I was born Celeste Hernandez-Gerety and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I grew up as the oldest of six children. I attended the University of New Mexico (UNM) for a year, intending to study some combination of music, spanish, economics, and a host of other seemingly unrelated topics. But after spending my freshman year in the basement of the UNM Fine Arts building recording and editing a cd of original music, I left school to pursue a folksinging career. Two years later, after a small tour of west coast bars and coffee houses, I found myself in need of more intellectual stimulation than I could get from writing songs. So I went back to school.

Returning to UNM, I decided to study political science. After my first year back at UNM, I transferred to the University of Maryland—College Park (UMCP), where I graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Government & Politics and a minor in Spanish. While studying at UMCP, I worked as an intern at the Children’s Defense Fund, and then as the Outreach Assistant for the Women’s Edge Coalition (now "Women Thrive"), a non-profit foreign policy advocacy organization.

In 2004, I entered Yale Law School with a focus on public interest law. I started serving low-income clients through the Community Lawyering Clinic in my second semester, and eventually helped to run the clinic as a Student Director. I also served in leadership positions for a number of student organizations, including Yale Law Women, the Rebellious Lawyering Conference, the Latino Law Students Association, and the Student Board of the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization. I spent my first summer of law school at the Legal Aid Society -- Employment Law Center in San Francisco, and my second summer as a Summer Associate for the litigation department of Morrison | Foerster in San Francisco.

Shortly before graduating from law school, I married my husband, an officer in the U.S. Army. His career meant that we would "get" to move to new and exotic locations (like Kansas City, or Fayetteville, NC) every 1-2 years. At that point, I was faced with the interesting puzzle of how to get a legal career to thrive in the face of constant geographic insecurity.

After graduating from law school, I moved back to New Mexico while my husband deployed to Iraq, and worked as a Staff Attorney at the New Mexico Center on Law & Poverty. After a year, we were reassigned to the Kansas City area, and I started re-thinking the utility of getting a traditional job where I'd spend 6 months getting my bearings, 6 months feeling confident and excited about my work, and then--POOF!--I'd disappear when the Army moved us to a new location.

Thus was born my practice as a Freelance Attorney.Working as a freelancer means I maintain a nationwide network of "attorney-clients" who need help on a project basis with legal research / writing / etc., and who want to work with me remotely (or at least don't mind it!). With so many incredible innovations in technology making it easier for people to stay connected regardless of their geographic locations, I'm convinced that the traditional model of office work is destined for at least partial obsolescence, and I plan to be on the forefront of this new age of work. Ultimately, this kind of work creates a win-win situation: I provide my clients with a flexible and low-overhead solution for their project-based work, and myself with the flexibility to embrace the chaotic lifestyle of a military spouse.

Feel free to email me if you'd like to talk about opportunities for collaboration, potential employment situations, or just random thoughts about work and life.

[The Other Me: In my "spare" time, I also run Stiletto Gear, a company that makes clothing for military families.]