Sponsor 7 Q+As with Traci Nally, Vice President of Human Resources at The News-Gazette! Everyone at N-G has been so supportive and encouraging of what TWSS is bringing to this community.
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1. What are you grateful for today?
The basics: my good luck in being healthy, having a good education, a job, and having normally behaving family and friends.
2. Tell us about one of your friends and what you love about her.
Deb Frank Feinen is a very good friend. She is a townie, is a member of the Champaign City Council and is running for mayor, and is a terrific attorney focusing in the areas of guardianship, estate planning, and real estate. What I love about her, other than her fabulous family, are the New Year’s resolutions she makes. Here are two of them: “I am going to drink more champagne,” or “I need to buy and wear more jewelry.”
3. Describe one of the best days of your life.
In 1995 or so, my sister and I were travelling together in Spain and Portugal for a couple of weeks. We had already been to a lot of fascinating places like Lisbon, Madrid, and Seville. But we were in the last couple of days of travel. We ended up in a tiny town on the southern coast of Portugal called Luge. That day in Luge was the best because we relaxed in the sun on the beach, read books, played paddle ball in the sand, slept, drank beer, had our clothes laundered at the local laundry shop (the clothes came out the softest ever) and then ate the tastiest pork dinner, accompanied by some tawny port and a grilled fresh sardine appetizer while a local musician played fado at a grotto-like restaurant in town. How can a day get much better than that?
4. What’s the best lesson you learned from your mother/grandmother?
My mother taught me to decide and fend for myself. This is an example of how she put it: “I can’t tell you to not smoke, because your dad and I smoke. But, you are NOT bumming any cigarettes off of me!” I chose not to smoke.
5. We’re all unique. What is your special gift?
I make really delicious pies. I am also a pretty darn good labor and employment attorney.
6. What could women be doing to make their community a better place?
Encourage reasonable and intelligent women, which could include themselves, to run for public office, supporting them financially in their campaigns, and then getting them elected.
7. What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
Implicit in this question is that I would want to do something, but that I was prevented from doing it out of fear. I learned long ago that I could hardly resist a dare, so fear has rarely stopped me from doing anything that I wanted to do. I am pretty adventurous and am willing to undergo self-humiliation or substantial risk if I think the outcome would be fun or helpful to others or be a learning opportunity. But rational fear is something that I heed. So for example thinking that I could die from sky diving is a rational fear. Yes, I would be afraid to sky-dive, but more than that, I don’t want to die before my time. So it’s not the feeling of fear that stops me; it is the rational part of me that wants to avoid death that stops me from sky-diving. I am not sure I answered the question.
