“The best lawyers champion people authentically. It is about investing in real relationships and believing fundamentally that law is a public service job… the whole point is to help our clients pragmatically navigate a complex system, during what is likely a truly heated and nuanced conflict.”
Alum Kate Agyemang, LLB ’17, believes this wholeheartedly, which is just one of the reasons she was chosen as an Ottawa Business Journal 40 under 40 recipient this year. She and her husband Eric Agyemang, BCom ’15, are in fact the first married couple to be recognized in the same year.
Kate credits her success to being mentored by and investing in leaders who actually care about people and want to make a difference.
After completing her psychology degree in 2007, she started in front-line mental health crisis work before becoming a disability management specialist. For years, Kate empowered medically-fragile people and those living with intellectual disabilities by triaging the complexities of meaningful community and workplace re-integration with specialized multidisciplinary teams.
She went back to school and completed a second degree in conflict studies and human rights in 2014, as she was increasingly pulled in to advise businesses leaders on effectively managing their most challenging team issues. By her early thirties, it was clear that to de-escalate the most complicated matters, she needed to a law degree. Undeterred, Kate went back to school …again.
Law school wasn’t easy – she remembers having to google “mooting” because she didn’t know what others were talking about, having come to law with no prior legal connections of any kind. A proud Ottawa resident, Bay Street meant nothing to her.
She focused on establishing her practice in Ottawa, paying her way through school by working with a top local litigation firm. She kept her head down to balance the realities of taking several additional classes at a time to welcome her first child mid-way through her third year.
After submitting a final paper to Professor Marina Pavlovic, she gave birth to her first child only hours later and went on to write both bar exams with a proctor using a stop clock to allow her to nurse her newborn.
Kate is now a Senior Associate in labour and employment at Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG) and has since welcomed a second child and continues to build her bilingual practice.
Kate has always been about stepping in and stepping up for both her clients and community, helping people and organizations who need support. She met her husband while volunteering in a respite home in Ireland “because we want to do the good, we need to see in the world”.
Kate is currently on the Board of Directors for Ottawa-Carleton Lifeskills, which supports adults with developmental disabilities in living an independent life. She has previously volunteered with Amnesty International, Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights, the Ottawa Health Science Network Research and Ethics Board, the Women's Legal Mentorship Program, and Pro Bono Ontario to name a few. She also spends countless hours informally mentoring other lawyers in navigating the pressures of private practice, , while remaining a responsive lawyer and most importantly, an attentive law parent. Her family is Kate’s top priority: “5:30-8:30 p.m. is for our littles – they are everything, and we try very hard not to mess with that”.
Her mentees know her advice is “there is a place for you as you are in law”, and to remember “law peers are your support network, not your competition”. She emphasizes the importance of chasing what you actually care about – not money or prestige - and the vital need to set and respect healthy boundaries by leaning out, not in. She acknowledges how important it is to share your own authentic struggle with your team and not let people only see your highlight reel. Like many, she has faced blatant discrimination in both her careers, and has not allowed the toxic narrative of misogyny or imposter syndrome deter her from her own fought-for path.
On receiving the 40 under 40, Kate says: "Ottawa has allowed me to have not one, but two careers, so I feel tremendously honoured to have been selected, but cannot pretend I am comfortable with the label. The only reason I am where I am today is my family’s relentless advocacy for the love of education; their incredible example of building a full life that can support others; my husband’s unwavering, and at times all-out dogged, championing of our collective goals in true partnership; exceptional mentors who chose to see me, and the powerhouse women in my life – who at every stage - have held me up when the going was too tough, to go it alone.”