Ambassador Spotlight
Think about what you bring to the table. Everyone is unique, including you, and you bring your own perspectives and skills. Embrace those instead of following someone else’s example.
Malavika Lobo
CMCP Ambassadors Council recently elected Malavika Lobo to serve as Vice-Chair in recognition of her dynamic engagement in advancing professional and personal development opportunities for attorneys of color across California.
Malavika Lobo is an associate in the Palo Alto office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she is a member of the firm’s litigation department.
Prior to joining the firm, Malavika was a Brackett Denniston fellow at General Electric. During law school, she was a judicial extern to the Honorable Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the U.S. District of Massachusetts.
Malavika received her J.D., from Boston University School of Law, and her B.A., from the University of California, Berkeley.
Why did you decide to become a CMCP Ambassador?
To get to know more CMCP members and have a closer connection to the organization.
What are you most proud of with your CMCP involvement or as an attorney, in general?
I’m really proud of elevating CMCP within my firm. Many firm attorneys have attended CMCP events and conferences.
What extracurricular professional activities have had the most impact on you or your profession?
CMCP! It gave me a network of attorneys of color that is so supportive and helpful!
What challenges have you encountered that you’d like to mitigate for the next generation?
I hope that the next generation of attorneys of color have the sense that they belong in the legal world. No impostor syndrome and no microaggressions.
What has your job taught you that you think about in other areas of your life?
It actually taught me to value my time. Why does someone else think my time is more valuable than I do? Because I have to think critically about how I spend (and bill) my time at work, it taught me to think critically about how I spend my time in other areas of my life.
Is it important to you to be a volunteer for any particular cause(s), if so, which ones and why?
I do immigration and civil rights pro bono work. Both of those issues are important to me because historically in the US, people of color and immigrants have not had the same access to justice as others.
Looking back, what advice would you share with yourself as a young attorney of color starting the legal profession?
Think about what you bring to the table. Everyone is unique, including you, and you bring your own perspectives and skills. Embrace those instead of following someone else’s example.
