Our Leadership Spotlight is a monthly series that WPLN does to highlight women leaders of different backgrounds and industries who are really doing the tough work and paving the way for all of those coming up behind them.
For February’s Leadership Spotlight, I was thrilled to speak with the Honorable Cassandra Kirk, the Chief Magistrate Judge of Fulton County, Georgia.
WPLN is all about building a pipeline of effective leaders, and we were excited to hear about Judge Kirk’s leadership journey. Check out our February Leadership Spotlight:
Judge Kirk started out by saying, “When people ask me to describe who I am, I generally say that I am Georgia born and Mississippi bred. And at my core, I'm curiosity led.”
While their magistrate court is relatively young, having only been around for about 10 years, they process about 80,000 cases per year. But they’ve optimized their processes and created accessibility for those coming into court, so they are able to connect their court to their community.
She credits listening to Master Classes to get herself prepared. A recent one she listened to was with Elaine Welteroth who talks about “superpowers”–the things that make you stand out from the crowd.
Judge Kirk says that her superpowers are, “the ability to see people… and the ability to see solutions and broken systems. And that alone, those two things alone, have given me the opportunity to shape this court, our magistrate court here in Fulton County.”
Over the last 10 years, Judge Kirk has appointed about 45 judges and has shaped the court to be focused on empowering, engaging, and informing their community. She even spearheaded Fulton County’s first juvenile drug court.
Her years spent as a criminal defense attorney, Special Assistant Attorney General, child advocate, Director of Legal Services for the Georgia Merit System, and judge, among other roles, best prepared her for this role and inspired her mission.
Judge Kirk credits courage and clear vision as essential to her job, especially as she had to essentially create the magistrate court from scratch. She also credits great mentors and women in leadership “who have basically stood in the gap and pushed me forward.”
She concluded by providing some valuable advice to other women interested in public service:
“Learn to serve, learn the job, learn who you are, who you hope to be, but more importantly, learn to brag. I think as women, we don't do a very good job of bragging. I have been on interview committees where men have said, I am the X, Y, and Z, and I do A, B, and C. And then when I asked the woman behind that role exactly what happened, she's like, that's not what happened. That's not what happened at all.
But the point is, women, we don't brag enough. And I think for me, I'm of a generation where I think bragging is a little it's almost unseemly. Like, you don't want to be the person going, oh, aren't you wonderful? Aren't you great? But at the same time, if you don't do it, no one else will know about it.”
We couldn’t agree more.Learn more by tuning into this month’s Leadership Spotlight.