I was born in Cairo, Egypt to an Armenian family that had been there for two generations. We immigrated as refugees and settled in Los Angeles. We soon moved to South Pasadena where I grew up, attending Catholic schools. While an undergrad at UC Berkeley I was interested in philosophy and linguistics, and almost opted for a career in academics. But I’d always felt a pull toward becoming a lawyer and advocate, so I went to law school in San Francisco and graduated in 1986. After three years in a small, mixed practice, I joined Sterns & Walker, a boutique plaintiff’s aviation firm, where I was given immediate, primary responsibility for a wide variety of personal injury cases. There I met my mentor, Gerald Sterns, a brilliant trial lawyer. I also met the even more brilliant women who are my best friends to this day. The firm was involved in every major aviation crash case of the nineties, so the work was meaningful and intellectually challenging. I tried my first jury trial in 1990 - a long-neglected wrongful death case. I lost, 10-2, I believe now because I didn’t know how to pick a jury.

In 1997 my then husband and I moved to Thessaloniki, Greece with our two sons, ages one and four years, intending it to be permanent. But after just two years I missed my work, and when my old firm welcomed me back in 1999, I jumped at the opportunity to return. That final year of the millennium was transformative for me and my young family. Despite the upheavals, I tried two cases that year, back-to-back. The second was a bench trial against the Greek airline, Olympic Airways, for the family of a doctor who died inflight from an asthma attack because the flight attendants wouldn’t give him a non-smoking seat. We made headlines for getting the first “secondhand smoke” verdict and won in the Ninth Circuit and the US Supreme Court with Clarence Thomas writing for the majority (despite the fact that Scalia dissented). The decision, Olympic Airways v. Husain, opened the door for international passengers to recover against airlines for inflight injuries and deaths that were not the result of terrorism or a plane crash.

I’ve been working solo from my Berkeley home office since 2005 and can’t imagine a better setup because I am very much a homebody. I also enjoy international travel and can speak several languages (enough to get by). I love all the arts, but my passion is classical ballet, and I am active with an amateur ballet company.