Oral History Program Jane Marquardt Interviewed by Lucas Eddy 12 April 2016 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jane Marquardt Interviewed by Lucas Eddy 12 April 2016 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Marquardt, Jane, an oral history by Lucas Eddy, 12 April 2016, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Jane Marquardt Circa 2010 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Jane Marquardt, conducted on April 12, 2016, in Centerville, Utah, by Lucas Eddy. Jane discusses her life and experiences as a minority leader in Northern Utah. LE: Tell me a little bit about your background, growing up and into your teen years. What was life like? JM: Well, I was born in Dayton Ohio. We moved to Utah when I was in second grade. None of us wanted to move to Utah. My family was my mom, my dad, my little brother, and myself. In second grade, I had my friends set up, my mom had her friend set up, and I don't think my brother cared so much. As we drove across the country, I remember going, “Where are we going?” But Dad promised us that we would learn to ski and that I would get a horse, so that was the good sweetener. He gave my mom a piano, so we moved to Ogden, and I lived there until I finished high school. It was a great place to grow up. LE: What activities did you do for fun? JM: Growing up, our family was always real active, so did a lot of hiking, horseback riding, a little bit of camping. I mostly did that with the Girl Scouts. My mom was the Girl Scout leader, so it gave me early chances to be in charge of little projects and things. I was a Girl Scout until about the middle of my high school years, but did a lot of that. I took a lot of music lessons; I didn't master anything. I mostly took the piano, but I also tried my hand at the violin, the guitar, some sort of flute or clarinet. None of them lasted more than a couple of months until my family begged me to stop. Except the piano, I could still play that a little bit. LE: Did you have an idea of what your goals were? What was your mindset? 1 JM: Growing up female in the ‘60s, I really didn't have any sense of being a professional. The only women in our family that ever worked were teachers, so I went into Elementary Education. That was my major for my first couple years of college, and I actually had a chance to work at a Native American school. My dad’s company at the time, Thiokol, was running down near Roswell, New Mexico. I had the chance to work there; I think it was the summer after my first year of college, thinking that because I was an elementary education major, this would be a good experience, but after about a month of being in the first, second, and third grades, I thought, “I don't want to do this.” I also had to take a class the next semester in college called, “Art in the Elementary School.” I am not very artistic; I thought, “I can't make bulletin boards,” so I started looking around for other majors. I remember taking it seriously, thinking, “I already declared elementary education, oh my gosh, I am 19. I can't change now.” Now looking back, how silly that is. You can change many times. But I remember my grandfather who was a college professor and lived in West Virginia, he sat down with me and gave me a pep talk. He said, “We’ll look around; you don't have to be an elementary teacher." So I looked around through college. I tried philosophy for a while, then psychology, and I finally graduated in political science, but I still didn't really have a sense of what I would do with it. I happened to take the law school entrance exam—the LSAT—and I did really well on it. So it was just sort of a fluke that I even went to law school. Looking back, it was a great decision, but I can't claim, “You have always wanted 2 to be a lawyer.” I just sort of fell into it through a series of try-and-try-again in college, and “What did I want to do?” I was going to say, I mostly had fun in college, which is the most important thing I've learned, still, is all the relationships that I developed. I still keep in touch with a lot of my college friends and was active in a sorority and was on the ski team. I was active in a couple other clubs. I was active politically with some campus groups, and so the relationships that I built there was a great experience. That was the most important thing that I got out of college. LE: What role do you think relationships and building relationships play in leadership? JM: To me, I think it's the most important element of leadership. If you aren't good at relationships, you won't be a leader. It's just that simple. I think all the world’s problem—no matter how complex—only get solved through people being in relationship with one another and figuring out how to act. You need scientists, you need technicians; you have to be good at relationships, or they have to align themselves with people who are good at relating to other people, or you never figure out how to take those scientific discoveries forward. So I think that is key. LE: Were there any experiences you had growing up that made you feel like you could be a leader? Were you interested in leadership opportunities? JM: Yes, I always intended to end up being the captain or the chair or the president of whatever organization I was in. I think it started with very small organizations. It could have been a Girl Scout project, or my junior posse that we did horseback riding and barrel competitions in. I ended up being the captain of that. They 3 weren't huge major clubs, and I was an officer in the club and high school and I think there was some political club I was an officer in. But I always intended to be an officer and one of the reasons was because I enjoy relating to people. So I would usually know a lot of people and I'm also pretty organized. I was just good at other people—probably came up with the brilliant ideas but I was good at organizing them and making sure that we did them. LE: Do you feel like maybe that was just a natural talent that you were born with? JM: Probably a desire to be around people is a natural part of me. But other than that, I think I just learned it. If I'm with a group of people and everyone saying where we should go to lunch, I'm always the one that goes, “Let's go here.” Let's just stop talking about it, let's go there. So I'm happy to jump into a vacuum of decision and just make a decision to move forward. I think that and in college, I ended up being the head of various campus clubs that I was involved with. I was the captain of the ski team at the time. Although, when I was on the University of Utah ski team, it was before title IX and so there was no scholarships for women's athletics. The men's team had a coach and scholarships and pay their way to races and we had sweaters. The University gave us sweaters and other stuff like that. A coach that we trained with at home, but when we went away to races, the coach didn't come with us. So we were on our own. But it was actually fun. LE: Did you feel that was unfair for the men's team to have all those privileges? Did you feel you needed to push for change? What was your experience? 4 JM: I felt certainly on the ski team example that was unfair. But I don't ever recall being real angry about it. It was just okay this is the hand that we're all dealt right now, so let's go out and show why it's incorrect and why future generations…in fact it was just a couple years later where they started having women's scholarships, so just trying to be an example of why things need to change. LE: What are your core values? JM: I think the number one value for myself is integrity. It's important in myself and it's important to me in the people that I want to be around. So I often give the example of in my early legal practice days, I was certainly never the most brilliant lawyer. But I did very well and I had a great reputation and the reason I had a great reputation is I never lied about the fax of my case. I had mostly a civil practice, had a lot of two or three day trials and the judges and the other attorneys just came to know that if I said something that I have the facts to back it up. And you argue the best care possible for your client, but I never made things up. And too often attorneys are under such pressure from their clients or to win or to present a good case, they tend to go overboard instead of stating the facts if anything I'm understated. I think that my colleagues and the judges of appreciated it and it helped me get a real good reputation early on. As I've gone through life I've looked for that in people that I hire in people that I associate with. They need to tell the truth and do what they say they're going to do. As soon as I'm around somebody who repeatedly doesn't end up doing what they say they'll do I tend to write them off as somebody I [don't] want to be close to. LE: Any other core values? 5 JM: I think loyalty is an important one. I always am very loyal. I have friends that I've had in high school and college and law school and we stay in touch with each other and are loyal to one another. Very loyal to my family members. So that's one and the other one I think is the sense of having fun. This is our lives, I don't know if we live more than once so this is the time we've got and we ought to have fun with what we're doing. So if I'm talking to other people about career decisions they're making or just whether they should do a particular project. There is always an element of "are you going to have fun doing this?" And if you're not going to have some degree of fun then why you doing it? And I got a lot of that from my dad. He loved to have fun and he love to play jokes on people and make things silly. And at the same time he had a very serious Mission of what he wanted to do in life but it had to be fun. LE: Have you had mentors that influenced you? JM: I think certainly my two biggest mentors would be my parents. My dad was just a master of creating relationships. When I started to travel with him in the early days of being on the Management & Training Corporation (MTG) board which I started doing right when the company was formed in 1981. He would teach me how to make sure you knew about the people you were about to meet with. This was long before computers so he would just had an index cards where you would keep notes on peoples passions or if there is some playing baseball or a daughter playing baseball or whatever. He would then look at his notecards to remember to ask them about that. And people were always impressed and so I remember sitting by him on a planes on the way to a meeting where we would go 6 over a list of attendees and their spouses and we would quiz each other about those people and it was just a good skill that he taught me about building relationships. And my mom has a very keen sense of social justice and so she always asking the question when you're doing something "is this fair to people? Other people in the world who don't have as much as you have?" So we grew up without awareness. Other than my parents I would say my mentors have been really my colleagues. My friends from law school both men and women. There's probably a group of about 10 of us who have always stayed in touch. We go on river trips together every couple of years. Now it's been almost 40 years since we graduated from law school but we've stayed in touch and we've gone through, people have gone through marriages and divorces and deaths in and different jobs and problems and celebrations but because we're all sort of on that same path together, I think we mentor each other. For me there weren't a lot of Women older than I was that I knew that were practicing law. So I found my mentors more in my group of friends. LE: Have you had the opportunity to mentor other people? JM: Yeah, lots of people; I always try to go out of my way particularly for people who would be in the same ward minorities myself so women and gay people who I think are sometimes hidden minority might not be obvious someone's gay. But sometimes in our society they're still not treated fairly. Particularly when I will miss a young lawyer and negotiating my professional world, I knew what it was 7 like so I went out of my way to try to mentor other people that I saw coming along. Most of those mentoring relationships aren't something that lasted for years and years but it might've been a couple of months of taking someone to lunch. When new women used to come to town to practice and there weren't very many I would make a point of getting to know them and taking to taking them to lunch couple of times. And seeing if I could give them any advice. And when young LGBT lawyers would come along I would try to go out of my way to help them negotiate whatever they were trying to get through. I can't think of many it, I can think of one woman that I would say I've mentor for her entire legal career. It's a fun relationship and I've heard her give speeches where she always says, “Jane Marquardt is the reason I'm a lawyer” and she got to be a much greater lawyer than I ever was so it's fun to hear her give that speech. And she's a good example of, you know, successful mentoring is when your student becomes your teacher. So they learn more than you do and achieve higher plateaus than you achieve, it's very rewarding. LE: As a minority leader in Northern Utah, what are some of the biggest challenges you faced or opposition? JM: I don't know if you want this story. I'll tell you and can cut it out if you want. 20 years ago in the mid 90s there was a legal magazine Voir Dire, it was published by the litigation section of the State Bar and it wrote a feature on me because by then I'd been practicing close to 20 years and it talked about me as a good lawyer and a good litigator and in the article which was a full page and mention 8 something about that I have a partner and was helping her raise her children, that I had the stepchildren. It didn't actually say I was gay but you know there was an implication there. And so that was published and like the next month some guy wrote, another lawyer wrote a letter to the editor about how dare they honor somebody who was openly gay and that was just a moral aberration wrong to do that. So they published that letter to the editor and the response to it was just amazing. It was great for me because 100 different lawyers most of them who I knew but I didn't know them all signed a letter to the Bar Journal which was a bigger magazine then the first magazine where it had appeared, In my defense and “How dare you malign Jane just because she's gay. She has the courage to be authentic." It was all sorts of affirmation for me. And it wasn't just affirmation for me, it was affirmation for other gay lawyers at the time who didn't dare be open. In the mid 90s still people were worried about losing their clients or having judges discriminate against them so there I was in a very public forum that I had never intended to be in but it turned out to be positive. Then the story got picked up by the Standard Examiner at and the Tribune and the Deseret news. Then I got to be an AP story so it just kept growing, But it was a good example of how an unintended mentorship of others just by being willing to be authentic. LE: How does that contribute to who you are as a person and as a leader? JM: Yeah I think all of us whatever our individual life experience is, we should celebrate that and realize that those are our gifts. Whatever background we come from that's what makes us unique and that's what allows us to contribute 9 whatever we have to contribute. I always felt that as a female attorney an error when, I started practicing in Ogden there was one woman who is in practicing a while and then there was another woman I had gone to law school with that was it. So I felt the real pressure in court and also among clients to be really good because there was an assumption that if you hire an attorney who is male they're going to be good because my gosh they are a lawyer. If you hired an attorney who is female you had to prove that you were just as good. So I think I worked very hard, I was always prepared to be very good. That wasn't really a bad thing; it was good that it just gave me a motivation to make sure I was really good at what I did. I think it's an example of whoever you are and wherever you come from, whether it's an economic hardship, You don't quite fit in with the religion in your neighborhood or you have a physical disability it's not something to be hidden, It's something to celebrate and say these are my life experiences so this is what I bring to this problem that we're working on now for this project or this relationship. It's why people like having relationships with you. Nobody would really have a long relationship with somebody who is just a cardboard cutout of normal. LE: What advice do you have for minority leaders or future minority leaders? JM: Try a lot of things. And figure out what fits. There's a way to do most anything you want to do just if you really want to do it enough keep working at it. Advice I give to people just starting out whether they're a minority or not it is, be willing to be flexible and what you think you want to do when you're 19 isn't necessarily what you're going to do when you're 29 or 39 or 59. 10 Life is about trying things for a while maybe you get sick of it and you have the skills to then go learn something else. Just being willing to dive in and realize that if the first one doesn't work out it's not a failure it's just now you learn why I don't want to do that it's just the process of figuring out what fits and what doesn't. There's not really any reason not to get started. Other thing I would say to a young person some sort of minority status is really look for an older mentor who has gone through some of the things, Same things that you have and they'll probably have some good advice for you. If you are a person who is physically challenged or in a wheelchair I imagine that somebody else who is a professional who has lived life can a wheelchair is going to know a lot more practical things to tell you then I would be able to tell you. LE: Do you have any other insights about minority leaders in Utah? Are things changing, are there different trends you've seen? JM: Yeah I mean Salt Lake City has a lesbian mayor right now. That's not so expected for the state of Utah and I think that's gotten a lot of attention but it's an example of people are willing to look at someone's leadership skills, their experience, And not judge them on whether they fit the stereotype of who would be the leader of a city. Although Salt Lake is probably the most liberal city in Utah so that probably is the stereotype. I guess when there's a lesbian governor of Utah you really know we've broken the stereotype. LE: Are there other things you've learned from mentors? JM: I would say I learn both from dad from other mentors I've had is just how much people needs to be listen to. So that when you're with somebody it's really 11 important to be with that person. So especially in the age of cell phones where we are all checking our emails and our twitter accounts all the time and it distracts you from the person in front of you. So the most important thing that you're doing is whatever you're doing right at that moment. It may not be the most important thing in your life, but you're doing it right now so to really be present. And I saw both dad and others that I admire have that skill to really focus in on the person in front of them. There is no more important person in my life right now then you, because I'm talking to you. You know you're not the most important person in my life but right now, 9:30 on this day you are because I'm not talking to anyone else I'm not thinking about anyone else. That's a good awareness to have. I learned that from my mentors. LE: Any other thoughts on leadership or experiences? JM: You can never stop learning it. I think the leadership subject is great to study. I love reading about it, I love going to lectures I always like to follow Nina around and hear what she's talking about. And other people who have workshops and lectures on leadership and team building and for me that's a real passion of mine, I never get tired of learning about it. It's not like if you're interested in it you've ever just got it. You just keep having experiences that build on each other and hopefully you just keep getting better. I often talk to people about finding out what is their unique ability in life. Meaning something that they're, have a lot of passion for and they never get tired of doing it and I think if you're drawn to be a leader then that's probably one of your unique abilities and keep doing it. Keep looking 12 for opportunities, keep reading about it it's not something you'll ever perfect but you can keep getting better at it. LE: That is all I have. Thank you. 13