Gennerman
When Amanda Gennerman (BA’00, Women’s Studies and Afro-American Studies) entered law school, she made a promise to herself.
I will not take a corporate job. I will not do what I don’t want to do. If I’m going to practice law, it’s going to be the way that I want to do it.
Twelve years later, Gennerman hasn't wavered from that vow. The Madison-based attorney practices immigration law, with a particular interest in domestic violence fostered by her background as a Women’s Studies major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I never thought I’d be in private practice,” she said. “That was not the path I thought I was going on.”
Indeed, Gennerman’s plan upon entering law school at the University of Denver was to return to Madison after graduation and land a job at a nonprofit agency doing advocacy work. After working at the Campus Women’s Center, the Rape Crisis Center and Domestic Abuse Intervention Services during her undergraduate career, she chose Denver in large part because of the school’s domestic abuse clinic. She got involved with the clinic in her second year of law school and worked on a crossover case that included an immigration asylum hearing.
And with that, she was hooked.
“One case sold me,” Gennerman said. “That’s what I wanted to do.”
But breaking into the field wasn't nearly as simple. After completing her J.D. in 2003, Gennerman returned to Madison and found work – conducting criminal evaluations for defense attorneys on immigration matters and taking contract cases from the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office – where she could while also networking with area immigration lawyers.
However, with student loans to pay off, she also needed a steady income, which prompted her to take a job at the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence as a health care advocate. It wasn't legal work, but it afforded Gennerman the opportunity to reconnect with Gender and Women’s Studies Professor Emerita Nancy Worcester, who was the organization’s state education coordinator at the time. Worcester’s legendary “Women and Their Bodies in Health and Disease” had been one of the reasons Gennerman had majored in Women’s Studies in the first place.
About 10 months later, Gennerman found what she had been searching for: a job as a deportation defense and family-based immigration attorney. But, it was in Milwaukee. After six months of commuting, she came to a realization.
“If I can do this in Milwaukee with slight guidance, I can do this on my own in Madison,” she said. “And so I opened up my own practice.”
Gennerman reached out to domestic-abuse agencies around the state and offered to meet with their Spanish-speaking clients. She began building relationships with those clients, who in turn recommended Gennerman to their friends. Now, roughly seven years later, she has seen some of them leave abusive relationships, become U.S. citizens and forge successful careers.
She credits her Women’s Studies foundation with teaching her how to recognize signs of abuse and training her to ask the right questions.
“I love what I do,” she said. “I just love it.”
This story was featured in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies' fall newsletter. Read more on the GWS website.