Valerie Uribe is President of the 2015 Barristers Club Board of Directors. She served as the co-diversity director for the Barristers Board of Directors in 2014. She plans to continue this mission and help further diversify the membership and leadership of the Barristers. Uribe recently started her own estate planning practice while working full-time at UCSF.

1. I am a HUGE foodie! It is one of the reasons I love San Francisco. I can talk for hours about food, new places to try, and things on my foodie bucket list.

2. My first language was Spanish. In fact I think I was much more fluent at five years old than I am now.

3. There are a handful of English words I have trouble remembering/speaking. So I say them in Spanish. It is a problem for my non-Spanish speaking friends. For example, it is difficult for me to say “drawer.” It is just a weird word for me.  I have to think about it and say it slowly.

4. I am horrible standardized test taker which is common with minorities. I am a hard worker. I graduated summa cum laude in college. However, based on my GPA and LSAT score alone I had less than a 15% chance of getting into a first tier law school.

5. Both sets of my grandparents were born in Mexico. My parents were the first in their family to attend college. To this day I am the only one on both sides of my family to attend graduate school, let alone law school.

6. Related to point #5, my family comes to me for “legal” advice and I have to explain to them that my law degree does not give me unparalleled power to make another family member to do something or not so something. If only!

7. My family calls me, “la licenciada” (the licensed one). In most Hispanic cultures, people refer to you by your profession rather than your name. My mother is a dual language teacher and her Hispanic students call her “maestra” (teacher) and her native English speakers call her by name, Ms. Uribe.

8. My childhood dream unrealized was to be an Olympic gymnast. I was obsessed and wanted to be Shannon Miller growing up.

9. My favorite type of exercise is dance. In fact, I almost chose dance as my double major.

10. I love to challenge myself in all areas in life (i.e., intellectually and physically). So next year I am doing my first full marathon and doing the AIDS life cycle ride (biking 545 miles from San Francisco to my hometown of Los Angeles). I am not really sure what I got myself into.