Partner and chair of the national appellate practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, LLP in New York as well as part-time Stanford Law professor and former dean of Stanford Law School are some of the titles Kathleen Sullivan holds.

The former student of Cornell, Oxford, and Harvard Universities is a third generation Irish American. Her ancestors came from Cork, Kerry, Galway, and Limerick, and settled in New York City in the late 19th and turn of the 20th centuries.

Sullivan has been to Ireland four times, and believes being Irish may make her a better lawyer.

“The ability to speak well and argue with wit and humility is something I learned from my family from an early age,” she says.

“I draw from my Irish heritage a love of family, a love of literature, art and music, and of the beauty of the spoken word, a deep sense of gratitude for the bravery of my ancestors in making the passage. I also have a love of the sea that I am sure is ancestrally engrained,” says Sullivan.

 

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