Alumni Profile: Kathleen Pritchard (’10) Shareholder, Welborn Sullivan Meck & Tooley law firm

By Reese Lile, Sustainability Staff Writer

Kathleen Pritchard was a member of the first class of Office of Sustainability interns when the program began in 2010. She worked as a Communications Outreach intern and majored in political science and minored in biology and environmental science. Following her undergraduate years at Wake Forest, Kathleen earned her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from The University of Texas School of Law. She was recently elected shareholder at the Welborn Sullivan Meck & Tooley law firm in Colorado, where she practices environmental and energy law.

 

Kathleen reflected on her time with the Office of Sustainability and how it has impacted her life and her career.

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The “Top Ten” list prompt didn’t exist while you were applying to be a student here, but if you were to create a “Top ten list” for a Wake Forest application, what would it be?

I would do my top 10 list for favorite places to surf. This is maybe pretty cliche for my generation, but I’m in my 30s, and I recently discovered how much I love surfing. I’ve been taking the little bit of free time I have and going to Central America to surf. I can’t say I’m good, but I love it very much. It gave me a revelation that I’ve been an attorney now for 10 years, and at some point, I started believing I was supposed to know everything. Then I tried surfing for the first time and I remembered—I’m a lifelong learner. I can learn something new in my 30s, be completely terrible at it, and still enjoy the process of getting better.”

What was your internship title with the Office of Sustainability, and what kind of work did you do in that role?

I was a communications outreach intern. When I was there, the Office was brand new, and we were sort of trying to figure out who and what we were as a program. I remember being involved with everything—I think I did some interviews with professors to understand how their research sort of dovetailed with sustainability. And then I also remember being involved with recycling initiatives and just being out and about, trying to get sustainability programs started on campus. So it was a little bit of everything.

What kind of work do you do now as an attorney?

I essentially see myself as an administrative lawyer. I focus on anything in the regulatory world, particularly environmental and energy work. Recently, that has involved helping utilities get the necessary permits they need to retire coal plants and move to wind and solar. Currently, I am representing clients in a Colorado rulemaking to develop a dredge-and-fill program that fills the gap left by recent changes in federal wetlands jurisdiction.  Outside of this work, I also serve as the chair of the Colorado branch of a national nonprofit called Grid Alternatives, which installs solar on low-income housing and trains folks from underserved communities to install solar.

What was your career path like? Did you always know that you wanted to be involved in this kind of work?

It took me a long time to get here, and I would say it wasn’t a straight path. Right out of law school, I clerked for a federal district court judge before moving to a law firm to practice commercial litigation. It it wasn’t until a few years into my career that I could sort of start steering the ship in the direction I wanted it to go. Sustainability has always been something I’m interested in, especially the renewable energy side of things, and I’ve been able to piece it together with my work in law. When I joined the GRID Alternatives Colorado board, a mentor told me something that stuck: she appreciated how persistent I was and how clearly I showed I wanted to be part of the board. That mindset has carried into a lot of other areas for me. If there’s something you want to do, you can still pursue it—as a volunteer, or even just as a hobby—until it becomes your main work.  I think there are many ways to stay involved until you are in the position where you have the ability to bring everything together.

What skills did you gain through your internship with the Office of Sustainability?

I would say the most obvious skill that I developed during my internship was how to be scrappy and figure out what is needed in a given situation, particularly from an information-gathering perspective, and then go after it. Because the program was in its nascency when we started, it was a lot of going out and getting people interested and aware of what we were doing. I think that’s something that I’ve taken with me through my career as well – figuring out, do I go to law school, do the traditional clerkship litigation route? And then taking what I learned and using it to push my career in the direction I wanted it to go. What I recall of my specific internship role as the communications outreach person is that I also had to interview professors who were involved in research areas that I knew nothing about, and that’s very similar to what I do now as a lawyer. I’m hired to advocate and provide strategic advice, and while I may know the basics, I often have to dig in and do a lot of research to really understand the substance. I think that’s very similar to what I did as a communication intern: interviewing someone in an area, truly trying to understand what they do, and then communicating that to others. And that’s very much what I do now.

What projects or work have you done that you are most proud of?

There are a few buckets in my career that I’m really proud of. In the traditional legal bucket, I’ve successfully argued appeals before state supreme courts and advocated for clients in front of local governments. A recent example: a utility was retiring its coal plant and adding 700 megawatts of wind and solar, but needed a natural-gas turbine permitted to support the system when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. We went before the county commissioners, made the case, and won. It felt great because it aligned our client’s goals with delivering clean, affordable energy to the people they serve.

I’m also proud of my work with GRID Alternatives Colorado. Meeting the people they serve and seeing how their solar job-training program creates opportunities is incredibly rewarding. This has been a tough period—the funding GRID was awarded was recently canceled—but it’s been rewarding to help the organization navigate it and keep their mission moving.

A big source of pride for me is being able to build a career I love while my daughter gets to see it up close. Recently, I took my four-year-old daughter to a GRID Alternatives Colorado fundraiser, and the executive director said to my daughter, ‘Did you know your mom is my boss?’ My daughter had a thousand questions. The moment stuck with me because it was the first time she’d really seen me out in the world doing work she never gets to witness. Being a mom is the most important part of my life, and sharing that side of what I do with her feels really meaningful.

Any other advice for fellow Demon Deacons and future alumni as they embark on their career journeys? 

I would say my biggest takeaway in my career is to be persistent. If you can’t make something your main job at the moment, make it your volunteer job or where you spend your free time. And I also think it is important to be patient, because it takes time to thrive in your career and take it in the direction you want it to go. It is important to remember that life is long. Your first job matters, but it probably won’t be your last—so stay flexible and keep the bigger picture in mind. Careers aren’t linear; they’re more “choose-your-own-adventure.”