"Love for the law, for our students, and for what justice can really look like" -Bridget C

- The following has been transcribed from a video, available to watch at the bottom of this page -

I am a colleague of Vanessa's at Pace. I have been teaching at Pace for over 20 years and Vanessa was the chair of the appointments committee when I applied for a job at Pace. And I really think of Vanessa as the person who made it possible for me to have a career in law teaching, because she was a fabulous communicator throughout the entire process and made sure I knew what to expect when I came for the day at Pace.

I will never forget that after some recruiting dinner, she drove me from Westchester all the way down to lower Manhattan in her purple VW bug and chatted the whole way dropping me at home, and one of the questions she asked me that I still remember to this day was, “Can you tell me something about yourself that would surprise me and that otherwise hasn't come up in the interview process?” And I scratched my head for a very long time and then I started to talk to her about television shows and my guilty pleasures with television shows I watched; at the time, I was deep into the reruns of Sex and the City.

And I will always, always, always, always be grateful to Vanessa for being such an amazing guide to becoming a law professor. She has incredibly high standards for all of us. And it's never fun to be on the receiving end of one of Vanessa's withering critiques of any particular position I've taken or way I've handled a particular matter, but she always does it from a place of excellence and love for the law, for our students, and for what justice can really look like.

Vanessa, here's to you.

Bridget C