Hispanic Heritage Month Podcast - Traci Martinez & Chris Lewis

Thank you, Traci. Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, it definitely is. I'm originally a mechanical engineer. I work in our IP litigation and prosecution group, mostly doing patent and trademark work. I started off after I went to the University of Akron College of Engineering to study mechanical engineering. Born and raised in Akron, Ohio, I kind of followed that path that was laid out in front of me through my parents. My dad's an engineer. I got to my fifth year and wasn't loving how my future looked. My mother, who's an attorney and also an immigrant from Argentina, she told me of this very interesting area of law called patent law and encouraged me to take the LSAT. Took it, did well, and ended up following her path of law school — so kind of being a really good first son and combining my dad's career and my mom's career and becoming a patent attorney, which I always think is rather funny. After law school I started at a patent prosecution boutique called Fay Sharpe, spent a couple years there, ended up lateraling to Squire because I wanted to do litigation work. The prosecution aspect wasn't always the engaging, collaborative team effort that I so loved throughout design teams or sports teams. It brought me here. I got a call and I think I've been here for about over a year now and it's been an excellent year.

Yeah. So my mother, my aunt Mila, and my abuelos — both immigrated, all four of them immigrated, I believe it was around the 70s or 80s, to New York City from Buenos Aires, Argentina. My grandmother, my abuela, is a seamstress, and my abuelo is a jeweler by trade. They brought up my mother and my aunt in New York City, New Jersey. That connection to Argentina has been something that's been a core aspect of their sacrifices. It's been a core aspect to me not only as an individual but in my career. There are times where the litigation work gets very tiring, as I'm sure a lot of us can understand, but I think about the nights that my abuelo, when he first immigrated — he immigrated by himself to first build a home for them and then come back to Argentina and bring them to America. He slept in abandoned apartments, was homeless for a little bit, just working hard to save as much money as he could. I think about that sacrifice and what it means to me and my family. When days get difficult, I think about that. I'm in a really nice apartment and have an incredible career thanks to my abuelos, thanks to my mother, and thanks to my aunt.

Sure. I guess I'm a fourth-year graduate associate. I graduated during the enviable time of the COVID bar, so I took the COVID bar and had to deal with entering the legal market as a first year when there was a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace — very fun time for sure. Those last three years have been a lot of me learning, and joining Squire this past year has been an amazing experience. It's hard to pick one — for prosecution work, it was so much. I would do three or four different assignments, working with different areas of art or different inventions, working with different inventors. I would touch a couple hundred matters a year. Now over the last year it's been like five, which is kind of crazy to think about. That difference has been the really engaging aspect — stepping out of my comfort zone, being assertive. I think for lack of a better term, assertive kind of sounds aggressive, but as you said, I reached out to you about Juntos, our professional organization, now mainly because I really think there's a huge power in asking. I've learned that through a background of being hesitant and being nervous. I think a lot of Hispanic Americans, Latino Americans, can relate — this 'nose down, work hard' mentality, keeping your nose to the grindstone. That's been a cornerstone to myself as an employee and as a person, going through school or what have you — not asking for things that I think might be helpful or useful, just taking things as they are and accepting it, adjusting myself to that environment. This last year and a half really started in law school when I realized that people really like being asked questions. People like being asked for help. When I first graduated law school I was very timid about asking those things, mainly my inexperience, but I also learned that people like helping. Restarting again as a first-year litigation associate, effectively, even though I'm a fourth year, gave me the courage to reach out, ask questions, be bold, and be willing to lean on others for help — but also ask if I can help and ask where I can take on work product. Things like Juntos and working with partners in California and different assignments all come from me reaching out and asking if I can have a little chat with them, a little ceseo.

Yeah, absolutely. We had the opportunity to go to the Hispanic National Bar Association Corporate Counsel Conference in Seattle, which has always been a place I've always wanted to go. That was with Elizabeth and Beev, two of the other Juntos pillars that I'm so happy to have met and who have been an excellent influence on me this last year. It's been a really huge highlight of my professional career and personal life — just getting to be friends with them. That togetherness, this growth that Juntos has helped me become — when I returned, I gave a small presentation to our Cleveland office about it and I said it's one of the most special moments of my career because growing up in Northeast Ohio, I didn't get to meet a lot of other Hispanic people, people of similar background. There's a few, but not a lot in my hometown. In my professional career settings there hasn't been a lot, and this is the first time where it's like, I can talk to everybody out there and they're crazy too — we all seem to have those conversations and shared experiences. It's very special, and it's been something I've taken energy from still.

Yeah, my best advice is to be bold and be willing to put yourself out there. I know it can be at times nerve-wracking, but no one knows what you need or what you want unless you ask or unless you reach out for it. There are times where people need your help, and offering that willingness or excitement to help can present opportunities you didn't expect. Like Tracy, when I reached out to you, I was expecting to just send emails to get speakers or help organize things and make the process of planning meetings easier on you, and it turned out to me getting on a flight going to Seattle and having what I consider to be probably the most special professional experience I've ever had — something I'm so thankful for. That was in my first year of being here at the firm, which I didn't expect. That includes reaching out to different partners, having communications with them, trying to open lines of communication. One of the partners I get work with is because I love the same soccer team as he does. I won a litigation case because of it, and he connected with me on that. It's been a nice way where we have this fun connection point but also now we're professional colleagues. I just encourage that boldness, that willingness to reach out, to assert yourself in situations where you may not be 100% certain if you belong — because I feel that we do. I feel that Hispanic voices, Latino voices belong in every room possible, and the only way we can truly be there is if we ask and make sure we believe we can be there.

Good day! Thank you.