Drinks with lawyers—Siobhan McIntyre peers through the looking glass

Drinks with lawyers—Siobhan McIntyre peers through the looking glass

22 Nov, 2024
in People & Places, Wild Lands & Wildlife by Madison Grosvenor

By Dawnell Smith

Over coffee, Siobhan McIntyre talks about peering through the looking glass more than once—there’s the Siobhan who operated in the world before having kids and there’s the Siobhan holding it together now. Though she can look through the glass at that other Siobhan, she’s clearly on this side of it now, with two little people to care for, to enjoy and to steward them into their lives.

Siobhan celebrating spring on Flat Top Mountain in Anchorage. Photo by Henry Tashjian.

“When first starting my career, work was such a central focus – past, present, and future. I was building to a place where I wanted to end up, where the work would have meaning and fit with my life and values around life,” she said. “Then, as a parent, the tenor shifted.” After a pause she continued, “My parenting journey is so intensely immersive that showing up for work is an entirely different gear now. It’s really clear that I get to do this for me.”

She works to do something external, to nourish that part of herself, to do the job. “I’m more in the present now, and the past that led me here often feels distinct and distanced.”

Doing the Alaska fishing thing. Photos by Henry Tashjian and Kathleen McIntyre.

You might say that looking through the glass puts a sheen on the past. Siobhan can still see that other Siobhan, but more so as an “other” now.

That “other” grew up a Boston kid who still knows the city inside and out and can navigate and define it through childhood memories and the childhood memories of her parents and grandparents, too; she grew up far from mountains, far from hiking that Alaskans do, and far from a place defined by the land and water, not city landmarks.

Yet, she’s an Alaskan now, not a fish out of water but another scrappy living being who feels enthralled by the position of self with place, and the joy of tramping into the unknown. It makes sense that this is how it went down, with the notion of Alaska seeded in her mind after falling in love with the myth of the Arctic in “White Fang” at 6 or 7 years old and feeling a familial touchpoint in her father’s stories about going north as a union electrician working on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. She remembers putting on his standard issue bunny boots and down parka with fox trim and tromping around in his arctic gear, playacting herself into the icy sheen of that fabulously imagined place.

The English major

Early on, Siobhan wanted to be an astronaut, at least before the “math” issue came up (“no brain for numbers” she said), and later she wanted to write books. Her professional goals shifted as a practical matter when she went to college. She had traveled west as a young adult, working seasonally for the National Park Service in Yellowstone and Zion National Park, and felt stunned by the power of open spaces and a desire to protect them. She thought, well environmental journalism might be a good option.

Siobhan doing the growing up thing in Boston, then heading westward. Photos by Kathleen McIntyre and Daniel McIntyre.

She studied English at Grinnell College in Iowa and graduated in 2006 when, notably, the bottom started falling out of the news publishing sector, too. The one thing she always vowed was not to go into medicine or law, and now journalism started to look iffy in terms of the job market.

It turns out that all her earlier interests, along with economic realities, funneled her into unexpected directions, but not unexpected ways of being. Her friend Sandy Faber met Siobhan in college when they were both 18. “She has such empathy for others, and a capacity for kindness even when she is feeling stretched thin,” said Sandy. “She has a calm, grounded approach to any conflict or crisis that leads everyone involved to a better outcome.”

In other words, she always had a kind of lawyering way of looking at problems, though Siobhan hadn’t come to that conclusion yet.

Instead, after college she landed a job at the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation where she did communications work while applying for similar jobs elsewhere and getting nothing but rejection letters. It occurred to her then that advocating for the environment might be more rewarding than just reporting it. Once she made that turn of thought, law school sounded not so out of line. She started studying for Law School Aptitude Test during her commute to and from work.

Soon enough, she landed at Vermont Law School and, like so many students at the time, came to the end of her degree in 2011 at the height of the recession with few opportunities and lots of people trying to seize them. A school counselor suggested she apply for an Alaska clerkship since the school had good relationships in Alaska.

Siobhan packrafting Clearwater Creek off the Denali Highway in Alaska, 2017. Photo by Henry Tashjian.

Turns out that was the golden ticket. “I always wanted to go to Alaska!” she said, in some ways still enchanted with the Arctic, her father’s Alaska tales, and the way natural places pulled her toward them.

She applied with every state judge she could find and ended up in Kenai for a year, followed by some private corporate work and representing village corporations for a spell, and then seven years working for the State of Alaska as assistant attorney general doing labor and employment law and assistant U.S. attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alaska.

She loved how labor and employment law meant supporting people in clear and visceral ways. Still, when she saw the job opening at Trustees in 2023, that old pining came back to her—the care for the environment and the possibility of a life-work balance that felt more manageable and again feeling more her full self.

The lawyer

Siobhan’s husband Henry Tashjian is also a lawyer. They met in law school, and he came to Alaska with her, finding work in Anchorage with the State, and eventually in his dream job with a federal agency. Henry describes Siobhan as outgoing and genial, with a great love of writing and literature, “all of which I think gave her some natural insights into good legal writing and effective communication with courts, counsel, and clients,” he said. “She also had a love for adventure, the outdoors, and the public lands and culture of the western United States.”

Enjoying Alaska’s stunning landscapes and visiting the Denali sled dog kennel, Denali National Park, photos by Kathleen McIntyre

All of that, plus lucky timing and necessity led her to Trustees.

Her Boston family still treats her like a bit of a mystery, though. Even going to Iowa for college instead of staying in Boston baffled them. But Siobhan quickly learned how much she didn’t and couldn’t know by staying in Boston, and how important curiosity and natural places mattered to her. There’s a palpable freedom to being able to bring her whole self wherever she goes, and Alaska offers so much space to do that.

One of her favorite things about living up here is how communities cross pollinate. The degrees of separation between people are fewer than in other places. “There’s a closeness of communities, an overlap of people with disparate interests who cross paths with each other,” she said.

Even in Anchorage it’s like a bunch of small towns bundled up into one small city. “Here, there’s no dress code, so to speak,” she said. “It’s come as you are, and kids are more accepted. I don’t have to bring part of myself, I can bring just myself.”

The full self

The Siobhan through the looking glass and the Siobhan here right now share a well-provisioned skill set. Legal skills and knowledge translate across subject matter, so moving from labor law to environmental law means applying the same tools, but getting to learn something new. These skills move all ways through the looking glass, too; Henry noted how lawyering and parenting share some critical dynamics.

“Lawyering and dealing with a broad variety of opposing counsels has given Siobhan great insights into some of the harder parts of parenting, through training in effective communication with argumentative people and understanding unspoken motivations behind demands or disputes,” he said. “I think it also helps her to focus on the practical aspects of life’s problems and setbacks, give thought to a particular course of action one can and cannot be expected to achieve, and take notice of the various alterable and inalterable deadlines we’re all periodically faced with.”

In other words, skillsets around recognizing and negotiating people’s differing wants, perspectives, ways of behaving, and goals make the Siobhan of today not so different than the one she sees through the looking glass—though the two still struggle to stay integrated.

Her friend Sandy recounted a relay race from Mt. Hood in Oregon to the Oregon coast a few years ago. “It should have been a logistical nightmare, with 12 runners handing off a baton over a 200-mile course,” she said, but with Siobhan’s help and good company, it was a fun little jaunt.

Coming full circle and sharing the Boston Garden and Arnold Arboretum with her two children, Photos by Siobhan McIntyre and Kathleen McIntyre

Now, as any parent or organizer of people knows, what feels like a fun little jaunt for some can extract every ounce of the coordinator’s energy, patience, and capacity to flex. That effort matters, though. As Sandy said, Siobhan brings “her analytical skills as a lawyer and her natural kindness and empathy to every challenge she encounters, and we are all better off for it.”

One thing that surprised Siobhan about doing environmental work in Alaska with Trustees is the nature of coalition dynamics. “The cohesiveness of these groups and how the nonprofit world is built on relationships—some longstanding and some new and growing—is new to me, “ she said.

And maybe that’s another way that today’s Siobhan entwines with her other—the way paying attention to and approaching relationships can make working together so much stronger than working apart. It’s hard to see all the permutations of light through the glass, and she’s only been with Trustees about a year.

For now, she said, the concept of her work doing something good for her children feels too abstract to muster, but “coming to work feels positive to me. I get to do something that reminds me of myself and what I aspire to be, even when that part of me is now in the background.”

The thing about the looking glass, of course, is that the reflections and distortions can pass through in all directions only to gather up into a single dream.

This is the 11th in a series of profiles based on interviews with Trustees’ staff over drinks, this time over a coffee at Black Cup in Anchorage.

More in the “drinks with lawyers” series: