful for the opportunities I’ve had along the way. I am most thankful that God aligned so many things that had to happen for Crystal and me to meet. For us to work together and grow together. We’ve both come a long way. And I know there is still plenty of divine purpose in our relationship. Of that I have no doubt.
I am also thankful to my father for setting me straight and knocking that chip off my shoulder.
And to my mom. Turns out that typing class was exactly where I needed to be all those years ago.
Shrinking Shay 