Today’s professional mom highlight is Justice Studies adjunct professor Alice Casey. Casey teaches Constitutional Law at Lasell, and is also a full time Assistant District Attorney in Suffolk County. She has two daughters who are 8 and 11 years old.
Casey attended law school at Suffolk University School of Law, and then began working as a law clerk in Massachusetts for several years. She then changed jobs and began working as an Assistant District Attorney in district court, handling misdemeanors and low-level felonies. She currently works as a supervisor for other District Attorneys.
She began working as a professor in 2013, which was partially inspired by how much she loved her job, supervising and teaching new district attorneys. Casey says her favorite part of teaching is hearing a fresh perspective from students who may think of legal issues in ways she has not thought of.
Casey says that her children have always been a part of her career. They often come into the office, and they even make nametags for all of the students in her classes (an adorable class favorite). Working at a school has helped her encourage her own children to be more honest and open with their teachers. She said it has helped her to realize that oftentimes, problems that are big to students can be easily fixed by a quick conversation between professor and student.
Her main advice for other women who are working professionals along with being mothers is that “it’s okay to ask for help.” She credits her mother, her mother-in-law, her husband, and even other parents for helping her get through the day. Though there are some small things she feels she has missed, she has never felt pressured to choose between her career and motherhood. She emphasizes that it is important to have your own identity, and feels she has successfully found the balance between that and being a very important part of her children’s lives.
In her field of work, she has never experienced professional discrimination due to being a mother. She partially credits this to her boss being a working mother as well, and creating a work environment that is perfect for people with families.
Casey, like all other working professionals, is a full person with complexities and pulls from all of her identities. Being a mother and a professional are only two of these pulls, but she balances them beautifully, and serves as proof that having a successful career and being a wonderful parent are not mutually exclusive.
*Picture provided by Casey.