Maria Isabel Ibarra

I attribute my success to my mother. She always had this way of saying it with her little accent, 'you have to try me, huh?' She called me mija, which means my daughter in Spanish, and she would always say, you have to try. And sometimes I think, okay, I have to try, I have to try, and then I succeed, like in fundraising. I thought I couldn't do it, but I did it. So then I kept doing it, and kept doing it for other organizations. Mom always said, you have to try, you have to educate yourself, you know, you never stop, you never stop learning. You never stop learning something new, and people don't want to learn anything new, they just want to sit there and do the least amount of thinking they can. So that's challenging. You have to challenge yourself. You can't just be stagnant. You have to continuously challenge yourself to keep your mind alert and your body active.

I guess, for starters, is to make sure and get an education. Back in the 70s, when I graduated high school, there were so many girls that were just out of high school, got married. And to me, I felt like, you know, they're ruining their life because they need to do other things before they decide to settle down and get married. I didn't get married until I was in my thirties because I was trying to get settled in, you know, working as a paralegal, making an income, paying for my car, eventually I bought my own house. I think people need to get an education, and my degree did not necessarily coincide with the legal profession because my actual ambition was to be a Foreign Service Officer. But to me, I think if you get an education, and it helps you, by all means, get that bachelor's degree, a minimum of a bachelor's degree.

For starters, with paralegal, there are some good paralegal schools. Start from the bottom, because I knew some ladies that were secretaries, went to paralegal school, and eventually we had a vacancy. They applied, and they gave them the job. And they turned out to be very good paralegals, even though they started from the bottom. And that's the thing to do. If you have to start from the bottom, don't just stay as a secretary. Consider what else you can do. Office manager, HR, try to move up from it and advance. In other words, try to advance your career. I've known people that were secretaries their entire life, and I'd ask don't you want to be a paralegal, or don't you want to get a little bit more money? Don't you want to advance? And they'd say no, I'm happy here. I think if you concentrate on trying to find a way to advance in your field, by all means, take it. Take it and work on it. Improve yourself as best as you can. You have to work your way up.

When I was a paralegal, I guess it would be preparing for trial. I did work for a gentleman who was considered one of the top trial lawyers in the United States, Siegel Wheatley. We would prepare for days, sometimes weeks, before a trial. And this was back in the 80s, way back before we had all this social media and everything, and we would actually prepare paperwork. I mean, we had paperwork. Nobody had laptops or iPads or anything. And we would prepare for days, sometimes weeks, before a trial. And that was a challenge, trying to get all the exhibits together, label everything, make sure there were three sets, and running back and forth to the courthouse if we didn't have anything, and all night copying. We basically prepared what we call a trial notebook for the attorney. And it was a binder, and it had all the information that he needed. If he was at trial, he could just refer into that book, and he appeared very knowledgeable during the trial. Meanwhile, the rest of us were scattering in the background, trying to make sure that he looked good up in front of the judge.

I had a grandfather that said, your word is what's important. If you give somebody your word that you are going to do something, you better comply with it and follow through. That was his thing. I've been in some instances where I've told people, I promise you, I will take care of this, I will look into it, I will do the best I can. And if I told somebody, I'm giving you my word, and I didn't do that very often, but when I told somebody, I'm going to give you my word that I will do this, and I will see it come to fruition, they would kind of look at me kind of funny. I said, you don't understand, in our family, when you give somebody your word, you're pretty much set in stone, and you better do it. My maternal grandfather was known in town that if he said something, a gentleman told me one time, his word was as good as gold, because he always was reliable. Reliable, trustworthy, and he was honest. And he lived to be 99, but he was a very perfect model of what an honest, trustworthy man should be. So his thing was, you give somebody your word, you better comply with it. And that's how I feel. If I tell you I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it.