In a new profile in the latest issue of D CEO, meet Sakina Rasheed Foster, office managing partner for Haynes Boone in Dallas. In the article, Sakina discusses her career path thus far, as well as how she prioritizes mentoring young lawyers to help the next generation navigate their career paths.
Read an excerpt below and the full article here.
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Sakina Rasheed Foster often felt lost at the onset of her legal career. The majority of her family went into healthcare or engineering, and she struggled to connect with mentors and Asian lawyer networks while in law school.
“Growing up, I always thought I was going into the medical field,” says Foster, now the Dallas managing partner at Haynes Boone. “Law wasn’t even an option for me until I started exploring different career paths in college.”
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In 2007, Foster became a junior associate at Haynes Boone to focus on financial transactions. Her first big transaction was helping a major airline purchase a large fleet of engines.
“I had absolutely no experience with engine purchases, airlines, or purchase agreements, but I wanted to make myself useful and valuable—and that really became my jumping-off point,” she says. Ten years later, she made partner. And at the start of 2023, Foster was named managing partner of the firm’s Dallas office.
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“What drives me—and what is my passion now—is to make sure that Asian lawyers have someone as a mentor,” she says. “I want to be any bit of help to a young lawyer who is saying, ‘I don’t know if the profession is for me’ or ‘I just don’t see how I can rise in the ranks because I don’t see people like me.’ Finding a way to retain underrepresented lawyers is a huge responsibility. We might not think, individually, that we can make a big difference, but most of us had people who helped us along our career path, so each one of us has the responsibility to help the next generation navigate their career path.”
