Clarissa Cerda
“Being First”
Clarissa Cerda
Recently named secretary and general counsel of LifeLock, Inc., a leader in identity theft protection, Clarissa Cerda has spent most of 2009 settling into her new position. In addition to handling all of the company’s corporate governance and transactions, Cerda spends a significant part of her time strategizing litigation and meeting with outside counsel. As the privately owned company's first-ever GC, she also continually assesses all of LifeLock’s legal matters, as well as its internal legal issues—no mean feat.
"I come from a strong privacy and software licensing background," notes Cerda, who for eight years was general counsel of Initiate Systems, Inc., a specialist in master data management solutions. "Although LifeLock and Initiate Systems are not alike in terms of industry, their models are not significantly different. In the identity theft profession, you're dealing with customers' personally identifiable information, and at Initiate Systems, we were responsible for matching, linking, and handling banking and patient data. So a lot of the regulatory landscape is very similar."
It helps that Cerda is well-versed in substantive areas like privacy, services, and strategic alliances. But what makes Cerda particularly well-suited for her current position, she believes, is her experience working with other hyper-growth companies prior to their initial public offering (IPO). "I'm used to being part of a senior executive team that leads and guides a company from one phase to the next," explains Cerda. "Having acquired many subscribers and experienced hyper-growth in its three years as a company, LifeLock is now in one of those phases, and I'm comfortable with being the person to help take us to the next step."
According to family lore, as a very young teenager growing up in Chicago, Cerda was determined to one day be a corporate attorney, despite not knowing exactly what that entailed; neither she nor her parents had much exposure to attorneys outside of television. Nonetheless, the goal remained with her.
Throughout her high-school years, Cerda worked as secretary and purchasing agent with steel companies at her father's small manufacturing business in Chicago. (Cerda's parents are immigrants. Her father is from Guadalajara, Mexico; her mother is from Havana, Cuba.) "While there, I noticed that because my father's name was Jose he was sometimes treated differently by those we dealt with, and usually not positively," recalls Cerda. "After Harvard [where she earned her bachelor’s degree in government], working as a paralegal in New York City, I noticed some of that same treatment towards women and minorities in the big law firms. Of course, a lot has changed, but not entirely." She went on to law school—the first in her family to do so—carrying the memories of these iniquities with her. When she graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1992, she was determined to somehow make a difference.
While finishing up studies in a Master of Laws degree program (in French) in Brussels, Belgium, Cerda was tipped off by a law school friend about a job on then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton's presidential campaign. She was soon hired as a budget officer on the campaign’s finance committee, which involved immediately relocating to Little Rock. ("Not an easy move when you're living in a European capital," she sighs.) A large part of Cerda's new job required her collecting at least $100,000 owed to the campaign by the media and Secret Service for travel costs. To do so, she replaced an old and extremely sluggish reimbursement arrangement with a novel pay-as-you-go methodology. Rather briskly, she recouped a much-needed $7 million of outstanding outlays, money that was put back into the campaign. Needless to say, her bosses were impressed.
Following Clinton's win in 1992, Cerda was named co-budget director for the administration's transition team in Washington. "I like big thorny challenges, the stickier the better," she recalls, "so what could make me happier than to work on replacing hundreds of Republicans with a spanking new batch of Democrats? Despite all the chaos, we were able to get about 500 Democrats into the White House and the Old Executive Office Building on [the first day of Clinton's presidency]."
Six months later, with the overall transition effectively complete, Cerda was poised to take a legal position working on international law matters. Instead, she accepted the administration's unexpected invitation to stay on as assistant counsel to the president of the United States—an offer not easily refused, particularly by a twenty-something attorney. "I was the sixth lawyer hired in the White House Counsel's office," notes Cerda. "For two years, I worked on executive orders, vetted Senate confirmation candidates, assisted with new laws coming through, ran the summer clerkship program—lots of different things. As the most junior attorney, I basically did the stuff nobody else wanted to do—and, while doing it, I learned a lot about people and management."
Cerda's time at the White House left her legal career slightly out of alignment with the professional development of most attorneys. "As a young lawyer, I could run legal teams, understand the coordination of different areas, and put cross-disciplinary checks and balances in place, but my technical corporate skills were not what they ought to have been," she remembers. "And because my intention was to become a top-notch corporate attorney, I opted not to stay in Washington and work my political connections, but instead to join Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP's Chicago office. They appreciated my management skills, and offered me a place where I could focus and develop the technical aspects required to become a really good corporate and securities lawyer."
After five years at Sonnenschein, Cerda was named a corporate and securities partner, the first Hispanic woman to become a partner in the firm's 100-year history. While with the firm, Cerda found that she was increasingly eager to concentrate her energy on the business issues of a corporation. In 2000, she joined her first corporate legal department as general counsel. Even after "going in-house," Cerda remained of counsel with Sonnenschein until joining LifeLock in January.
Lessons learned from early working experiences, law school, and government service remain with her today. "One of my primary mentors, the late secretary of commerce Ron Brown, used to say, 'Being a success isn't just about getting there; it's about making sure the door stays open and encouraging others to come through with you,' " explains Cerda. "Those are words that I've really taken to heart."
"I've been fortunate to have had great mentors and amazing parents who provided me with a solid foundation," she concludes. "I'm comfortable being the trailblazer, but not everyone is willing to be first, and for them it's important that I strive doubly hard." DB
Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.
From the March/April 2009 issue of Diversity & The Bar®