Editorial Assistant Intern | June 2017 - January 2018
The goal: UC Berkeley’s alumni publication, California Magazine, hired me to write, edit, and execute projects for their online and print publications. They needed someone who could do the research and tell a good story without being afraid to pick up the phone.
How I did it: I formed an alliance to their style guide and collaborated with contributing writers by phone and email. I fielded incoming writing and design submissions through their general mailbox and escalated proposals to the Managing Editor.
What happened next: I fell in love with the publication environment. It was inspiring to work alongside the fantastic storytellers on staff. My strong attention to detail earned me a freelance gig on their fact-checking team after my internship ended.
My writing sample: Read on for my featured obituary on former law dean, Herma Hill Kay.
California Magazine, “Bugged”
Herma Hill Kay leaves behind a legacy and an impact that will last for much longer than her 57 years of teaching at Berkeley. She served as the first female dean of Boalt College of Law, from 1992 to 2000. She was an inspirational professor, an accomplished writer, and a renowned lawyer—one of the eight most influential lawyers in Northern California according to the National Law Journal. At 82 years old, Kay died on June 10 at her home in San Francisco.
Kay was raised in rural South Carolina and knew she wanted to go into law from an early age. After graduating from high school, she attended Southern Methodist University and received her B.A. in 1956. Next, she received her J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1959, at the top of her class. She became the second woman to join the Boalt College of Law faculty at Berkeley in 1960 where she continued to teach until she was appointed as dean in 1992. She was the first female dean at any top 10 U.S. law school.
Kay’s subjects included Sex-Based Discrimination and California Marital Property Law. She was a leading advocate of women’s legal rights, and influenced multitudes of women to go into the Male Dominated profession of law. Thanks to Kay’s impact, the uneven distribution of men to women in Boalt classrooms shifted to include as much as 50% women.
She published numerous works relating to women’s equality in legal education and legal rights. She co-authored the California Family Law Act of 1969 as well as the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act, which became the standard for no-fault divorce across the United States. She went on to co-author the Sex-Based Discrimination casebook with Supreme Court Justice Bader Ginsburg, who was a treasured friend as well as a writing partner. Bader Ginsburg wrote the introduction to Kay’s latest writing, a nearly complete book on the lives of the first 14 female law professors of the 20th century.
Not only was Kay a phenomenal professional, but she was an amazing woman and a grandmother too. Granddaughter Jessica Brodsky has shared that Kay was always warm-hearted, but maybe not the stereotypical grandmother figure. According to Brodsky, Kay had a dignity about her that made her seem like an incredibly sophisticated, powerful woman. As a young girl, Brodsky recalls feeling in awe of Kay because she was unlike any other woman she interacted with, though always amazingly kind and generous. She recounts frequent trips to Barnes & Noble where Kay would buy her dozens of books to satisfy her hungry mind.
Brodsky shares that the most important thing she learned from Kay was that hard work and perseverance can take you a long way, even against stacked odds. Kay encouraged her to work as hard as she could in school and in life, and a recent Boalt graduate herself; Brodsky says Kay influenced her decision to pursue law school though she never pressured her. Kay was unfailingly supportive of her grandchildren in everything they’ve set out to do.
Kay held many titles and accolades: President of the Association of American Law Schools, Member of the Council of the American Law Institute, and an American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow. She received the Margaret Brent Award to Women Lawyers of Distinction in 1992, and in 2015 both the AALS’s Triennial Award for Lifetime Service to Legal Education and Law, as well as the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award. She is survived by her sons Michael, John, and Tom; and her four grandchildren.
