Superpowers: Strategic thinking and communication
Member, Jackson Kelly
In the ninth grade, Susan Snowden attended a Youth in Government program in Charleston that piqued her interest in the field of law. “We had to draft a pretend bill and run it through,” she says. “I didn’t enjoy the political side of it, but I did really enjoy the legal side.”
Now, decades later, as a member with Jackson Kelly and a visiting law lecturer at West Virginia University, that experience has proven formative. “I would not do anything else,” she says. And yet, it’s far from the only thing Snowden fills her time with. Since the 1980s, she has served on the Board of the Mountain State Apple Harvest Festival, where she began as a volunteer and has now throughout the years held every leadership role available. She also serves on the WVU Medicine Board, the Eastern Panhandle Bar Charitable Foundation Board, and the WVU Hospitals East Foundation Board—to say nothing of the many other community roles she has held and since stepped back from.
“I believe that, from those to whom much is given, much is expected. Because we have a unique set of skills, I have always believed that lawyers should give back to their community,” Snowden says. “We have the ability to make a major impact in different walks of life.” Snowden enjoys a robust family life, an exciting travel schedule, and plenty of other things that fill her cup just as much as her job and her community work do. To her, all of these pieces of life go hand in hand. “If you never give back, I would suggest that you probably don’t really feel fulfilled,” she says. “I have what I think people call work–life balance, and I don’t know that it really is. I think it’s self-fulfillment.”
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Since 2014 WV Living magazine has been honoring West Virginia Wonder Women, amazing women who are raising the bar in their communities, serving as beacons of light in their industries, and forcing change for the greater good. WV Living is proud to celebrate these Appalachian mothers, millennials, and mavens proving that in a time full of uncertainty, divisiveness, and hate, love for one another is all we really need. No need for bulletproof bracelets or a golden lasso of truth—these women are creating a better West Virginia with their can-do attitudes and Mountain State spirit.
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