During the third annual Agosto Center Lecture Tuesday at South Texas College of Law Houston, Nanette “Nan” DeRenzi, vice admiral (ret.) U.S. Navy JAG, presented “Keep Moving Forward: Awareness, Access, and Attitude.”
Assistant Dean Donna Davis, JD, hosted the event. She leads the Agosto Justice Center for Leadership and Empowerment and serves as Title IX Coordinator.
“Awareness starts with yourself,” DeRenzi said. “Be aware of who you are, your strengths and your weaknesses … but also recognize what you don’t know. To learn what you need to know to succeed, don’t just reach out to expert lawyers and those at the top; you’ll quickly find that paralegals and office managers know a lot that you need to know. Build relationships at all levels of the organization or firm.”
Related to access, DeRenzi noted that people live most of their lives in “Plan B.” “You may think you know where you’re headed… then you find a different area of law you’re more interested in, your personal life takes a turn, or you might experience setbacks,” DeRenzi said. “Just keep going; excel in the opportunity you are given and retain a relentless belief in yourself. Trust yourself. Believe that if you fail, you can get back up and try again. And if an unexpected door opens, don’t be afraid to walk through it.”
DeRenzi knows something about walking through unexpected doors of opportunity. She grew up in a close-knit Italian family and was in the first generation of her family to graduate from college. She is the only person in her family to move away from home. “Everyone, including me, thought I’d soon move back.”
Instead, her U.S. Navy life took her on interesting journeys to many different places. She began active duty in 1987, intending to serve a term and return to civilian life. During her first five years, she was heavily involved in litigation and started a Master of Laws (LLM) degree that she was paying for herself. Her plan was to become a district attorney when she left the Navy.
However, she quickly found she loved the mission, the work, and especially the people, and she stayed in. She was headed to a job in the Office of Legislative Affairs. When they sent someone else instead, she was crushed.
She was sent to the Navy’s General Legal Office instead, which turned out well for DeRenzi. She was able to garner a spot in the Navy-funded LLM program for environmental law, and eventually, was placed in a better job in the Office of Legislative Affairs.
“My planned and unplanned jobs made me marketable, and I thought about getting out,” DeRenzi said. “However, in late 1993, the law excluding women from combat positions changed, and I stayed in for a chance to go to sea.”
When she worked in legal offices, DeRenzi was never the only woman. It was different when she served at sea and on senior staffs. In most of those jobs, she was the only woman, one of only a few women, or the first woman.
“In my experience, if you were good at what you did, nobody cared who you were or what you looked like. I worked hard to integrate whatever group I was in – not because I was a woman, but because I was a lawyer, and lawyers weren’t always popular,” she said. “I was concerned that if I didn’t do well, they wouldn’t consider another woman. Also, I knew if I didn’t do well, my name wouldn’t come up again for future opportunities.”
DeRenzi was successful, and she became the first woman Judge Advocate General (JAG) of the Navy when she took command in 2012 — 28 years (and many roles) after she was commissioned through the JAG Student Program while attending Temple University School of Law. DeRenzi retired from the Navy in 2015 after 30 years of service.
Over her career, she mentored many men and women, as she had been mentored. She also learned from the leaders she encountered — the great ones and the average ones. “Leadership matters, and the leaders I worked for always held us to high standards,” she said. “Some yelled and got angry, and I learned that I wasn’t going to be that kind of leader. I always got to be fully myself as a leader, with no expectations to mimic others.”
Earlier in her career, DeRenzi was not comfortable being highlighted as a woman who was first at something or who held a specific role versus being recognized for the professional role she had earned through hard work, dedication, and leadership ability. “I thought of myself as a Naval officer, then a woman. But as I become more senior, my views evolved; I could see how much it meant to younger women to see another woman in a role they aspired to hold.”
DeRenzi believes firmly that people must — first and foremost — be qualified for the job they are seeking. “Merit matters,” she said, “We wouldn’t be doing our own officers or the Navy any favors by putting someone in a job they weren’t prepared to do. People cannot achieve senior roles if they miss out on the opportunities to get started on the track to promotion. We need to do the best we can to ensure the military reflects the diversity of our nation. As we grow more diverse as a nation and a legal profession, it’s important to remember that opportunity isn’t a zero-sum game. One person’s success does not translate into someone else’s failure.”
DeRenzi’s October visit to campus for the Agosto Justice Center Lecture was her second time to speak at South Texas Law, and she said she always experiences a strong sense of community when she comes here.
“When I was at the law school about 10 years ago at the invitation of Dean Guter (who I served with in the Navy), I felt a strong sense of service, community, and a commitment to giving back,” DeRenzi said. “As I walked around campus today, I felt that same culture, and the law school’s continued dedication to those values is special and unique. Each of you attending here is fortunate to be in a place where diversity, opportunity, and service are mission imperatives.”
Original source can be found here.