Why I was hiking in Sri Lanka .... and why it makes me a better lawyer

I have the ability to go into any situation with any number of parties in any environment and help solve problems. This isn’t bragging. I’ve shown this to be true with my work around the world. How do I do this? It’s through a sincere desire to help people uncover what they believe to be the optimal solution, an above average ability to communicate, no back off on confronting even difficult issues, and an often annoying level of persistence.?

The fact is that I really care about people. And problems intrigue me. They always have, I guess. Even as a child, some of my most intrinsic memories are of solving puzzles and figuring things out. After three decades of practicing law and working on policy issues, I now have moments of cognitive alignment, where all the elements of a problem or situation coalesce and the solution becomes clear. This helps me guide people and groups through murky situations that they might not be able to find a way out of on their own. But at the same time, I’m also flexible in my thinking and respectful of the beingness of others, so I recognize that while my solution might provide the initial light toward the end of the tunnel, the true light comes from others’ recognition of where they want to go.

Knowing that this is the value I bring to situations, the winding path of my career makes perfect sense to me. But it’s so nontraditional that it looks like a ramshackle of dichotomies from the outside. I guess I’m like a puzzle myself. When seen separately, my pieces don’t make sense. This essay is an attempt to put the puzzle together in a way that describes who I am and why I do what I do.

When I started my career as a litigator, all I wanted to do was fight and win. This attitude brought me a fair amount of success. People complain about lawyers all the time, but in the end, when they get into a dispute, all they want is a fierce gladiator that can kick the shit out of their opponent. I’ll be honest … being in battle day in and day out can be fun, especially if you’re surrounded by teammates that have a similar fighting spirit and the skill to bring home the win.

I built this kind of a team and I loved working with them. I became managing partner of my litigation firm and directed teams of multidisciplinary professionals in high speed, high stakes cases around the country. But then the adrenaline high took its toll on my body, my soul, and my family. I sought more spiritual meaning and, as I became more aware, I realized that I was devoting blood, sweat and tears to games that weren’t very meaningful to me or to society at large. I needed a change.

By turn of fortune, our family was presented with the opportunity to move to Africa. We took it. I retired from my law practice and my main responsibility became figuring out how to exist and care for my son in an environment that was totally foreign to me. Learning how to adapt took time, but eventually I figured it out. I also practiced learning how to slow down. This I failed at. But, by having the time and space to look around to see what was needed and how I could contribute, I came upon an opportunity that changed the trajectory of my professional career and came to define who I am as a person.?

We arrived in Kenya shortly after vicious post-election violence in 2007/8. Wounds - mental and physical - were still raw. Many still lived in the blue tents of the Internally Displaced Persons camps. Everyone had a story; horrible, horrific stories. Before the crisis, Kenya was often portrayed as an “island of peace” in a turbulent region, but this perception was shattered by violence. People, especially young people, were keen to find a point of stability that they could use to rebuild their future.

Serendipitously, I became associated with an international group called Youth for Human Rights (YFHR), who’s focus was to teach people the basic inalienable rights we all have as human beings, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This resonated with me as I remembered why I wanted to go to law school in the first place. It also resonated with Kenyan youth. I started an NGO and put together a team of motivated young people to teach human rights across the country. We went to schools and universities in towns, rural areas, informal settlements, and anywhere that would have us. This work expanded to cover other youth programs, one of which I delivered as a rehabilitation course to young men in prison.

When a school girl came up to me after a human rights presentation to thank me for being the first person to tell her that she was “worth something”, I knew that my life was now on the right course. My small NGO ultimately partnered with the United Nations to do community outreach programs on human rights, resulting in the largest YFHR impact in the world for International Human Rights Day in 2009.

That spark ignited a second career in international development. Since then, I’ve been privileged to work on a variety of initiatives that range from high-level policy development, as in my work in Kosovo to formalize over 350,000 post-war built structures, to community level development, like capacity building for 750 small niche tourism businesses in Sri Lanka.

The subject matter of my projects has varied over the years. It started with construction policy to improve the business enabling environment, given my legal background in construction law. It then expanded to include better government service delivery through streamlined processes and capacity building. Since policy development, streamlining and capacity building are transferable skills, I was able to apply them to other contexts, like improving the tourism investment climate in Sri Lanka. Success with stakeholders led to a full-on tourism project to promote sustainable niche tourism. Which leads me to hiking …..

As an avid hiker and enthusiast for all things outdoors, I often joked that I needed to find a way to get paid for hiking. This dream came true in the final months of my last project in Sri Lanka, where I found myself as the Project Director overseeing the incubation of a new management organization for The Pekoe Trail, one of the world’s newest long-distance hiking trails. The Pekoe Trail spans over 300 km through the scenic tea country of central Sri Lanka, connecting 22 stages across historic tea plantations, cloud forests, and villages. We had only four months to stand up an organization to manage what was already a world-renown tourism product with a vast array of stakeholders and existing management challenges, and to be financially self-sustaining in the process.

In the meantime, I was able to experience the trail myself and become a proud member of the trail community to help create something that is truly special. So, yes, my social media is happily overflowing with hiking photos.

This most recent capstone experience represents a culmination of many things that I’ve been developing in my career: finding and build good teams of diverse professionals; being the kind of leader that helps nurture and sustain enthusiasm to reach what may appear to be unreachable goals; keeping teams on track, even when distractions abound; teaching and modeling good communication skills and helping others recognize why this is important; and, in the end, letting go and turning activities over to the people who are most appropriate to take them forward.

This last point is difficult for me at present. As I mentioned, it was my dream job. But creating a lasting impact and making sure results are sustainable are fundamental principles for me. So in this way, I will take the win.?

In the midst of my international development work, I created a law firm to advocate for things that I’ve discovered are important to me and needed in our society: housing opportunities (the right to housing is a basic human right); governments that act within their authority; and better working relationships and communications between people. This has manifested most prominently in the senior housing industry, where we apply our skills at the intersection of civil rights and land use law to make sure that even older people with disabilities have the right to choose where they want to live, and where we can help business owners navigate a complicated government regulatory environment.

My competitive spirit hasn’t disappeared and I certainly still like to play hard and win. But my odd collection of experiences enables me to see a larger playing field, understand productive ways to overcome barriers, and know how to seize opportunities for solutions that work.

How to sum me up and complete the puzzle?

I apply creative problem solving to achieve results that have a meaningful and lasting societal impact.

And if this involves hiking, definitely count me in.

Michelle Pinkowski

Problem Solver | Adventurer | Communicator