Managing Partner Monica Monday Featured Interviewed in The Roanoke Times

Managing Partner Monica T. Monday was featured in an interview that The Roanoke Times published in its business section on Sunday, January 13, 2013 entitled “One Question with Monica Monday”.

In the interview, Monday describes how it felt to rise to the highest management level in a 90-year-old law firm. “We have a really strong history of leadership in this firm. Bill Rakes was the managing partner for 20 years, Mike Pace for 14 years. In watching them I have learned a lot about their leadership, and I think they feel very strongly as I do about the firm’s involvement in this community and in the state. And that I think my principal focus will be to maintain the work that they and all the attorneys in the firm have done to make Gentry Locke a part of this community and a contributing part of the community. That’s very important to me.”

As one of only a handful of female managing partners in the Commonwealth, Monday was forthright about the role of women in law firms. “Women are graduating, and have been for some time, from law school at an equal rate as men. And yet law firms have had a difficult time in retaining women lawyers. So it’s been an interest of mine at this firm, because I think that there are such great opportunities for all lawyers, but for women I think this is a great place to be. While it may be a unique statistic that I’m joining and a very small statistic, it’s not really a surprise to me that a woman could become a leader of this firm based on my experience.”