Myia Strozier

I would first say my son - he's a big reason why I do what I do. Becoming a mother made me more self-aware and more emotionally intelligent. It also showed me my strength in the multiple things that I can handle at one time, which has helped me tremendously in my career, like being able to juggle multiple tasks at the same time. My son is 2 years old now, and becoming a mother definitely opened my eyes that you can handle hard things, you can handle difficulty. It taught me that I'm capable of so much more than I thought, and that strength carries over into everything I do professionally.

The best career advice I ever received was from an attorney who told me that staying organized and being organized in our profession would take me far and would really be the key to success. That advice really stuck with me, and over time I've developed a knack for organization. In the legal field, where you're managing multiple cases, deadlines, and details, that organizational skill has been absolutely essential to my success.

I would say to be a sponge and to learn as much as possible. I know sometimes it can be intimidating to talk to someone who's been in the field maybe longer than you, or has more experience. It can be a little intimidating talking to attorneys as well, especially if you see them on commercials or hear about them on the radio. But I would say become a sponge - learn as much as you can, gain as much skills as you can, let people teach you, let people coach you. And while doing that, start to build your own systems along the way. If you take what you feel is comfortable for you, and you also take advice from other professionals in the field, then you can kind of create your own system and your own flow. So I would definitely say stay open-minded.

I feel like the biggest challenge right now in the field is that a lot of law firms and the legal industry is very traditional, so they're kind of resistant to change. Even with new technology coming out and new opportunities, and a lot of paralegals going freelance, they're resistant. We're saturating the market, and there's really a movement of paralegals becoming freelance and building their own businesses outside of working in a law firm. So I feel like the biggest challenge is navigating the changes that the industry is going through. We're going through a really big change and a really big transformation. It's not going to look the same in a couple years, so I think that's one of the biggest challenges facing us right now.

I'm going to start off by saying integrity is very, very important to me in work and my personal life. Staying authentic and staying true to yourself is very important to me. That's actually something that I have been learning - I'm 29 years old, so I have been learning the importance of staying true to myself and chasing my dreams and things I want to go after. I'm also going to say being compassionate, whether that's being compassionate with other people or compassionate with yourself. A lot of self-forgiveness goes a long way. I know that's kind of difficult for people in their 20s, dealing with taking your time and giving yourself that compassion to learn, and to grow, and to make mistakes, and to get back up and try again. So I think that leads into perseverance as well - just persevering and being resilient when you have challenges in life, because you're going to have challenges in your personal life and you're going to have challenges in your career that you come across. Having those two qualities of perseverance and compassion towards yourself will take you far as well.