Episode 21: Katrina Foley
Attorney and Member of the Orange County, California Board of Supervisors
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Join MC Sungaila as she talks to attorney and member of the Orange County, California Board of Supervisors Katrina Foley about becoming a community leader. Prior to her election to the Board of Supervisors, Katrina served as Costa Mesa’s first directly elected Mayor and a member of the Costa Mesa City Council for 12 years, in addition to running her own firm, The Foley Group.
Katrina discusses her desire to and focus on serving her community and her constituents, why she studied law in the first place (to help women and girls and victims of domestic violence and abuse), the importance of taking initiative and reaching out to likeminded people to build your network and power to make a difference, and how she uses her legal skills in elected office by gathering the facts and standing firm in court when necessary to protect the people she serves.
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Katrina Foley
Katrina Foley is a community leader, successful businesswoman and attorney who became Costa Mesa’s first directly elected Mayor in November 2018. Katrina also served as Mayor in 2016-2017, and has been on the Costa Mesa City Council for 12 years. Previously serving on the Newport Mesa Unified School District Board of Trustees from November 2010 to November 2014, Katrina’s focus is on making local Orange County communities better for families.
Katrina is President of The Foley Group, A Professional Law Corporation in Newport Beach. The Foley Group, PLC provides services in contract negotiations for artists and athletes, civil business and employment litigation, and non-profit compliance matters. In 2001 and 2004, Katrina was honored by Women in Leadership and the National Association of Women Business Owners’ at the annual Remarkable Women Awards event.
Her service on local and regional boards and agencies includes the following: serving on the Travel Costa Mesa and Toll Corridor Agency Boards, and liaison to the Newport Mesa Arts Commission, Cultural Arts Committee, Bike and Walkability Committee, Pension and Finance Advisory and Special Districts Committee, as well as the Orange County Fair.
As a City Council member from November 2004 to November 2010, Foley served as the Chair to the Redevelopment Agency and City Council liaison to the following: the Orange County Fair, Newport-Mesa Unified School District, Youth in Government Program, Child Care and Youth Services Committee, Cultural Arts Committee, and Santa Ana River Trail Blue Ribbon Committee. She also Chaired the Coast Community College Measure M Oversight Committee and was recognized as the Orange Coast College Citizen of the Year.
A proud graduate of Head Start and a Pell Grant recipient, Katrina understands what it is like to grow up in a family facing financial challenges. As the daughter and wife of union members, Katrina has always stood with California’s workers and working families in their efforts to organize and collectively bargain.
In law school, Katrina established the school’s first women’s resource to serve domestic violence victims and chaired the women’s law caucus. The small clinic is now a well-established, for credit clinic run by the law school. Katrina was the City of Costa Mesa’s first pregnant Planning Commissioner. At that time, she initiated changing tables in the restrooms and a nursing station for employees at a new IKEA development.
Katrina has two sons in college who attended Costa Mesa Public Schools. She lives in Costa Mesa with her husband of 29 years Casey, a local teacher.
I'm pleased to have to join us on the show, Katrina Foley, a member of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Orange in California. Welcome Katrina.
Thanks for having me.
You’ve had quite a lot of experience as an elected official prior to joining the Board of Supervisors in the County, serving as the first directly elected Mayor of Costa Mesa, serving on the Costa Mesa City Council, serving on the local Board of Education. Also, you started your career as a lawyer practicing law when you can occasionally. You still do that also in addition to your responsibilities.
I thought this would be something interesting in terms of people thinking about, “Being a lawyer or having legal training might be useful for elected office, but how does that work?” Honestly, how do you balance all of that too, in terms of family, law practice, and then going through political office as well? First, I wanted to start with how did you decide to become a lawyer or go to law school to begin with?
I decided to become a lawyer because of some terrible situation that was happening with my family. My mom was married to an abusive man. They were getting a divorce and there was a custody battle over my baby sister. We all got dragged into court. I was in ninth grade or something. I saw that my mom did not have good representation. My stepfather's attorney was crushing us. That day I said, “I am going to be a lawyer so that women and moms in the future don't have to worry about representation.” I put it in my yearbook. It said, “I'm going to be a lawyer.” Here I am, a lawyer.
That's interesting. Everybody has different stories. For some people, it is an epiphany like that, a particular experience where you say, “Somebody needs to be involved in this system that represents people well.” Other times it's an evolution, but in your case it is an epiphany one. That's pretty interesting, your impetus to become a lawyer.
Did you think in law school that you wanted to focus on, particularly women and girls and their rights? How did your interest in what it looked like to be a lawyer evolve?
When I went to UCLA, I went as an English major because I thought that would give me a good background for becoming a lawyer. I spent a year after college working in a criminal defense firm and I knew I wanted to be a lawyer and help women. At that time, I went to law school because I wanted to help women who were abused by their partners and who were suffering from domestic violence and possibly had committed a violent crime to get away from their abuser.
Going to law school, I became the Chair of the Women's Law Caucus. I got to build relationships with a lot of amazing women law professors. I realized that that's a narrow field I'm representing, that kind of a client. My whole world got opened up. I always knew I wanted to work in the area of discrimination and protecting people's rights. That was what inspired and motivated me.
For law students who are listening or reading this, keep an open mind. Even if you come with a particular view of why you wanted to go to law school is helpful because there might be something else that you realize, “It's tied to why I originally wanted to do this. I didn't even know that there was this kind of practice, but it's a good fit for me.” That translated to employment law in your case.
That's how we met. I went to law school at Seattle University School of Law. I had a scholarship. I decided to move back to Orange County with my husband. He is from Costa Mesa, Orange County, California. We decided we were going to make Orange County our home. I didn't know anybody here. I had no friends here. The only people I knew were my husband, his friends, and his family.
I started writing letters to all the women that I had researched on LexisNexis to determine who was working in the area of women's rights, discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Your name came up. I wrote you a letter. Amongst others, I wrote Michelle Reinglass a letter who was a prominent employment law attorney here in Orange County and was the former president of the bar association here. You and I got coffee and we became friends over time and Michelle gave me a job.
I put that in the category of you never know unless you ask and for anyone who is feeling shy, people respond to that. Most people want to help other people. They like to meet new people. That's a good combination. You might hit it off. That was a good result of your sending letters out. That was before people were emailing all the time.
One thing that we did over the years, that if I could give advice to especially young women lawyers, that helped us, even though we didn't see each other that much, but it helped us to stay connected to each other and to track each other's careers, is that you would send me a little clipping of something that you read in the paper. I would do the same. I do think that those personal touches, not an email, but that personal note, make a difference. You're able to continue to have good long-term relationships because of that.
It's always nice to have a cheerleader, somebody that you know is watching and is like, “Way to go. Good thing that you achieved that.” Following in a positive way and supporting tangibly and helping in other ways when we could. That is a good point. I don't think people think about that, especially in this day and age, email and text, but not the other.
I still do handwritten notes to people.
Even more so now, they stand out more because so few people do them. Invest in some stationery, it's helpful. You came to Orange County with your family and started practicing law. It sounds like probably it's the same motivation in terms of your public service and government service, wanting to help people. How did that come to mind? People, especially when they're just coming out of law school, like, “I'm trying to practice law and get this done,” but you had another idea that you want to serve in another way too.
I have a hard time focusing on one thing.
We share that.
It's funny cause I have two young adult sons now. They're always saying to me, “Mom, you just need to focus on being a lawyer and you could be rich.” I go, “My soul would not be rich.” I feel richness because of the work I do and most of it doesn't pay me. When I got the job as a law clerk working for Michelle Reinglass while I was waiting to get my bar results, and then I later went to work with her as an attorney. That was an incredible period in my life in terms of absorbing everything I could to be a trial lawyer from her. She was a great litigator, hardworking, and demanding. I grew quite a bit in that small, short period that I was with her, which I left because I ended up having a baby.
We had a couple of trials. I was pregnant while I was in one of the trials. I was taking depositions and I have some stories to tell about some judges and how we hopefully have progressed in terms of how judges treat women who are pregnant. It was an amazing time in my life where it set the foundation for me in terms of the knowledge I had about employment law because we were fast and furious and small little firms. You do everything. There's no, like, “We're going to have a research department research something.” We are the research department.
What was the first office that you held? It’s pretty early in your career.
First, I was the planning commissioner. That was the first public official office. I sat on a couple of committees, human relations committee and childcare services, but the first public official office was the planning commission. I joined the planning commission at a time when our city was going through a Renaissance. I thought that my legal skills could be valuable to the planning commission, zoning code, ordinances, and things like that. People encouraged me. I never decided to run for office. It wasn't in my yearbook.
I'm a big planner. I'm one of those people that I wrote in my yearbook that I'm going to be a lawyer. I had a plan. I was going to go to college, get married, go to law school, buy a house, have a baby, and get my career going. I did that plan. Not everybody can do that, but I'm one of these people that I set a goal and then I push towards it. This public service thing undid all of my ability to plan my life uniquely, but it was so rewarding.
I became a city council member and then, over the years, school board member and mayor. I've enjoyed the ability to be an advocate from my legal training, the ability to communicate for those people who don't have a strong voice and to make sure that all voices are heard and we're representing the whole community, even those who maybe don't know how to use their voice or they aren't able to.
If you focus on just one thing, your soul would not be rich. You feel rich when you do what you love even if it doesn't pay you.
Certainly, what we've discussed on the show before is you don't think about how your skills and training as a lawyer can be useful in all of these different settings. In all kinds of boards, whether they're public boards or private nonprofit boards, the way we assess issues, the way we're trained to assess issues and move forward and work through problems, that whole analytical set is helpful for any kind of board. You found that probably true on the planning commission and things like that as well.
You mentioned that there's still advocacy going on when you are a public official. You may not know each of the individuals that you're advocating for. You may not have met all of them, especially in a county as large as Orange, but you're always thinking about that and in that way, serving as an advocate and representing your constituents, which I'll say in this day and age is refreshing. Not a lot of people have that focus, but the way you mentioned it, it comes from your legal training. You're like, “I have a client. In this case, I have a bunch of clients.”
I do think of it like that. We have an issue that comes before us at the Board of Supervisors. My first step is to read the staff report, read all of the background, go get a deep dive into why did we do this the way we did it in the past and what's not working, and what we can do better. Always in the back of my mind, “How is this going to serve the greater good? How can I advocate for those who may not be able to share with us what isn't working for them?” Our legal training applies to so much. Often, I am told by constituents and even county staff that you have a way of getting to the point faster. I know the path I want to take maybe faster than others because I'm used to setting a path and moving forward.
That’s you setting goals and moving towards the goal personally or otherwise. That’s partly your personality, as you described. We're problem solvers. We see a problem and a path, “This is a good resolution for all of the various stakeholders. How do we get there?”
In my years as a trial lawyer and a litigator, combing through discoveries, questioned witnesses, trying to get the facts. What are the undisputed facts? What's the basis from which we work and craft our position? I'm a big fact-finder as a county supervisor. Apparently, I'm the first county supervisor in Orange County to ever hold investigative hearings on important issues like fentanyl, homelessness, and public health. We're doing a sustainability summit.
No one ever did that, where you bring experts in, bringing county staff in, community members, and other public officials, and question them as if you were questioning a witness in a deposition or on the stand so that you can gather facts, and then you can use that factual data to craft an initiative, a program, or a policy solution. That’s where I'm comfortable, asking questions, assessing all the facts, and then figuring out how to make this work.
That makes a lot of sense. You’re crafting policy, you might have some sense of what's happening and the problem that you need to address, but when you have people telling you that this is exactly what's happening, you can craft it better if you know what's happening, as opposed to presuming or taking one anecdotal comment about what the problem is that you need to address.
You and I have worked on cases [together] before. We have to rely on experts because we're lawyers. We're not experts, scientists, nurses, or doctors. We have to rely on experts in order to guide our decision-making, whether we're lawyers or policymakers. I rely on experts to help us.
You're drawing more analogies to your litigation background in that regard as well, like, “We have experts.” You sometimes need to take some tough stands with regard to what policies you're going to implement, what ordinances, or what rules you're going to stand by. Having the legal training, you're not free to do that because you can assess it and you know when something is the right thing to do.
I do think that is a difference between me and maybe some other elected officials. It goes back to usually, when I take a strong stand on something, I've gathered all the facts. I'm comfortable in my position. I know where to stick my ground. I know where the line is, where I'm not going to cross over where my argument might falter. I do have a better comfort level with my strong stands on different policy issues.
It's because you've done the homework in advance, “I'm taking that stand of the fact-finding,” and the things that you're talking about, reviewing everything. There's value in asking that question, “We've always done something this way. Why? How did that happen? Does it still work?”
I would say 70% of the time, we should make a change. That's what I've discovered. 30% of the time when I am told, “This is the way we've always done it.” I feel that maybe it's time for a change.
If that's the only answer, people can't remember there was a good reason, but people don't remember that's different from, “We've always done it this way,” but why? Does it make sense now? I have the same perspective on management issues. It doesn't make sense. We should do what's right now. Things have changed.
Everything has changed. The world has been a different place in the last few years. We have to evolve with the evolving community. We have to pivot when necessary. If they learned anything from the last few years and dealing with COVID, it's that you have to be flexible and learn to pivot quickly.
You were very interested in fact-finding and making sure that people did some fact-finding before some decisions were made in terms of having some COVID patients come to our county. That was early before there were lockdowns or anything, but that's consistent with your approach of, “Let's figure out whether this is a good idea based on actual information.”
You and I worked on that case together for the City of Costa Mesa. I will say that even though I was there as the mayor, I couldn't help myself but go into lawyer mode. I wish that we would have had that big meeting we had recorded because it's now a historical moment in time. All we have is our notes and our recollections. The moment when I was cross-examining the Trump lawyers essentially and we did not believe anything they said.
I was going to say that the Department of Justice, the CDC, the state, and everyone was at the table because you made that possible by challenging the decision in court.
What we learned in that Q&A was they wouldn't let us have a stenographer even, which I still think, in retrospect, maybe we should have pushed harder, but that's in the past. They weren't being forthright with the community or with us. We now know what they told us then, which was that it wasn't airborne, [was wrong]. That’s why the world has COVID.
We're talking about February 2020. That was early. That was definitely an eye-opener. For me, it reinforced the need for having all the different levels of government. If the local government and you had not said, “Let's look at this,” there wouldn't have been anyone looking out for the particular residents of Orange County. The federal government and the state didn't think it was their job, even though their actions would have had major implications.
Tying this back to the beginning of our conversation, many of the lawyers that we engaged on this matter were lawyers that whom we had developed relationships over the years. We knew their experience level, their work ethic, our work ethic, and who would be able to keep up with us. That's important for new lawyers to understand that all those relationships that you build over the years, your work ethic, character, and involvement in the community matter because when somebody is looking for somebody to help, maybe it's you because they know that you can get the job done.
Jennifer Keller, an amazing trial lawyer, is also a guest on this show. With great teamwork. You’re right. That's a good point in terms of we all have known each other from a lot of different services, community work, and a number of other things where we've crossed paths, including working with each other previously on cases. It's important to think about that. I often tell newer lawyers that you have to get your skills in the first couple of years and be focused on learning what it means to be a lawyer, as you mentioned when you were in Michelle's office.
Also, you need to get out earlier rather than later because some attorneys are just told to sit in your office and bill hours and worry about that later after you've become partners, something like that. I’m like, “Hogwash,” especially if you want to contribute to the community. You should start doing that as soon as you feel you have something to contribute. Other people need to know you far in advance before they have a need for you.
I don't mean to be generalizing, but in my own personal experience, women tend to go to other women professionals that they know have exceptional skills and can get a job done that they want to get done. I have observed that maybe this isn't true across the board, but in general, men tend to have more of a business approach, like, “This is my business buddy. We want to throw some work his way.” Not looking at it from the perspective of, “Is this the best person to get the task done in the way we want it done?” More looking at it, “We want to support this business.” I want to support the businesses, of course, but I also want to hire the best people and the right people for the job.
That's an interesting observation. I have seen that on occasion.
When you're told that this is just the way it's always been done, that is when you know it's time for a change.
There's a benefit to that in that they all lift each other up. They all succeed and it keeps feeding on itself in that way. They keep rising together, which is good. There's something in it that's positive that I’m like, “We should be more conscious about that.” Many of us are, in terms of doing the same thing for women and our women friends. I do, in most cases, I'm interested in like, “What is the best collaborative team for this? Who is the right person for this issue in this case?”
You need different skills in different kinds of cases. I would do that. If someone asked for a reference like, “I need to know a little bit more about it.” I say, “This would be the right fit for this,” because you want everybody to do well, including whoever you're referring something to, or if you're hiring, you want it all to work out well. Choosing the right person and the right team is important, not just, “I always support X business or X guy.”
Especially women lawyers, and I don't know why this is, women business owners that are in retail and restaurants, they have a tendency to do more bro deals, I'll call them. Women lawyers often are reluctant to promote themselves, get out there, and have a misperception that you do good work and somebody will come. No, that does not happen. You have to build those relationships over time.
As women in the community, women leaders in the community, we have to lift other women up more. We have to put women at the table. Especially women lawyers, we have to make sure that they have access to the bids that are going out. Especially if you're working in government, we need to make sure that they have access to sitting on commissions and committees so that their work can become known in a more public way.
That's an excellent point and a good reminder for everyone who's listening. Think about that consciously. Also, it dovetails a little bit with some of the comments other guests have made, particularly judges. In that context, women judges will most often say that they probably wouldn't have applied for that position if somebody hadn't approached them, whether it was a judge, a woman, or a man who told them about an opening or suggested that they would be a good fit for an opening because they're a little bit reluctant at first for themselves to see themselves in that role and to apply without some nudge.
One of my interests in this show is sharing the stories. Even if you don't have someone individually to nudge you, but the show can nudge you, the individual people that maybe they'll encourage you to apply for things. You have to know about those openings. Even if you're letting people know about an opening and say, “You should consider applying.” Sometimes those aren't always obvious in the commissions or committees. Maybe people don't even know where to look for those or that there are such openings. It's helpful to let people know about them too.
For years I had a great woman judge who's since retired, who kept nudging me to become a judge. “I'm not qualified,” I would say to her. I can't be a judge. I don't have enough trials because, in my area of law, the client often wants to settle before you get a trial. When you do go to trial, it's this 30-day trial. It consumes your whole life for two years.
I'm a small firm. I always felt like I never was qualified. She would say to me, “You've appeared before judges, right? Yes. You're a lawyer, right? Yes. You know what you want in a judge. You're qualified.” We have a tendency to feel, and I still feel this way sometimes, Imposter syndrome, like you're not worthy of the position. You're not good enough. You're not doing it well enough.
It's also that same thing of, if there are ten criteria, we’re like, “Do we have all ten?” We have to stop doing that.
I only had three trials in 2022. It's tough, but I do think we have to support other women and push them. I've learned this in my own career. Even if it doesn't work out, you gain something from that experience and some other door will open. I ran for Senate, as an example, for the state. It was devastating, the outcome of the election, to say the least. Another door opened. Now I have an incredible job that I love.
I was going to say where you are now with the county, it's such a great fit for you in so many different ways. I look at your experience and your trajectory with the city and other roles. It seems like this was the right time to have this come to fruition because any sooner, you wouldn't have had the experience as a mayor and all of that, which helped you go to a higher level from the start as a member of the board.
I have all that background. I know what cities need.
If you're at the city level, then you're like, “The county, I can also consider the individual city’s situations or needs.” I can understand, in a real way, what they're dealing with and how we can help with that. It seems like it's built neatly on top of your prior experience, but it's a good thing. You mentioned the disappointments too because that is a thread certainly that I've heard from other guests on the show.
You say, “This amazingly successful person who's doing great work.” You think nothing bad could happen in their lives. You're far from the truth. There are a lot of challenges and you've overcome them and also grown from them. Having that resilience or grit or whatever you want to call it, was part of the recipe for success.
I developed this resilience and grit, thick skin. I get from my dad this ability to let something that may be as dramatic that happens to me, move it to the past and keep moving forward and then overcome a lot of challenges. My mom and my grandma helped me to have the strength and the confidence to overcome challenges. We had a difficult life growing up.
That gave me a foundation for overcoming things maybe easier than others. I have this unique ability to push through the chaos and even push through some times that are, for the average American, would be difficult in terms of attacks and people protesting at your house and things like that. You have to have a good sense of who you are, that you're supported and loved to be able to push through those difficult challenges in life.
Until you have that circumstance where someone is right in your face like that, you don't know. Until you're tested like that, you might think you have a good sense of yourself, but you don't know until that situation happens how strong you are or whether you're like, “I need to work on a little bit of this work. My worth is my worth, no matter what people say or think about it.”
If it's losing a motion in court or you've worked so hard on that summary judgment motion, and you thought that you had the winning position and you lost, you can't cry over it and never get to work again. You have to move on and learn from that experience. I can tell you every summary judgment motion because it becomes part of who you are. You will always learn from that experience.
You always want to win or else you wouldn't be a competitive person. That's what you want to do. When you don't, especially when you think you should have, and the client should have, then you're double upside because not only that, but the client didn't get the result that you think the client should have gotten, but you have to move on and also learn from that. I still listen to every oral argument I do, no matter how painful it might be afterward, because I wanted to say, “You can keep improving. Everything you do, you have to look at that. That's how you grow.”
It's interesting what you were saying about early challenges and moving forward from them. Charlie Zhang, who's on the Symphony Board with me, is a major philanthropist now, and a major entrepreneur previously. He had his story recently told on local news. That's someone who has the exact same attitude, someone who was part of a lost generation in China and came to the United States and completely built a whole new life for himself and his family.
When asked about those circumstances as a seventeen-year-old working in basically forced labor in the fields and China, he said, “That happened, but I have to move forward from that. I can’t live in that. Use that for motivation or what you have for the future. If you live back there, you can't go on to produce other things.” It resonated with me because I listened to Charlie's interview. I was like, “It’s resonant of Charlie's approach.”
Your past is your past. We all learn from our experiences. I try to share about my past, not because I still want to live in it, but because a lot of times, I speak to a lot of student groups and a whole diversity of residents across Orange County, rich and poor, young and old. I want to make sure that those, especially students who maybe they're on the free school lunch program and they're embarrassed, or their family is financially struggling and they can't buy the tennis racket, the football shoes, or the cheerleading skirt, whatever it is, I’ve been there.
I know that. I always try to share that past because I feel like I'm an example of where you can go if you stay open, get a good education, surround yourself with people who care and love you, and have a goal and strive for that goal. Sometimes I go into these classes and they think I'm some rich White lady. It's interesting. You can see their facial expressions change. It goes from being this glazed-over look to, “Okay.”
They’re much more engaged with you. They can relate to you. Also, another part of your superpowers as an advocate for the presidents of the county is that you have a broader experience and it’s a different empathy in that setting. What advice would you give to a young woman or girl who might think she might want to make a difference in political office? Have a thick skin and a good sense of yourself, we got those parts.
Your past is your past. Don't let it hinder your journey to success.
For girls in high school, especially junior high school, surround yourself with other girls that love you and care for you and are not going to judge you. We all go through that phase where everyone's judgmental, but surround yourself with a group of young women with who you know you're always going to be together. I still am friends with my tribe. We used to be called the Junior Mints. We’re six of us that were best friends. We roller-skate all over town. We have been lifelong friends. We live in all different areas of the country. I know I can always go back to them. They're never going to judge me. They're always going to be there to listen. I don't even always need advice.
I need someone to listen that whom I know I can reveal all my secrets. You got to find that. That's super important for girls. That's hard in this day and age with social media and the trust issue. You should never betray your friends. Betrayal and the opposite of that, loyalty, is an important part of not just your career but life. If I could advise one thing, whether it's girl or boy, young or old, it is that loyalty and trust are probably the most important character traits to carry into your life. You'll do well if you have loyalty and you're a trustworthy person.
Those are probably more traditional values than people would often think of these days. A dopamine hit on social media is worth a lot to people, even though there might be a lot of long-term issues of trust and loyalty lost after that. It's important for that. You've got a much longer path to go both for yourself, for your own integrity, being that way, and then being able to have a strong sense of yourself because you know that you're a loyal, trustworthy person, no matter what anybody says. Also, it leads to having these close lifelong friendships, which are rare. As I've gotten older, I realized there aren't many people that you could describe in the way you're describing.
Also, as lawyers, we are trained to have confidence and make sure that we keep things in confidence, attorney-client privilege. The value of trust needs to be re-engaged at an earlier age for our country because it comes into play in so many ways in so many professions. Your whole life could be destroyed over it. It's something I feel strongly about.
That's good advice. I love that the advice is coming about developing yourself and your character as being the core of anything that you might do, whether it's public office or not.
In public office, I have this practice of no surprises. I learned this early on when I was on the planning commission. It ties into the trust factor. That is that if there's a project coming before us or a contract and I have concerns about it, I have questions, or maybe I'm deciding I'm not going to vote for it, and I have a working relationship with the people who are the proposers, I tell them what my issues are. I let them know in advance. No surprises. A lot of times that doesn't happen. There's this tendency to want to blindside people from the dice and play gotcha.
I do think that then, over time, you don't know the next time that lobbyist is going to be on another contract, the next time that developer’s coming before you, or that business. Over time, you will degrade their willingness to trust what you say if you do this gotcha or we're going to blindside you. Anybody newly coming into public office, my would advice be no surprises. Let them know upfront within the parameters of the law what you're allowed to say. Let people know if you have questions or concerns upfront. They'll respect you for it even if you vote against the project.
Also, it allows a dialogue and an ability, “That's the issue? Can we fix that issue? Can we do something?” It's much more constructive when you do that on the front end. If people can't meet it, they're like, “We can't do that.” For whatever reason or they don't want to do that, but they know. I see what you're saying too, in terms of they may not agree with you. They don't like the decision that you're making, but they can respect the process.
They know that they can trust you to be upfront with them.
Particularly now, it's hard to build trust or maintain trust, but in other ways, it's simple. It’s basic. What do you most enjoy about your role?
Helping people. It's as simple as that. I, every day, get to wake up and help people. I get to help people find housing. I get to help veterans. I get to help businesses cut through the red tape. I get to help promote something amazing about something happening in Orange County. I get to protect people. I love helping people. In eighth grade, I got, “Most School Service.”
At that time, I thought that was dorky. I’m like, “What? I can't believe I'm getting most of those services.” All my girlfriends get, “Best hair,” but now I realize there was a teacher that nominated a school community that realized that I was somebody who served and me. My motto at the office is, “We're here to serve,” because I love serving.
It's so much more diverse, serving all the different constituents in the county, many different cities, and a wide-ranging set of residents. There's a whole wide-ranging set of problems, which are more complex but bring your legal skills to bear on those too. We've been talking about it. I was feeling in a lot of these discussions on the show that people, in thinking about their background, they say, as you did, which is, “I didn't necessarily have this on my list of things that I wanted to do, but now when I look back, it makes a lot of sense that I'm here and that all of these things built up. I can't imagine where else I would be or should have been as a result of that.” Do you have that same feeling?
I do have that feeling. My career took a change towards more focused on public service a few years back. If you had asked me several years ago, I would have told you that I was going to be this amazing trial lawyer doing cases all the time. The career change got me closer to who I really am. I love litigating, doing that work, and helping people resolve employment disputes. What I didn't enjoy about that process was it was oftentimes unnecessarily long and unresolved because of the lawyers. That was part of it.
I've always had this feeling like the dispute gets away even from those who were in dispute, to begin with. Once it enters the legal system, it's like a separate entity. It has its own life. It can go on for a long time.
Not being able to resolve things for people in a shorter period of time is something I can do now as a supervisor. I can find a resolution for people every day. It may not be an employment law, but it's in other areas. There are long-term things we've worked on. I do think that my career change started to develop several years ago. I love what I do.
I can tell that. Particularly in your role, you're blossoming. It's great to see. Which talent would you most like to have but don't?
Ability to sing. That would be the talent I would love to have.
I got that a few times from folks.
I always wanted to sing. I can never sing.
I always say you need appreciators of the singers and singers themselves. Otherwise, there'll be no audience. We need both. In my sense, I say art appreciators. I can't draw or do anything like that, but I can appreciate a nice painting. You need people like us too.
Before I switch to more lightning round questions, I know one of the things you wanted to talk about was your tips from law practice and even working on litigation strategy now in your public offices. What tips do you have in terms of both teamwork in that regard and then also brief writing or argument?
It's hard. I have this habit of correcting everyone's papers. Now I work with a lot of non-lawyers. It’s even more dramatic. Remove the verb to be from your writing to the extent that you can. Stop saying, “I have. I had. Should. Would.” Your writing will be more active and interesting. You'll get to the point faster. One skill I learned when I was in college at UCLA was my Hamlet professor, he had us all write an essay on Hamlet.
He circled the verb to be throughout your paper. If you had more than a certain number, I don't remember the number now, but you got an F on the paper and nobody had ever heard of this. They don't know what the verb to be. Why wouldn't you write like this? We're all trained to write like that. Remove the verb to be. Even on social media, in our newsletter, and in our certificates that we give to people, we are training a whole office on the active voice. If you can use that tip in your legal writing, the judges will appreciate you.
It's much more immediate when you have the active verb, but it's also funny that you say that about a teacher impacting you that way in some way that you were shocked by to begin with. Still, from early on, they've impacted how you are now.
Loyalty and trust are a very important part of not just your career, but your life.
I would also encourage trial lawyers to find an appellate attorney that you can work with because a lot of times, when you're in the litigation phase, there are things that you do that you don't even know you're doing that prevent you from having a good case on appeal because you're looking at it from the trial lawyer perspective, not the appellate lawyer perspective. Talk to that appellate lawyer early on in the case and get their advice and tips. You'll be better for it for your client. If you end up having to go on appeal, your case will be set up better.
That's certainly my view. That's been my experience working and I love it. I love working with teams in that way. I’m like you in terms of if we can get something resolved or our input can help early on rather than after the fact when we're like, “There are some things we can do, but other things we can't do at this point.” I hate having to say that. I'd rather be involved earlier. You touched on this a little bit earlier, but what trait do you most deplore in yourself, and then what trait do you most deplore in others? We talked a little about that in terms of trust and loyalty.
The trait that I most deplore in myself is my inability to do nothing. I don't know how to do that. I’m not good at being by myself and meditating and relaxing. Probably as I grow older, I need to learn to be more able to be meditative and relaxed and by myself. That's something I'm working on. A trait that I deplore in others is untrustworthiness. I've been betrayed in life, fortunately, not in my personal life but in my political and professional life. Trust is so important.
Who are your favorite writers?
I love Sandra Cisneros. She’s somebody that I can relate to. And Toni Morrison.
They’re excellent writers. Who is your hero in real life?
My hero in real life is probably my grandmother. She has survived three husbands. I sometimes think she can survive all of us. She is a person who grew up in rural Alabama, the youngest of many, at a time when you would go outside in an outhouse to go to the bathroom. Poor rural conditions. She got married at fourteen years old, which I don't recommend. She's been through so much in life.
Every day she gets up, gets dressed, puts on her jacket and her blouse and her slacks, and puts on her pearls, which is why I love girls too. Even though she's not going anywhere, she’s ready for the day. She combs her hair and puts her lipstick on. To me, having that positive attitude, “I'm ready for the day,” every single day, it's something I take with me and I learned from her.
My mom's phrasing of that is a little different: “Make this the best day ever. It's a fresh canvas. Paint it how you like.”
[My grandmother] wasn't [formally] educated. [But] she is a voracious reader. She reads every day. She's quite smart, but she never got to get educated because of her upbringing and the time in her life when things were happening and when she got married and everything. She has always been my strongest advocate for getting an education. It's served me well.
It's good that she's still so sharp and engaged in that way too, constantly reading and all of that. That's good to keep doing what may well outlive all of you with that rate, the pearls and the books. For what in life do you feel most grateful?
I'm most grateful for my family. I had bad modeling growing up in terms of the chaotic dysfunction of the life that I was born into. I tried hard not to have that life for my family. I have an amazing husband who's super supportive of me. He's always there even when he doesn't want to be. He knows when to push and when not to. We have great sons. He's a great dad. I'm fortunate to be able to have somebody that loves me unconditionally. That's hard in life if you don't have that.
It's an extra challenge for sure. It helps you keep that core that you're talking about too, when you have a good place to be with your partner.
It's so crazy because we've gone through so many things together. He's a teacher. He helps kids every day. We have different ways of helping people.
I was thinking about that. You have that in common. Both of you are serving others and helping others. You have that common thread. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite to a dinner party?
I would invite Justice Jackson. I want to meet her. She has an incredible story. I loved watching her during the confirmation hearings. I watched most of the hearings, not all of them. I admire her strength. She was calm, cool, and funny in a lawyer's way. She seems like an amazing person to meet.
She's charming. A nice person in addition to being quite smart.
Last question. What is your motto, if you have one?
Never give up. That's my motto.
That sounds appropriate and succinct. Active verbs. Thank you so much, Katrina Foley, for joining the show and talking about your path to service and sharing that with all of us.
Thanks for having me. I love that you're doing this.