Milbank LLP Project, Energy and Infrastructure Finance partner Carolina Walther-Meade was featured in Latin Lawyer as part of its International Women’s Day Q&A Series, which profiles leading female lawyers that are role models in the industry. Ms. Walther-Meade spoke about what it was like entering the legal industry as a woman, how firms can support the career growth of women lawyers, and what advice she would give to young lawyers starting out in the industry today.
She described the start of her career, noting, “At first, I tried to act in the way I thought clients expected me to be, which was someone serious, older, and probably not a woman. I was very lucky because my mentor told me early on to just be me, and that was a huge relief because it’s very hard to pretend to be someone that you are not. Coming into a new environment and having someone telling me to be my authentic self-made the beginning of my career much more interesting.”
She analyzed the challenges faced by female lawyers, saying, “I think that, especially for women, we have a range of different roles in our personal lives that are equally important and demanding as our careers and I think we all sometimes struggle to figure out how to balance our professional and personal lives. This is why I believe that it’s so important to be in a firm where you see lots of different people, different paths and styles of work and that it can be managed in more than one particular way.”
Ms. Walther-Meade also provided advice to lawyers just starting out. “Find a way to create opportunities for yourself. It is also very important to be yourself, to bring all of your identities to the table and be comfortable with that,” she said. “Lastly, try to enjoy your job. Life is short and we may have very demanding jobs, but we work with very interesting people with very interesting lives, and I think that remembering that human element of the job makes our careers much more rewarding.”
Read Ms. Walther-Meade’s full International Women’s Day Q&A here. Subscription may be required.
