Jennifer Mike

The best career advice I received came from a female professor who was the only female professor at our law school. She told me not to stop at the point of my legal career, but to go for a PhD if possible. She said that sometimes, your name will open the door for you, and then you will carry through with whatever work you're doing. So allow your name to open the door for you - when people hear 'Dr. Mike,' the respect comes in, and people want to listen to you. That should allow whatever ideas you have to permeate several societies, because they think now this is an authority who is speaking. She was the starting point for my mentorship, and I've had other women mentor me since, including my PhD supervisor who was also a woman, so I've had strong female influences.

My advice is perseverance. It is not easy, definitely not easy. There are lots of distractions along the way, a lot of voices that will tell you this is enough, you've done enough. A local voice will say you have an undergraduate degree, that's enough, you can practice and be an attorney. But there are other opportunities out there. You can attain higher qualifications. You can work to become a senior attorney in a law firm, you can work to own your own law firm, you can work to become a judge and rise to the Apex Court, which is the Supreme Court. So set your sights very, very far. Map out where you want to be, where you see yourself, beyond the possibility of where you see yourself, and start working towards that now. There are lots of things I look back on and I wish I could go back and change some of the decisions I made or some of the limitations I placed for myself, because there are endless possibilities out there. So you keep pushing. I use the word perseverance because there are some obstacles on the way, nothing doesn't. There's so much demand that comes with being a woman. Society expects so much from you, and then there are obstacles, but you can surmount it. Every day you have to push yourself. Every day you have to remind yourself why it is important. Why is it important? Because you are important. You have a mission, and you can attain that mission. Just set your sights on it and push for it.

There are a few challenges. When I look at the top people in my field, there are very few of them that look like me. I am a person of color, I am a woman, and my background is in Africa, so I see less people that look like me. I see less women, first of all, I see less women of color, and I see less women with my background. It's not a limitation for me - it leaves some opportunities for me to chart the course for the women that look like me, that are coming from behind, to say that they can get there too. So it is a motivation for me, but it is also a bit daunting, because you have that little voice that might creep in somewhere to say there's nobody like you, nobody has done it, so why do you think you can do it. The other challenge would be the opportunities that are out there. I used the word perseverance earlier on. Sometimes I wish it was easy to just walk into certain opportunities, rather than knocking and knocking on the door, pushing twice as hard, and working twice as hard, and burning the midnight candle, the 1AM, just to achieve what somebody will achieve working from 9 to 5. But it's a cross that I have to bear, and my consolation is knowing that there are people who will eventually walk along the paths that I have paved and I've made the life a little easier for them.

The most important value for me is to stay true to yourself. I feel as a woman, you should learn to embrace all sides of you that you like. I'm quite weary of the one-size-fits-all model that some women or even female activists try to portray - oh, you must be a career woman, you must be a homemaker, you must attain some particular points in society professionally for you to feel fulfilled. For me, I am a mother, I am a wife, I am a professor. That arrangement makes the core of who I am, and I'm proud in all these spaces. I'm very happy to say that I am a mother with nurturing capabilities, I'm very proud to identify myself as a wife, and I'm very proud to say that I have some professional accomplishments in my name. This is who I am. I have not looked down on anybody who values one over the other. If one woman says she prefers her professional life and she doesn't want children or a husband, that is fine. If one woman says she wants to be a home carer and focus on taking care of only her child or children and her husband, that is also fine. Whatever you value, just hold onto it. It is what you want at that point. Again, it's okay to change your mind. As we grow, as we evolve, we have new ideas, new ideals that will come to us. It's okay. I advocate for freedom of opportunity and freedom of choice. Everybody should have the choice, the opportunity to make choices for themselves. At the end of the day, it is what ticks for you at that point in time. I approach life from a contextual perspective. The whole works better when each part is functioning well. You cannot exist as an island in society. You relate with others, so be nice, be kind to everybody.