Alumni Profile: Marguerite Miller

Marguerite “Maggie” Miller was only 17 when she moved away from home and began her undergraduate career at Texas State. She worked two jobs to support herself and pay for school, going to classes in the morning, nannying through the day and waitressing at night at a local Italian Restaurant, Italian Garden. This obviously left little time to focus on academics or extracurriculars. 

Maggie enrolled in the Housley Principled Leadership course, which was when she started to think about her future career. She was especially inspired by Kevin Housley, the man who the course was inspired by and dedicated to. 

“Kevin Housley himself was both a rancher and a businessman,” Maggie said. “That was how I grew up and what I wanted to accomplish.”

Growing up in Blanco, Texas on a ranch and in a low-income household, Maggie didn’t know white collar careers were an option for her. They seemed out of reach. When she met her now-husband who grew up in California, her father-in-law remarked that her goals could be bigger, and that instead of hoping to become a paralegal at the law firm she was an assistant at, she should reach higher and get a law degree.

Initially, her reaction was that this wasn't a viable option, thinking “that’s not a real thing, that’s something that people from my background only accomplish in the movies.”

But Maggie was interested in learning more. She did her research, took the LSAT, and was accepted to many schools across the country, eventually deciding on Seattle University. Maggie has now finished law school. She passed the Washington bar exam this summer and is now a practicing attorney in Seattle at Carney Badley Spellman, P.S. She focuses on the startup community, corporate transactions, and privacy issues. 

“I find startup work really fun,” Maggie said. “A lot of the time it’s a puzzle, and you’re helping someone make their dream come true.”

Now that she has achieved what she didn’t think was possible, she wants to mentor the next generation, including law students from low socioeconomic backgrounds like her.