Biography

In addition to her transactional practice in San Carlos, Teri opened a second office in Hawaii in 2020. After having spent every summer with her grandparents on Oahu during her youth and one to two trips a year as an adult, it was always her dream to be able to spend a more substantial amount of time in the place she considered home. So, Teri took the Hawaii bar exam in 2019, thankfully passed, and moved her home base to Honolulu in March 2020, although she still works on California time! The plan is to travel frequently between her offices in California and Hawaii to be able to meet the needs of all her clients.

One of Teri’s main interests is helping foster parents navigate the legal system on behalf of their foster children, as well as to assist foster children in navigating the system themselves, especially as they age out of the system. Teri has long dealt with the bureaucratic maze that is the foster care system, and helps to make it understandable to the people who are living in it.

Teri has also been a frequent speaker and educator on the issues of gender and sexual orientation harassment and discrimination in schools and in the workplace. Teri served as Co-Chair and Legislative chair of GLSEN Peninsula/South Bay (a two-county chapter of the nation’s largest organization working to combat sexual orientation and harassment in K-12 schools), and frequently conducted classes on gender issues for attorneys and educators in the San Francisco Bay Area. Teri has also testified before the California State Board of Education and the California Senate Select Committee on School Safety on harassment issues in California schools.

Teri is the author of “Honoring Gender Differences in Children” (Open Hands, Volume 13, No. 1, 1997) and co-author of “Sexual Orientation, Our Children and the Law” (GLSEN, 2000), a manual distributed throughout California to educators and school district superintendents. People having a difficult time sleeping can read Teri’s law review article “Yours, Mine and Ours: A Proposal to Bring Certainty to the Use of Personal Goodwill in the Sale of Assets of a C Corporation” (13 Hastings Bus. L.J. 89 (2016))

Professional Experience

Attorney

Private practice, 2002 – present

Lecturer

Santa Clara University School of Law; Santa Clara, CA
Courses taught: Business Planning, Advanced Corporations
2002 – 2015

General Counsel

Al Shugart International; San Carlos, CA
Attorney for start-up resource and venture capital company
1998-2006

Campaign Manager

Managed the Proposition 23 (“None of the Above” Ballot Option) campaign for the California March 2000 primary.

Stay-at-home mom

1989 – 1998

Attorney

Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati; Palo Alto, CA
Corporate and securities practice, primarily for start-up technology companies. 1984 – 1989