Allyship in Action – Brittany Hernandez
We recently got to have an in-depth chat with Brittany Hernandez, Founding Attorney of Cor Meum Law, Founder & CEO of Cor Meum KMAI LLC, and the Global Ambassador to Law Schools for Gavel (a platform that empowers lawyers to automate their workflows, productize their expertise, and scale their services using tech).
The purpose of this series is to highlight advocates for the incredible working mums within tech & data, as well as businesses that are supportive and progressive within their approach to creating more inclusive tech & data teams for women.
Amber @ MotherBoard: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your current role?
Brittany: I served in the US military for four years on active duty in order to pay for law school via the Post-9/11 GI Bill (Chapter 33), which gives you 36 months of tuition and a monthly stipend. Because you could only receive the stipend (which I was using to pay for food, rent, transportation to and from school, etc.) when you were actively enrolled in classes, I studied full time during the Summer terms as well. This meant that I ended up finishing a full term early and placed the timing of my California bar exam at February 25 and 26, 2020, literally just a few short weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic led to an unstable and uncertain job market for every profession right when I was a very recent grad and baby intellectual property and entertainment lawyer.
Thankfully, I passed the exam on that first try and I already had a secured place in the MA International Film Business program jointly run by the University of Exeter and the London Film School (which I chose to participate in due to the fact that I had 11 months and 20 days left over on my GI Bill and the program length fit within that perfectly).
Everything I do in tech now stems from four key decisions I made between June 2020 and May 2022:
My decision to pursue an MA after law school meant that I wasn’t well suited to start my career in a traditional firm right after school, so I participated in an incubator program for sole practitioners through my school. Through that, I heard about and ended up participating in the June 2020 Passport to Practice and Bucerius Legal Tech Essentials programs while I waited to move to the UK for the MA in the Fall. That’s when I was introduced to legal tech and, specifically, Dorna Moini of Documate (now Gavel), which is the company I represent as the Global Ambassador to Law Schools now and my role is to deliver the very types of presentations that Dorna gave where I was in the audience!
Because I was now exposed to the world of legal technology, I decided to do my dissertation project on how legal tech could be used within the film industry. So, when we had Kate Ho (Co-Founder of Scottish legal tech startup Valla) as a guest lecturer, I immediately reached out to her and asked her to be my mentor. She eventually became my Academic Supervisor and graded my dissertation project. Since we were connected and she knew me, I was in a position to see the job ad she sent out for a Business Development Executive and trusted my work ethic enough to hire me despite my experience being more on the legal rather than the business side.
While I was at Valla, I coordinated a workshop in partnership with several UK charities for people who felt they might be experiencing discrimination at work. I wanted to create a Resource Guide that would show or hide certain resources depending on a person’s answers to a series of questions. After an extensive search, I remembered that I had a free Gavel account from the Passport to Practice class with Dorna! I decided to reach out to her and ask her if she’d be willing to donate an account to Valla so we could create the Resource Guide. She graciously agreed and I went on to create this interactive, customizable Resource Guide for the workshop participants.
While I was creating the Resource Guide using the Gavel platform, I got 100% hooked on developing workflows and apps with the tool. It felt like a superpower was unlocked and I was a natural fit for that type of deep focus, creative, challenging, gratifying work that harnessed the power of tech to solve real human problems. It was that newfound love for development that drove me to (1) pitch Dorna the idea for a Lightning Talk series for the Gavel community and legal innovators (which became our ongoing and successful Lightning Talks for Legal Innovators series), (2) pitch Dorna the idea for a Gavel Certification Course (which I created with Megan Sawtelle through my academy, Cor Meum Academy), and (3) reach out to everyone with their full names displayed on this Gavel Automations Developers page on LinkedIn asking them how they liked being automators because I was thinking of doing it as a career after my contract with Valla ended. It was through those LinkedIn messages that I first met Megan and later worked with Hayley Leviashvili (Founder & CEO of gigLAW) before being invited by Dorna to be Gavel’s Global Ambassador to Law Schools, where I get to help spread awareness to law students about the incredible opportunities available to them in legal tech and empower them to succeed in the rapidly shifting legal market.
Amber @ MotherBoard: When did you realise that the tech industry is not currently set up to support working mums?
Brittany: It might sound weird, but I actually realized this during law school as it applied to working moms generally. Two of my really close friends in law school each had 3+ kids and were still getting better grades than me even though (1) I didn’t have kids or even a partner I needed to maintain a relationship with and (2) I was smart and studying really hard! This helped me realize that moms truly operate at a whole other level of discipline and patience and that institutions don’t always account for their unique needs and trials. This early recognition was later reinforced when I transitioned fully into the tech space, where my main contact at Gavel, for example, would need to take a business call on the way to her kid’s school or asked if we could do a meeting asynchronously. Dorna herself is due to have her second child in early April (a girl!) and there is so much that depends on her as the Founder & CEO of a growing tech company (including people’s livelihoods) that I just wonder (1) how are moms able to be as incredibly good at their jobs as they are and (2) how will I navigate motherhood as a woman in the legal tech space when I have my first, second, third child?
Amber @ MotherBoard: Why is being an advocate for mums in tech so important to you?
Brittany: It’s important to me personally because I understand the dual desire to be a mother and to be a fully realized human being, which includes expressing ourselves creatively through our work. I’ve wanted to be a mother for many many years now but only recently found a partner that is also ready for that stage in our lives. I remember the nights I woke up in a panic, crying as I felt a barrenness inside of me and a fear that I would miss out on the opportunity to experience having children in my lifetime. I used to joke that I was reluctantly the career woman my friend Sammey Jo always wanted to be and she was the mom of two boys I always wanted to be. That said, now that I’ve found my niche in tech, I recognize the almost compulsion to express myself using modern technology and a mixture of no-code and low-code solutions to make the pictures I see in my head a tangible, interactive reality. As an advocate for moms in tech, I want to help create a world where women get to be fully realized as individuals with a unique ability and gift they desire to share with the world as well as supported in their multiple roles both at home and at work.
Amber @ MotherBoard: What do you think are the core benefits of having more mothers in tech & data teams?
Brittany: In my view, the core benefit of having more mothers in tech and data teams is that it humanizes the dynamics and inter-workings of businesses and brings an empathy to the workplace that reminds us that it is personal, not just business. We’re all humans working with other humans who are trying to make the world a better place for humans to live. Having mothers in the workplace who are raising tiny humans reminds us of that.
Amber @ MotherBoard: What challenges do you see mums facing day to day in the workplace, and what can be done to support them better?
Brittany: A lack of empathy, understanding, and perspective by those who are either not women or who don’t have children. I’ll admit to being nearly guilty of this myself once! A mom asked if we could just send our notes to each other rather than have a live call because she needed to deal with something for one of her children and I was so wrapped up in the problem I was facing that I said I still wanted to have a call but that maybe we could move it to the next day. I was mortified after sending the message because I realized I let a small work thing add another weight to her shoulders when (1) it absolutely could have waited or been done asynchronously as she requested and (2) I lost my perspective about what is really important in life. I apologized to her and told her that, of course, I could just share my notes on the topic and that she should focus on what she needed to do for her family. The challenge today, I think, is that lost or lack of perspective.
Amber @ MotherBoard:What do you think needs to be done by companies to improve the number of mums working into tech teams? And how can we get more women into senior leadership roles?
Brittany: This is a tough question so it’s no wonder we still have these problems! That said, I think there could be a bigger effort by companies to nurture the careers of women in tech early on but to not let that support subside or be withdrawn when they have children. Rather, the efforts should be doubled to find ways to support and enable mothers to return to work after maternity leave. Perhaps mentorships, fellowship opportunities within the company, and visible role models in higher roles could help.
Amber @ MotherBoard: Where does the onus lie to creating tangible change? Eg. Government/ individuals/ hiring managers/ HR?
Brittany: Another great question. I’d choose “D. All of the Above”. We all have a responsibility to create tangible change and to not be bystanders to the problem. What government officials, hiring managers, HR teams, and individuals all need to realize is that mothers have such a unique perspective, cultivated by the very fact that they are responsible for the survival and emotional health of a growing human, that it is vitally important that that perspective be injected into every organization at every level to remind us of our humanity and the duality of individuality and interdependency as a species. We all have a responsibility to use our voices and positions to support mothers in the workplace, particularly in STEM careers like tech and data.
Amber @ MotherBoard: What are the biggest hurdles leaders in the industry are facing when hiring more mums?
Brittany: Probably implicit bias. We all think that we are good people who aren’t racist, discriminatory towards marginalized groups, and that we’d give money to homeless people if only we’d brought our wallets that day. The reality is we’ve been brought up in societies that have histories of systemic biases that we’ve internalized and have to actively fight against as individuals, teams, and organizations more generally. If leaders can acknowledge that implicit biases exist within themselves and within their teams, then we can start to overcome the hurdles they face when hiring more moms in their organizations.
Amber @ MotherBoard: Do you have any final thoughts or words of wisdom to anyone who doesn’t think the inclusion of mums is important to diversify teams?
Brittany: Wake up.
