Lexington, KY - Like so many of the women interviewed for this publication, Barbara Edelman's mother has been the most inspirational woman in her life - and a hard act to follow, as well.
"She is twice as smart as I am, she has unlimited energy and there isn't anything she can't do," said Edelman, a partner at Dinsmore & Shohl, LLP law firm. "She is a retired schoolteacher who can play classical piano, upholster furniture, solve algebraic equations, prepare tax returns, repair the roof, paint a room, lay tile, sing opera, host a dinner party for 20 or mow the grass, all at the very young age of 80. She has been like that her whole life."
Edelman's mother is Willie Barnstable, a key organizer in the family's famed annual celebrity/charity event, the Barnstable Brown Derby Gala. Because her mother instilled the belief that they could do anything in life, Edelman continued, she and her four siblings "have always dreamed big dreams."
For Edelman, that meant pursuing a career that was not very welcoming to women at the time. The first woman elected partner to Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs' Lexington office in 1988, Edelman recalls commonly being mistaken for a court reporter as she appeared in courtrooms across the state.
"When I started out 30 years ago, I was going into courts all over Eastern Kentucky - a lot of those courts hadn't seen any female lawyers yet," she said, "I did not appear in front of any federal female judges until maybe 15 years ago."
Her gender was definitely an added challenge in the early part of her career, but fortunately, Edelman is one to turn a good challenge into an advantage - being different, she said, gave her the opportunity to distinguish herself.
"I can also say that I never had any trouble in front of the jury b/c half of the jury were women," she added. "It gave you an advantage of sorts."
Edelman incorporates the benefits of a challenge into her daily work, where a big part of her job responsibility is to oversee the younger lawyers in her firm.
"I'm a tough task master," she said when asked about her leadership style. "I try to give younger people a lot of responsibility, and I think with that comes the opportunity to excel and the opportunity to fail. I work a lot of hours and I expect the people who work for me to work a lot hours, because we have a hard job to do and it takes a lot of dedication."
Despite (or perhaps because of) the challenges associated with field of law, Edeelman calls it a "fabulous career for young women, and for young men as well."
"The thing about a law degree is there are so many options and there's something to fit any lifestyle," she said. "There's lots of things that lawyers can do that are very diverse and intellectually stimulating."
Perhaps the biggest challenge Edelman has met - and the one of which she is most proud - is the act of juggling a successful career and a family. While she says she spent a lot of exhausted days while her children were young, she loves what she does and wasn't willing to give that up.
"It's very very hard. I don't tell any young women that it's easy to do. You have to some way somehow be fully committed to both and you have to be able to multi-task," she said. "If you're not doing something you love, you're not going to be able to do it all."