Sakina Rasheed Foster, managing partner of the Haynes and Boone, LLP Dallas office, was featured in an article in Texas Lawbook, authored by Adolfo Pesquera, discussing her Trailblazer of the Year award from the State Bar of Texas, her passion for mentoring, and more.
Read an excerpt below:
Mentoring young lawyers and law students has been a career-long passion for Haynes Boone partner Sakina Rasheed Foster, and in recognition of her volunteerism she was awarded Trailblazer of the Year by the State Bar of Texas.
Foster, 45, was recognized at the state bar’s 31st Annual Texas Minority Counsel Program convention in Houston, Oct. 26, along with recipients of awards for Rising Star, Corporate Counsel of the Year and Lifetime Achievement.
Foster is a transactional law attorney of South Asian descent and a practicing attorney since 2004. Foster’s clients are commonly on the borrower side of complex commercial agreements, and she handles transactions across a diverse number of industry categories.
Foster said she was nominated for the award by The Podium, a Dallas/Fort Worth-based nonprofit organization for Asian American women lawyers.
“It is part of their goal to amplify voices within the legal profession for other Asian American women,” Foster said.
The Podium created a mentor group composed of three members who are given the title of “champion”—attorneys in senior roles in their law firms. Foster was asked to be a champion and said she was thrilled to have been considered.
“We as champions typically have 20 or plus years of service, and we act as informal mentors. We’re available for people in the group that want to reach out to us,” Foster said.
Foster’s role as a champion for the group is but the latest of many roles she has held as a mentor throughout her career.
Foster’s very first project as a volunteer mentor was with the Dallas Asian American Bar Association in 2007 when she was in her third year of practice. She was working on a career night conference and tasked with gathering a panel of attorneys who would talk about their journeys through the legal profession, she said.
“That was really eye-opening for me,” Foster said. “As a third-year lawyer, I didn’t have any way to meet senior attorneys of various practices. The panel gave me a way to talk to them. By that experience, I was bitten by the bug of bar service.”
Foster eventually became a director and then a president of the Dallas Asian American Bar, but she didn’t confine herself to that organization. She has held positions as officers with the Dallas Bar Association Board, the Dallas Women Lawyers Association and the Equal Access to Justice Campaign for the Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program.
Foster is currently on the board of directors of the Texas Women’s Foundation.
To read the full article in Texas Lawyer, click here.
