Susan Wiseman ’84 embraces role of mentoring women in law

For nearly a decade, Susan Wiseman ’84 has been general counsel and corporate secretary at Braze, a New York City-based cloud software company that provides customer engagement technology for businesses. Among her current responsibilities, Wiseman helps employees navigate through a rapidly changing industry. It’s an undertaking that she can easily relate to. After a 12-year hiatus as a stay-at-home mother, Wiseman says, it was difficult to land a new job as a lawyer. In this Q&A, Wiseman shares lessons about how she made her way back into the workforce and discusses why she assumed the mantle of mentorship.

What inspired your interest in law?

I’m from New York and I grew up on Long Island. I was not a math or a science gal. I always loved debating, reading, writing, and problem solving, and I thought that law would play to my strengths.  

Why did you choose NYU Law?

I did my undergrad degree at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois because I figured I would end up back in the New York area, but wanted some time away to get a different perspective. Northwestern was a great choice for me. They had a pre-law program in the School of Communications that focused on critical and analytical writing, which are skills that have served me well throughout my career. I was very lucky to end up at NYU Law. I think where it’s located, for one—in the Village—definitely appealed to me. You’re in such an interesting part of the city and can actually get out of the pressure cooker of law school to be a part of a bigger world.  

What were your experiences like at NYU Law during the early 1980s?

When I talk to other lawyers, a lot of them say that they didn’t like law school. I loved law school. I was enrolled with the smartest and funniest group of people. The professors were engaging, and the classroom discussions were fascinating. And there was a big focus on community involvement and pro bono work, in addition to providing a first-class legal education. I had a number of great professors. Linda Silberman [Clarence D. Ashley Professor of Law Emerita] taught my Civil Procedure class, and she really stands out to me. One of the most pivotal Civ Pro cases is called Pennoyer v. Neff, and we ended up creating a board game out of it that we gifted her at the end of the year. [University Professor Emeritus] Anthony Amsterdam, who argued Furman v. Georgia, was also an incredible and inspiring professor.

I remember in my first year that Silberman was really tough and very scary. She would start shooting case questions at you. And she would make you stand when she called on you. I remember that the day she called on me, my knees were literally knocking against each other because I was so scared. And then by the third year, I experienced this total change from fear to this feeling of control. As they say, “First year, they scare you to death. Second year, they work you to death. And third year, they bore you to death.” I never found it boring, but other than that, I think that adage is pretty accurate.

What happened after graduating from NYU Law?

I started as a corporate associate at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett, where I received great legal training and also met my husband and many of my closest friends—a total win-win for me. I then went to the US subsidiary of a major industrial company in Germany called Metallgesellschaft Corp. I was there for five years doing general corporate work. And while I was out on maternity leave in 1993, they lost a billion dollars in the oil markets. They fired everyone and shut down US operations, giving me the lovely distinction of having been fired while on maternity leave but being unable to bring a lawsuit.

I later moved to suburbia with my husband and two children, and returned to work as an “of counsel” at O’Sullivan Graev & Karabell, which was one of the first firms to hire women in part-time roles, paying fairly for actual hours worked. And while the concept worked in theory, it didn’t work for me, because when I left for work in the morning, the children were asleep. And then when I got home at night, they were asleep again. So, I quit, thinking that I would take some time and go back to work when my kids were a little older. But I ended up staying home for 12 years, raising my children, getting very involved in my community, doing pro bono work, volunteering and being involved in my kids’ schools.

When I finally decided to go back to work around 2008, I faced a rude awakening, because no one would hire me. I was stunned since I had assumed, incorrectly, that with my education pedigree and experience, I would always be marketable. And then in 2010, someone who had worked with my husband was working at a social media start-up called Buddy Media. She reached out because she needed help with contract work. I started working part-time and within a few months, went full-time, which started the second phase of my career. After a couple of years, the company got acquired by cloud-based software company Salesforce, where I worked as a managing counsel until I went to Braze in 2016.

Why do you think you faced challenges in returning to the workforce?

There are a number of factors at play. For one, I think people are hesitant to take a chance on someone who’s been out of the market for a long time. I think that there is a concern that this person is not going to be committed to the job, or cannot be relied upon to stay in role for the long term. I think it is unfortunate and short-sighted, because there are a lot of people—who are talented and experienced professionals—who leave the workforce for periods of time for a variety of reasons. I would love to see our profession evolve to enable people to make that choice without facing serious professional repercussions. It’s an unfortunate tendency in the industry—one which I hope will change as more women, and even men, take time to pursue other valuable and meaningful pursuits.

I was very lucky, because the woman who ended up hiring me was very patient and understanding, and did a great job of easing me back into the workforce. And I don’t think it’s just a problem for women. The first lawyer I hired here at Braze—who I worked with at Buddy Media and Salesforce, did legal recruiting for a brief period in her career. She told me that when I was first trying to come back into the workforce after taking off twelve years that she never would have hired me if my résumé had come across her desk. And now we have worked together for about 15 years.

I am just a big believer in giving people a second chance. There is someone at Braze on our security team who spent a number of years in federal prison for hacking years ago. He became an ethical hacker, got married, and had kids. When he interviewed with us, there was real concern about hiring him. I met with him and discovered that he’s an incredible guy who made a mistake when he was young. In hiring, we should consider the things that people bring to the table, including the alternative experiences that they’ve had.

Can you tell us about your current job at Braze?

One of the people I had worked with at both Buddy Media and Salesforce went to Braze a year before I did as President and CEO. As Braze began to scale and grow, he hired me as the company’s first lawyer, tasked with building out the commercial function in the near term, and the legal function as a whole over time. I now have a team of 28 lawyers, based in the US; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and the Asia-Pacific region.

Braze enables brands to engage with consumers through a number of channels, including email, SMS, push notifications, WhatsApp and others. It became really clear during COVID, when people weren’t in stores, that the only way that brands could engage with consumers was through their mobile devices. Braze enables brands to communicate with consumers in ways that respect their preferences. Let’s say that you land at an airport in Ohio. A ride service that you have permitted to know your location may ping you when you get off the plane, letting you know that there are a number of drivers at the airport, ready to take you to your hotel. And as an added bonus, it’s giving you a discount if you book within the next five minutes. Unlike advertising, which follows you all over the internet and does things with your data that you may not be aware of, Braze customers only use data provided by the consumer that is fully in line with the consumer’s stated preferences and permissions.  

I came to Braze as employee number 68 and as the first lawyer. They mistakenly thought I was just going to do contracts. What I said to them was, “I have a legal brain, and you have an accounting brain, a finance brain, and an engineering brain. And when we sit down at the table, we’re all going to think about issues in very different ways.” One of the things that I have loved about my time here is that I have always had a seat at the table and have been a part of the team in making decisions. 

I have very strong views about the role of a GC. My job is to evaluate risk to ensure that the business is able to make informed decisions with a clear understanding of the full risk profile. My job is not to say no, but rather to give options and alternatives that enable the business to make the decisions that it is better suited to make. That if they’re solving for X, there may be many different paths to X. And my job has been to understand what they were solving for while complying with legal and industry requirements. I’ve been very lucky to be an integral part of the management team here, taking the company through IPO and playing a role in scaling and growing it from the tiny tech baby that it was when I joined, to the global public company that it is today.

Given public concerns over data harvesting and privacy, how does your work address this issue?

I oversee all regulatory compliance. In the early days of the company, when we were a small start-up in one country, we had two or three lawyers with everyone doing everything. As we have grown, we were able to start hiring specialists to cover each specific legal area, to better address the needs of our scaling business. My team now consists of sub-teams of commercial lawyers, privacy lawyers, employment lawyers, product lawyers, and legal ops. We are a public company, with operations in 12 countries, with myriad legal systems and requirements across all aspects of our business. Between employment law differences and privacy regimes that vary by country and now by state within the US, my team is uber focused on ensuring that we comply with the vast array of these different legal systems and regimes.  It is both challenging and interesting, which I love.

You have focused lately on mentoring young women, often through discussion panels and appearances. Can you talk about this work?

Mentoring women is the absolute best thing I am privileged to do. I do it outside of the confines of my job. I think women in the workforce are struggling to make it all work. As I see it, most women want to have four things in their lives: they want a meaningful relationship that fulfills them in their personal lives; they want a job that pays them incredibly well, that’s really fulfilling, and where they’re making a difference; and they want something that they love— whether it’s children, pets, outside interests, pro bono work or something else that gives their life depth and meaning; and they want time for themselves, whether it’s for friends, to volunteer, or to work out. 

When I was a stay-at-home-mom, I yearned for intellectual stimulation and missed having a job to challenge me. And then when I returned to the workforce, I missed having time to myself. Between work, my job, my kids and my husband, I found that there was no time for me. I think women today are raised to truly believe that they can have it all. I am confident that they can—just maybe not all at once. I see women struggling to do all four of those things really well, all at the same time. And they’re stressing themselves out because somehow, they believe they’re “failing” to achieve that impossible perfection. I think pointing that out is helpful.

I see women having imposter syndrome. I see women being much harder on other women. With age and experience, it’s possible to have a perspective that you don’t when you’re younger. Sharing that perspective and listening to the women who are caught up in that struggle is incredibly meaningful to me. I meet with women at Braze. We pick topics like imposter syndrome. And kindness—is it a strength or a weakness? We talk about how to embrace change and things like giving and receiving criticism. I wish there had been someone to talk about all of this when I was starting out, because I think just hearing, “Okay, I’m not alone,” and getting perspective from someone who’s been there and has gone through a lot of the challenges is so helpful.