Joycelyn McGeachy Kuls: A Legacy of Service
Many professionals are inspired to give back to the community—through volunteer work, mentorship, and other services. For Joycelyn McGeachy Kuls, vice president and senior counsel in Merrill Lynch’s Employment Law Department, her service comes from an additional source of inspiration: her family’s history of service to others, which stretches back more than a century.
It started with McGeachy Kuls’ great-grandfather, Reverend Liston L. Davis, who founded an industrial academy in Caroline County, Virginia in 1902 for black students, because educational opportunities were scarce for blacks in the South. This legacy drives her desire to help others achieve their goals.
“There was a tradition of responsibility and commitment in my family to help others,” she says. “It wasn’t communicated to me in words, but by example.”
McGeachy Kuls has continued her family heritage throughout her career, and is currently involved in many volunteer activities. In 1999, she started an internship program for Merrill Lynch’s Office of General Counsel.
“The purpose is to help establish a pipeline with law schools in the New York metropolitan area and give law students exposure to legal careers on Wall Street,” McGeachy Kuls explains. “Dozens of students have come through the program. Experience at Merrill Lynch can help open the door to other positions after law school.”
McGeachy Kuls participates in workshops for I-LEAD, a program at Bank Street College for high achieving minority students, where she discusses the career of law and critiques resumes and interviewing skills.
“By introducing students to a variety of professionals, we show the students that there is an array of career opportunities available to them,” says McGeachy Kuls. “They see that we have done it, so they feel that they can achieve as well.”
McGeachy Kuls also volunteers with Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, which gives law and banking students a chance to work summers for Fortune 500 companies. “It shows them not just the nuts and bolts of a job, but also office dynamics, teaching them how to survive in a complex corporate environment,” says McGeachy Kuls.
McGeachy Kuls began her career in banking after graduating from Georgetown University. But she decided to study law because it offered a variety of professional opportunities. “What you do should be an expression of who you are,” McGeachy Kuls believes, “of values that mean something to you.” She chose Howard University School of Law because of its leadership in the civil rights movement and its tradition of educating “the nation’s finest black legal minds.” It was there she solidified her belief that lawyers are “social engineers.”
After graduation, McGeachy Kuls worked as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx. She joined Merrill Lynch in 1996 as a litigator in the Securities Law Department and began practicing employment law in 1999. “As an employment lawyer,” McGeachy Kuls says, “I support Merrill Lynch’s commitment to maintaining an environment that respects all employees.” One of her duties is writing and reviewing the firm’s affirmative action plans.
McGeachy Kuls intends to continue practicing law and to follow the credo of her alma mater, Howard University: to use the law to make a difference in society. For McGeachy Kuls and her family, that dedication has lasted over a century.
Tom Calarco is a freelance writer from Schenectady, N.Y. He is the author of The Underground Railroad Conductor, which is available for purchase online at www.travelsthruhistory.com/books.htm., and The Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Region.
From the May/June 2005 issue of Diversity & The Bar®