ALUMNI PROFILE: Linda Broy­hill ’71
BY LEIGH ANN COLEMAN ’09

Linda S. Broy­hill ’71 knew exactly where she wanted to con­tinue her edu­ca­tion after high school. How­ever, the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia (UVA) at that time didn’t allow women to attend for their first year. Her father tried to con­vince her to attend The Col­lege of William & Mary, but Broy­hill wasn’t so sure. Aim­lessly search­ing for an alter­na­tive, she saw an ad for Wes­ley Col­lege in Sev­en­teen mag­a­zine. “I thought, ‘This looks great! It’s a small school, it’s close to home, it’s near the beach. I think I’ll go there.’ ” She applied, then came for a visit and fell in love with the campus.

At Wes­ley, Broy­hill said she was “one of those bor­ing peo­ple,” a clas­si­fi­ca­tion she cred­its for help­ing her grad­u­ate with a 4.0 GPA. But beyond earn­ing good grades, she thrived in an atmos­phere that allowed her to explore new beliefs and ideals. Expe­ri­ences at Wes­ley also helped equip this first gen­er­a­tion career woman with the skills to tackle any adver­sity that would come her way.

Although Broy­hill was raised and edu­cated in the Catholic faith, she kept an open mind about Protes­tantism while attend­ing a United Methodist school. Wes­ley stu­dents were then required to attend chapel and take a reli­gion course. “I took Old Tes­ta­ment and it was one of my favorite courses. I loved going to chapel and I loved the Protes­tant Church and I thought, ‘Gee, maybe this is what Chris­tian­ity is all about.’ At that young age, it pro­foundly affected my out­look on the world,” said Broy­hill. The new per­spec­tive she gained was not unlike the unique expe­ri­ences that many young peo­ple encounter today through higher edu­ca­tion. The major differ­ence, how­ever, was the time period in which she expe­ri­enced col­lege and the con­text of the world around her. In the early 1970s, more doors were start­ing to open for young women. Although women had been attend­ing col­lege for years, schools across the nation were still male dom­i­nated and most women grad­u­ates were pursu­ing more tra­di­tion­ally fem­i­nine jobs. Amongst the unrest of the Viet­nam War and Women’s Lib­er­a­tion, Broy­hill was among the first gen­er­a­tion of women seek­ing a career in law.

The pro­gres­sive men­tor­ing from Wes­ley fac­ulty mem­bers allowed stu­dents like Broy­hill to come to their own con­clu­sions and estab­lish their own belief sys­tems. Per­haps the most engag­ing was Uncle Louie. Broy­hill remem­bers his Eng­lish class and all the research she con­ducted for her paper defend­ing women’s rights, just as land­mark case Roe v. Wade altered abor­tion laws to pro­tect women’s health.

Out­side of the class­room, Broy­hill thor­oughly enjoyed liv­ing with the other young women in Budd Hall. Spend­ing time with her dor­m­mates, shar­ing the laughs and the tears, tak­ing trips to Rehoboth Beach and the occa­sional mis­chief rounded out her edu­ca­tion with a healthy sup­port sys­tem. “It was the hap­pi­est time of my post high school edu­ca­tion. I was very happy at Wes­ley,” she said.

After grad­u­at­ing from Wes­ley Junior Col­lege, Broy­hill trans­ferred to UVA. Although oth­ers encour­aged her again to attend William & Mary, she was deter­mined to fol­low her dream and go to the uni­ver­sity she had already waited two years to attend. Her expe­ri­ences there were the com­plete oppo­site of those at Wes­ley. The uni­ver­sity was much larger and pre­dom­i­nantly male. In class, Broy­hill was one of only a hand­ful of female stu­dents in classes that ranged from 150 to 250 stu­dents. At that time, the fac­ulty was com­prised of all men and some would not even call on female stu­dents “for fear they would cry.” Broy­hill lived off cam­pus in an apart­ment by her­self and at times, she wished she was back at Wesley.

She had entered a new world for career-oriented women in Amer­ica with­out the lux­ury of female men­tors. Still, Broy­hill faced each chal­lenge head on and never compro­mised her goals. She grad­u­ated from UVA with her B.S. in Edu­ca­tion in 1973 and decided to return to UVA six years later to pur­sue a degree in law. She hoped to help the fam­ily busi­ness, Broy­hill Enter­prises, Inc., by prac­tic­ing real estate law. “I thought I had the right skills and it was that time in our coun­try where women were empow­ered to go into male dom­i­nated professions.”

Shortly after grad­u­at­ing from law school in 1983, Broy­hill worked for Hazel & Thomas, P.C., a small real estate firm where she ended up prac­tic­ing bank­ruptcy law. In 1992, she prac­ticed at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP. By 2003, Broy­hill was prac­tic­ing both bank­ruptcy and real estate in her cur­rent posi­tion at inter­na­tional firm Reed Smith LLP in Falls Church, Vir­ginia. A lit­tle over a year ago, she was elected by her peers and the pub­lish­ers of Vir­ginia Busi­ness Magazine’s Legal Elite as one of Virginia’s “Best Bank­ruptcy Attor­neys”. One of her great­est mem­o­ries and accom­plish­ments was when her firm filed and con­firmed the first Chap­ter 11 reor­ga­ni­za­tion plan for a Class I Rail­road in the United States under the new Bank­ruptcy Code.

Broy­hill now lives in Vienna, Vir­ginia with her hus­band Robert Lawrence, who is also an attor­ney. Although free time is scarce for the cou­ple, Broy­hill says she enjoys that time indulging her “pas­sion for fash­ion.” She also loves to spend time in her gar­den and likes to cook, par­tic­u­larly in the win­ter months. Her hus­band is an accom­plished sax­o­phon­ist and loves to enter­tain when they have get-togethers with fam­ily or friends.

Despite the long hours of such a demand­ing career, Broy­hill served her local Amer­i­can Red Cross board for the past 20 years, the last three of which she served as chair. As a native of Arling­ton, Vir­ginia and a res­i­dent of Fair­fax County since 1960 when the area was still very rural, Broy­hill is very proud of how the area has grown and pros­pered since then. “Fair­fax County and Tyson’s Cor­ner have become one of the largest, most pop­u­lous areas in Vir­ginia. I enjoyed watch­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of my home­town into a lit­tle thriv­ing city.” Serv­ing and pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship to her local Red Cross chap­ter was very mean­ing­ful because it allowed her to give back to the com­mu­nity she loves and still be ded­i­cated to her profession.

Look­ing back on her career, Broy­hill cred­its Wes­ley Col­lege for pro­vid­ing the build­ing blocks for a life­time of suc­cess. “Wes­ley helped me get into UVA and law school and gave me the foun­da­tion that makes me who I am now,” she said. She jokes that her great­est accom­plish­ment may be sur­viv­ing 20 years of prac­tic­ing law. “It’s been a wild ride, that’s for sure.”

Her advice to cur­rents stu­dents, espe­cially young women, who are con­sid­er­ing a career in law is to real­ize the inevitable sac­ri­fices that come with such an ambi­tious career path. “This is a stress­ful job. It is a lot of respon­si­bil­ity and long hours,” she noted. Yet, she is quick to note the high­lights of her field. “In the entire prac­tice of law what I enjoy the most is when I have a diag­nos­tic chal­lenge. I like being able to find a way to fix a prob­lem or find an answer to a ques­tion no one else can find. That’s what I have always excelled at,” she said.

When Broy­hill grad­u­ated from Wes­ley, she received a small sil­ver candy dish as a reward for her per­fect GPA. Recently, she found the tar­nished sil­ver memento, had it pol­ished and now proudly dis­plays it in her home. “When­ever I see it, it reminds me of Wes­ley and all the fond mem­o­ries.” To this day, she still con­sid­ers it one of her most cher­ished possessions.