Alum Stacey Heyman shares highlights from her successful decade as a Reed Smith global regulatory enforcement associate, and in the senior in-house roles she has held since then. Stacey built professional acumen and confidence through trial experience as a new associate, an early-career client secondment in London, and working with detail- and client-service oriented partner role models. Stacey also shares how she secured the advice and support of her Reed Smith mentor during her transition to her first in-house role, setting the stage for an ongoing professional relationship. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Career Footprints. In each episode of Career Footprints, we'll ask our guest, a Reed Smith alum, to share their career story, how their time at Reed Smith set them up for success, and their advice for early career lawyers. Our goal is to surface insights from inspiring professionals careers that will help you find your professional success, however you define that.  Alicia: Welcome back to our Career Footprints podcast with our incredible Reed Smith alumni. I'm Alicia Millar and I have the great, great pleasure of introducing, talking with, discussing the career footprint of Stacey Heyman who has been part of the Reed Smith family for actually a significant chunk of time and in her career beyond Reed Smith as well. Stacey, welcome.  Stacey: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.  Alicia: Wonderful. We are looking forward, I am certainly looking forward to hearing more about your career to date and the time at Reed Smith. So why don't we jump straight into it? I know that you are Senior Commercial Counsel at Atlassian. But way way before that, um you were part of the Reed Smith uh family and I understand was it 2009, all the way through to 2020. Is that correct? Tell us, tell us about your time at Reed Smith.  Stacey: I was, yeah. So I was a summer associate in what was then the Falls Church office of Reed Smith is now the Tyson's office, um, in the summer of 2009 and then returned full time as an associate in 2010 and then, uh, was there until 2020. Yeah. So I, I grew up at Reed Smith. I was a baby lawyer and learned so much uh for the first decade of my career.  Alicia: Amazing. And um it, it was a decade that that's quite, that is a significant chunk of time. Give us a flavor about why you chose Reed Smith in the first place. What was it that really drew you to the firm?  Stacey: Yeah. So, um during on campus interviews while I was in law school, I was specifically targeting law firms that had satellite offices in um in specifically suburban to Washington DC, which is where I am now. That's home for me. But I really wanted the reach of a global law firm, but the feel of a smaller office. Um And so I, I knew going into OCI, that was, that would be a good, sweet spot for me. And I was interviewed by Rick Holzheimer from our Falls Church office and he had a good poker face. I did not think the interview went well, I had articulated all the reasons why I thought I would be a good fit and, um why I was attracted to apply to Reed Smith. And he just sort of sat there very sternly. Um, so no one was more surprised than me to hear from the recruiter to hear that I had been invited for a callback interview. And then I was thrilled to join as the, the only summer associate in that office for 2009. It was great.  Alicia: Amazing. And you know, that a decade is a significant chunk of time. I mean, you know, were there some really key points during that time that you kind of think? Wow, that was, that was a genuine learning moment for me. That was a, a sort of got caught out there or, you know, what, give us a sort of some of the smaller footprints of, of your time at the firm.  Stacey: So many. Yes, I, so I actually was slated to start, I, you know, graduated during an economic downturn in 2010. And so our entire class had been deferred until January of 2011, but, um, the Falls C