First Career — A Lawyer
Born and raised in Wisconsin, I came east to Harvard College, where I majored in Economics and spent my non-academic time competing in Track & Field, becoming an NCAA All-American. Following graduation, I enrolled in the Masters in Public Policy Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and then went on to Harvard Law School, where I was a member of the Law Review. I met Carla when I was in Law School and she was a student at Simmons College.
After graduation, I was a law clerk for Justice William O. Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1973-1974 Term. It was quite a year, since it began with the Justice halting the bombing of Cambodia and ended with the Watergate tapes case. In 1974, Carla and I were married and settled in Brookline, and I began practicing law at Foley Hoag in Boston, where I stayed for 32 years, until 2006, with a practice that involved complex civil litigation and administrative agency matters. A good deal of my practice centered on energy law, ranging from public utility rate setting and environmental initiatives to the representation of virtually all of the municipalities of Rhode Island in the negotiation and establishment of an aggregated purchasing program that has saved the municipalities millions of dollars in electricity costs.
While I was at Foley Hoag, I also had the opportunity to do pro bono work. Among other projects, I was counsel to the African-American and Latino plaintiffs in Black Political Task Force v. Galvin, two-year litigation in federal court that struck down, under the federal Voting Rights Act, the 2001 redistricting of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (and ultimately led to the obstruction-of-justice conviction of House Speaker Thomas Finneran). I received the 2004 Amigos Award from ¿Oíste?, the Massachusetts Latino Political Organization, for “steadfast efforts and relentless commitment in upholding civil rights for Latinos in Massachusetts.”
Also, while at Foley Hoag, I volunteered for four years in math and science classrooms in the Boston Public Schools. The time I spent working with kids triggered a career change for me.