Fulfilling a promise

When she was 6 years old, Jennifer Yruegas knew she wanted to become a lawyer. The realization came when her parents—migrant workers— were sprayed with pesticides while working, and the farm owner ignored their concerns. “I realized that coming from a low income migrant family, the only justice you can really obtain is the justice you are able to go out and get yourself,” she says. To gain the knowledge and skills needed for advancing justice, she immersed herself in a range of classes at Lewis & Clark Law School, graduating in 1999 with a J.D. and, she says, “a new way of thinking” and the confidence to say what is on her mind.

Those skills have helped her earn a position directing worldwide legal affairs for one company and her current position as assistant general counsel for Nike. In all she does, she recalls the promise she made that day in the fields and how it shaped her life’s work, just as something her father once told her shaped her way of thinking—and acting. “He said, ‘Go do it: If you don’t ask or try, you will never know.’ It was a defining moment for me.”