Wilmer hale senior associate Tiffany Wright talks about the challenges she overcame to become a lawyer and Supreme Court clerk. Brian Tiffany Wright, what was it like being a clerk to a justice of the Supreme Court . Tiffany it was incredible. Sometimes, very overwhelming. The court is i describe it as a magical place. It is white marble. When you go in, everywhere is white marble. And as a clerk, you get to go to the inside golden gate. That is when i always felt the awe and the honor of going to the place where the public cannot go, where the business of the court really happens. I never lost that throughout the fullyear. It was a really meaningful and beautiful experience. Also, very hard. Brian what was your year . From what date to what date . Tiffany july 11, 2016, and ended on july 7, 2017. Brian who did you work for . Tiffany Justice Sotomayor. Brian has there been anybody like you who ever served as a clerk, our audience will see why i am asking this. Tiffany i dont know. I know the reporter tried to figure out if there had been anyone specifically from the from southeast d. C. And that particular socioeconomic background that i had, and because of the courts extreme rules about confidentiality and the sometimes unwillingness on the part of former clerks to talk about themselves and the experience, it is really hard to say things like no one has ever, so we not sure, but my year, i was certainly the only person who was africanamerican in the very beginning until Justice Gorsuch was the only one who was a mother and the only one who came from a background like mine. Brian what about age . Tiffany actually, it was pretty diverse in terms of age. One of my coclerks and i were the same age, 35 and 36. There were quite a few older clerks. I think in the past, the , justices have gotten people straight from law school, and that is changing a lot. They are looking for people with a little more life and legal experience, so the age of the clerks is ticking a bit upwards. Brian we ask you to chat because of a man who spent a long time doing an article that ended up on the front page of the washington post, john woodrow cox. Who is he . Tiffany he is amazing. He is a reporter for the washington post. He was working on a series of stories about children in the United States who have had experiences with violence. And i believe there were four or five stories in that series. All of them, just really heartbreaking and really beautiful, and the way that i got in contact with john is he wrote a story about a young child here in d. C. Whose father had been murdered and he was six or seven. And i read that article while i was at work at the court and it really hit me because i recognized a lot of myself in the child and i felt very strongly that if i could, i would like to reach out to him and talk to him and pass on some of what i have learned and how to deal with that experience and how to push through. And to let him know there was hope on the other side, so i emailed john and i asked him if he would pass along a letter. A letter i wrote for the child in the article, and he said sure. In the course of us talking about that, he asked if he could write an article about me. And i had a good excuse at the time, which is at the court does not allow us to talk to the price in any capacity, but i really needed time to think about it, because as i think it is clear in the article, a lot of what was covered in very personal, things i have not spoken about and i needed time to see if that is something i wanted to do, and once my term at the court wrapped up, i talked to my husband and some friends, and realized that the reason i reached out to john about the child in the article was that i wanted to say to him a number of things i thought would be helpful, and if i can do that for other children, beyond this one, then that could be a really meaningful thing, and certainly something that would have meant a lot to me when i was in that place several years ago. John and i worked together over the course of a few months, talked to my husband, my family, my colleagues, my judges, and put together something that i really think is beautiful, and i said to him i am eternally grateful for the compassion and the way that he wrote the story was very he handled it exactly the right way. Brian front page of the washington post. What was the reaction to it . Tiffany i received a lot of positive reaction. Washington post. The most meaningful has been exactly it confirmed why i wrote the article in the first place which is i have gotten a lot of feedback from students and children that read the story and now see what is possible. And that has been so meaningful to me. The reaction has been amazing. Lots of emails, lots of messages. I tried in the beginning to respond to everyone of them, but i could not, so the reaction has been very heartwarming. Brian your undergraduate work was where . Tiffany at the university of maryland in college park. Brian what did you study . Tiffany psychology and criminal justice. Brian your law degree comes from where . Tiffany georgetown. Graduated in 2013. Brian your son is how old . Tiffany 10. Brian you met your husband where . Tiffany the university of maryland. Brian when you were serving, you had a son to worry about plus your job . Tiffany yes. I married well. Which i think is key to a happy life. My husband has been just quite amazing in the way that he has handled all of this, because as hard as the court was, when i was in law school, i was working fulltime. Noel was two at the time. And so, went to school at night and had to study ended law review and everything i could possibly do, and throughout all of that, i never had to worry about noel because my husband took amazing care of him and it never became an issue between the two of us. When i decided to apply to the court, it is something we talked about, what the hours would be like. And how i knew that this was going to be a really demanding year, and my husband was one of my biggest supporters who pushed me and said you should definitely do this. Brian what are you doing today . Tiffany today, i am an associate at a law firm in d. C. I am an appellate lawyer. And focusing on government, governmentfacing litigation, the litigation where someone is being investigated by the government, whether state or federal or looking for a way to deal with particular challenges as a result of that. Brian and what impact did being a clerk have on you getting this job . Tiffany my relationship with the firm actually goes back to before i was a clerk. I left the justice department, which is where i was for my first three years of law school to go be a summer associate. They were kind enough to recognize that by leaving the justice department, i had given up Health Insurance and things my family needed so they let me stay, so i worked there for my last year of law school. When i finished at the court it , was just natural for me to return to the place i had looked at as home in terms of law firms. Brian where were you born . Tiffany tacoma, washington, on the Fort Lewis Army base. Brian what were your parents like at that time . How long were you there . What were they doing . Tiffany my parents married after high school. They both grew up in washington. My father enrolled in the army shortly after they graduated from high school, and they both moved to Washington State to fort lewis, and that is where i was born. We were there for about two years or three years before my parents separated and my mom moved back to the district and my father followed a couple of years later. Brian where did you live here in the district . Tiffany i lived in south east, across the street from a housing development. Known as Potomac Gardens. On thirteenth street is where my house was located. And i lived with my grandmother, who had left an abusive marriage in virginia and come to d. C. With her five children, and all of them, and including me and my cousin, lived in this house. My grandmother had five kids. Two boys and three girls. One of them was my mom. By the time i came back to the district or shortly thereafter, both of my uncles were sent to prison, convicted of robbery and one of them, sexual assault. The other, armed robbery. And so, for the part of my childhood that i can remember, it was my mother, her two sisters, my grandmother, and my cousins in the house on 13th street. Brian what is the first thing you can remember, and at what age, that the Living Conditions were like . Tiffany i remember what i now call chaos, so i remember the adults always coming and going. My mom worked a lot, so i remember her not being present a lot. I remember knowing that there was something that they were doing that i was not allowed to see because i was always told to leave. Those are my earliest memories are my cousin and i being outside, waiting for whatever was happening to finish, and i now know that that was drug use. And that is my earliest memory, feeling even as a child that something was not quite right. Brian how old were you . Tiffany at that time, i must have been six or seven. Brian and when did you first know what was going on and did you ever ask your mother or grandmother what was going on . Tiffany i was a very talkative and inquisitive child, so i did ask, and it was grown peoples business. It is nothing you need to worry about. You stay out of it. It actually was not until a little bit later that i understood what was happening, and the effects that it was having. I think i was about nine when i came to understand what was going on. Brian how well did you know your uncles . Tiffany not well before they went away. I know them very well now, but they were sent away when i was still pretty young. One of them, even as a child, i was pretty close to, because one thing that we did every saturday was my grandmother would take me, and i dont remember whether my mom went. Im sure she did. But the memory is my grandmother and i, there was a van that would come to woodys Department Store and we would go down to lorton, virginia, which is where the maximum security prison was, and we would go in and visit with him, and this is something we did all the time. And i just remember knowing that this was a Family Member and somebody that i love and feeling a lot of guilt that this was the situation he was in and watching and wishing that there was something i could do about it so that he could come back home. And so, i did feel like i knew that uncle pretty well. Brian how long was he in prison . Tiffany about 25 years. He was not released until i was well into adulthood. Brian did you ever talk to him about his life and what happened . Tiffany no. I mean, one of the things about my family that is in some ways a blessing and in other ways a curse is that we dont really talk about things. I think it is a survival technique. Talking about things makes them more real and thinks them very difficult. When my uncles were released i should back up i did not even know what he was in prison for until i was working at the parole commission, my second job after graduating from college, and somebody at the Commission Says do you know that your uncle was in jail for rape . And i didnt, because nobody ever talked about it. We did not talk about it. Both of them have been out. I will say i am incredibly proud of them because they were released. They have worked very hard, have families, have family, and to me, they are very loving and demonstrate everything that is possible for people after being released. Brian where do they live . Tiffany still in the district. Brian did they read the article . Tiffany i have not talked to them, so i dont know. Released. Brian did you worry at all that they would read the article . Tiffany i did. One thing i worried quite a bit about, and my husband and i have had i dont know how many hours of conversation about this, is trying to strike a balance between telling my story and being as truthful as i can, not wanting to make anything seem better than it was because it is not the point of the story the point of the story is lost. Like, i want everybody to understand how hard it is to have hope if you are in that situation. I did not want to cover anything up. At the same time, i felt a lot of guilt talking about other people. In ways that were not always flattering. So i worried extensively about it. Thankfully john was very , understanding and wrote the story, particularly certain parts that i worry about very delicately, so i do worry about that. I still worry about that. Thanksgiving might be really interesting. Brian where will you spend thanksgiving . Tiffany my parents now live in richmond. My mom remarried my stepfather, who i dont call my stepfather except when i am trying to explain situations like this. My second father is pastor of a church in richmond, and when i left to go to the university of maryland, they moved to richmond, so they have been there since 1999 or so, and that is where we traditionally spend thanksgiving. Brian when you were growing up, how was your schoolwork, how were your grades . Tiffany they were great. My son found a box in his room that i had been keeping in his closet that had all sorts of things. And one of them was a collection of my report cards, and so, the grades were great. The behavior was not always great. A lot of being very talkative, and i noticed around the time my father died, it was very interesting. You would think it was the opposite way, that my behavior and work became much better and i became a better student in terms of grades and my behavior, which improved a lot. Brian 1989, your father died how . Tiffany my father was a correctional officer here in d. C. At d. C. Jail, so he kept really late hours. Someone knocked on the door and when he answered it, he was shot to death. Brian where were you at the time . Tiffany i was with my mother. That is all but i want to say about that. Brian i dont know how far you want to go back, but what was the impact on you at the time . Tiffany the impact on me was it was tremendous. It was definitely the most devastating but also the most transformational moments of my life. What happened, my mother told me i believe it was the next day that he had in fact died. And, i thought that i understood what that meant, but this was my First Experience with death. I dont think i even had a pet that died. She said he was in heaven, but we went to the funeral and i remember he was there, his body was there, and he looked so much like he did in life that i thought that heaven must be here on earth because he is just here in his sleep. It was not until i touched him and realized that he was gone because the body was so cold and he was lifeless. And i became it was not grief at that point. It was a form of fear that was very extreme. It was, the best way i can describe it is you have a nightmare, you wake up, and for a few seconds, you dont know if it is real. And so the cold sweat and the stomach dropping and just feeling in the fight or flight moment is how i felt. That is my memory from the funeral, i walked around like that for a long time. Brian what was your relationship with him . Tiffany my father was very quiet. He was not shy, but he was quiet. But he was a man that had a lot of presence. And so, for me, and i think this must be true with most children, he was definitely my security. And i looked at him as invincible. And even though i thought i think i had some inkling that obviously things were not the safest, but when he was there. I did feel safe. That is what he was for me. My security, strength, and always knew that he, for some reason, very much believed in me even when i was young, and so, always would tell me that i have so much potential and can be great, whatever i want to be. So he was both my security and my sort of confidence. When i lost him in the way that i lost him, it was incredibly no difficult. It was incredibly difficult. Brian for someone that has never been to washington, and you say you lived in southeast washington, and not many people there get to do or can do what youre doing. Explain that. Tiffany this has been when i was coming up, it was the height of the crack cocaine epidemic. D. C. , which traditionally has a about 90 to 100 homicides, the year my father was killed had 489. And most of those were in southeast, and there are some neighborhoods were that its really concentrated. The Potomac Gardens area is one. All of the area known as anacostia were just centers for a lot of crime, a lot of very serious drug use, and just the way the neighborhood was described, which was an openair market for drugs. That is what it was like. Its very different now. I dont recognize it now. It was very poor and hit very hard by crack cocaine. Brian how many people in your family got on drugs . Tiffany all of them except my grandmother. My grandmother, who passed away in 2008, she to my knowledge never did drugs. She struggled a lot with alcohol. I always think that that is how she dealt with what mustve been a very difficult time. She worked hard every day. She was gone before 5 00 a. M. And she came home and did it every day. So her struggle was alcohol but the other adults all struggled with drugs. Whether it was crack cocaine, but heroin, marijuana am obviously, pcp, lsd, cocaine, in various forms. Any drug that you can think of is something that someone in my family at some point struggled with. Brian there is a reference in the article about kids in the neighborhood making fun of you in relationship to your aunt who was accused of being a prostitute. What can you tell us about that . Tiffany so that is a factual question. Im going to dodge it and say it does not matter whether what the kid said was in fact true. It matters that that is what i believed and my reality at the time, and so, that is prostitution in exchange for crack cocaine. That certainly happened. It always hurts when i hear people say that drug use and drug addiction are victimless crimes. Because there are victims we dont talk about and we dont know about. Living in that type of environment, even for the kids who made fun of me and for myself, we were dealing with things we should not have had to deal with. Hearing that from the kids it had never crossed my mind. I did not know what sex was. When i heard this, the first thought i had was well, what are you talking about and what is it . And then, you know, that was my first introduction to sex at 9yearsold. It had a Lasting Impact on me which took many years of therapy for me to get through. It was incredibly difficult without saying anything about what her situation actually was. It was very difficult for me. Brian when did you start therapy, and what kind of therapy was it or is it . Tiffany i thought i was tak