Vanessa Countryman, ’05, now secretary of the US Securities Exchange Commission, began her career in private practice, as many new attorneys do. However, from the very beginning she was drawn to the federal government, driven by her passion for administrative law and the example of her parents, both of whom had distinguished careers as federal employees.
“My parents were very clear with me that there were many ways to give back in the world, and they had chosen to give back by dedicating their lives to public service,” she said. “For my mother especially—who had been liberated by American soldiers, along with her family, from Nazi work camps—it was a very important part of her value system to serve others.”
Countryman’s own career at the SEC, spanning over fourteen years, reflects these values. Since joining the agency, she has held several key leadership roles, including chief counsel in the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis, before being appointed secretary in 2019. Her journey is not only a testament to her professional success, but also to her enduring commitment to the Law School, to which she has been giving annually since her graduation.
Countryman sees the Law School as a constant thread woven throughout her career, motivating her desire to give back. “Whether it’s people who have reached out to help me, peers who have gone on to have successful careers who have inspired me, or the rigorous intellectual training I received while I was a student, the University of Chicago Law School has been a really critical through line for me in all of that.”
A fellow alum helped her get a foot in the door at the SEC when she was trying to make the move to the public sector. By chance, they had reconnected at a work event.
“I thought there’s no way that this person who I haven’t seen in years—he was a third year when I was a first year—would help me, but a few days later I got a call that there’s an opening to work for one of the commissioners,” Countryman recalled. She brushed up her résumé, interviewed, and got the job.
“One of the wonderful things about working for the government when you’re relatively young is you can have a lot of decision-making ability, or at least a voice in the room,” she said. “I was in my early thirties when I was working as counsel to a commissioner. It was my job to represent her views to others, and to be able to do that with confidence was really important. The Law School gave me that confidence. When you are a student at the Law School, everyone speaks up because they have to; you’re going to get called on and you have to be confident enough to share your opinion.”
Humility is another important lesson Countryman says she learned from the Law School: “There’s this idea there that you’re only as smart as the last thing you said, but also, at the same time, that you don’t know everything. There’s always something to learn from your classmate who is going to say something. I learned so much about being open and receptive to that kind of discussion and that kind of learning over the course of a lifetime. Marrying confidence in your own abilities with the humility that you don’t know everything is critical to being a good regulator.”
Countryman still fondly remembers being in “Stone Court,” the constitutional decision-making class designed by Professor Geoffrey Stone, ’71, in which students tackle hypothetical cases as “justices” in “the Supreme Court,” giving them a deeper understanding of the judicial process.
“I look back on that class as being profoundly intellectually formative, not necessarily because I broke ground in the legal world, but because it was practice of how to really receive other people’s views and think hard about them,” she said.
Countryman views her annual giving as an ongoing reflection of her values and of the profound appreciation she feels for how much the Law School has mattered in her life story.
“If everyone has the attitude that ‘my amount doesn’t matter,’ then nobody would give, and that’s not helpful,” she said. “I wanted to be part of the percentage who gives back—because I know it matters.”
Nadia Alfadel Coloma is the Associate Director of Content at the Law School.
Original source can be found here.