Work

I work at Bowditch and Dewey, which is a 120-year-old law firm, and one of my partners, he is like one of the greatest litigators of all time. He just took me under his wing, he takes all of us under his wing. So just having the ability to have access to one of the most well-respected lawyers in the city really helps you to gain invitations to rooms you wouldn't necessarily be invited in. And then once you get there, you prove yourself, and suddenly you're invited to do lots of things. You know? So I think mentorship from the legal community in terms of Bowditch and Dewey. But then there are women who run other companies that I just sort of met along the way who helped me get into other rooms that Mike Angelini is not going to get into, certain rooms like Linda Cavaioli from the YWCA used to. It's like the mentors have been people who were, I think, excited to see a Worcester kid grow up and stay in Worcester and succeed. I've been lucky in that way, too, where people just offered help, and I quickly knew it was okay to ask for help or to reach out to people and make connections. But it's been in the professional world, definitely, that I've gotten my most mentorship and my best friendships are other women who don't necessarily work at the same firm as me or are even lawyers, but they're in positions of—I don't want to say power—they're in high level positions, and they struggle with sort of the same things I do, where it's tiring to be the only chick in the room and kind of young still. It used to be really hard for me. I'd be 32 years old, looking around, there’s nobody under the age of 60, all white dudes. And it's nice to have people who've already done it, or people who are doing it in other spaces to just talk to throughout the time. I don't know. I think I would have gone crazy by now, 14 years later, because there's not that many women. All of my lawsuits, it's very few that I have women as opposing counsel. So, it's nice to have women outside of my every—like in my real interactions. I'd argue that I'm one of the few women litigators, business litigators, at the whole firm. Everybody has their niches, but I'm like the traditional—when you picture what I do, you picture a 50-year-old white man. So, it's nice to have women who, whether they sit in healthcare or in nonprofits, are the equivalent.  They expect me to be a 50-year-old white guy, and here I am.

What I had to do was face down the union and get them (the workers) working to the clock, not to the rate, and that was bad.  It was really bad.  First of all, they didn’t want a woman in a man’s job.  Reason:  You find out how much more they’re making than you.  I made less than the men on the floor.  I was the Head Foreman which meant the men on the floor reported to a supervisor or leader who reported to a foreman, and the foremen worked for me.  And I got less than the guys on the floor......I knew that we were paving the way.  And I remember one time at Strathmore Paper, one of the people in personnel was a woman.  She said to me, you know, when I was feeling particularly bad, she said, “Remember we are not doing this for us.  We’re doing it for our daughters.  So that when they encounter work, it’ll be better for them.  Remember that.” And you know that was my goal.  If I can’t have it, you know, at that point I didn’t know if I’d have a daughter or not, but I have a niece and I have a grandniece and I can make it better for them.  Because, we (women) deserve it.  We have a lot to offer.  We are not second-class citizens.  There are so many very bright women. 

I feel like that's probably one of the reasons that I got brave and quit my job was to even see the way that the Salvadorian Central American population has grown over my 30 whatever years 36 years, I think. But we still don't have that many restaurants. Like you see Mexican restaurants everywhere or a bakery.  And we love our pastries and our bread, and there isn't anywhere here in Worcester, even though the population has grown. There's no bakery where we can get fresh pastries because we eat them for like breakfast, for a snack, for anything. We are just really into our bread [laughs]. So that made me realize that maybe that's something I could do because I was doing it at home anyways, and then people were buying it because like I said even though we have grown as a community, there still hasn't been a lot of Central American businesses.

I would honestly say…be patient and be kind to yourself. You are figuring things out as a teenage girl…You are processing things…and maybe going through a difficult moment…I take in interns now and constantly am reminding them…you are not an island. You, as a human, you need connections, and that’s really what helps you grow…It definitely takes time to get there, to build the confidence to just own who you are. But I think all of my experiences and seeing inequities for myself, for my family, for other immigrants, that’s always just driven a passion.

I guess when you go to visit an historic site, you want to find out what happened. What happened here? Why is this place important? Why do a lot of people come here looking at this? And that's very similar to the book. I discovered that there were 130 corset businesses in the city over the course of 120 years or so. What happened here? Like, what caused that? Why were there so many? So it's when the questioning mind kicks in. How did this happen? What can I learn about it? What were their lives like? Those definitely relate to spending your childhood going to foreign countries and learning about new places. I think those tie together.