As a kid, Amy Harman Burkart wanted to be a lawyer like you see on tv with the courtroom lawyering and criminal procedure. After law school, she honed in on being a federal prosecutor and set herself up to be in the right place at the right time. Timing, though, is a funny thing and a couple of roadblocks and other experiences came up first. Find out how staying true to yourself can sometimes steer you to the original dream after all.
As a kid, Amy Harman Burkart wanted to be a lawyer like you see on tv with the courtroom lawyering and criminal procedure. After law school, she honed in on being a federal prosecutor and set herself up to be in the right place at the right time. Timing, though, is a funny thing. When her husband wanted to go to business school she decided it would be good to try to expand their family so was an adjunct law professor when she became a mother. Then just as she was ready for the role in Boston, there was a hiring freeze and no openings meant she needed an alternate plan.
In this episode, find out from Amy how staying true to yourself can sometimes steer you to the original dream after all … on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode’s Guest
Amy Harman Burkart is a litigation specialist who has been associated with many esteemed law firms and has had a variety of experiences in the law. Her dreams of serving as a federal prosecutor came true when she served as an Assistant United States Attorney for nearly a decade and was the Chief of the Cybercrime Unit. She is currently a trial attorney at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. She lives with her husband and kids in the Boston area and is always up for a fun time. So call her if the need for a costume box should arise.
For another story about hanging on until the timing is right, listen to our episode with Elizabeth Manheim.
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Amy Harman Burkart: Someone who talks as much as I do gets told that they should be a lawyer from an early age. So I think that that was something people had told me when I was a little girl, but I didn't know how to do that or what that looked like. And then some of my friends at Dartmouth were taking the LSAT, so I took that. I'm good at standardized tasks, so I did well, but I think I wisely thought maybe I should work for a little bit and get out of the bubble.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: As a kid, Amy Harman Burkart wanted to be a lawyer like you see on tv with the courtroom lawyering and criminal procedure. After law school, she honed in on being a federal prosecutor and set herself up to be in the right place at the right time. Timing, though, is a funny thing and a couple of roadblocks and other experiences came up first. Find out how staying true to yourself can sometimes steer you to the original dream after all on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today I’m here with Amy Harman Burkhardt and we are going to talk about back and forths and taking the lead in many domains and we'll see where this, I'm sure it's gonna be far reaching. So Amy, thanks so much for being here.
AB: It's awesome to talk to you.
LJR: All right, so I start these interviews the same way with each of our guests, and I asked two questions. They are these: when we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
AB: I showed up at Dartmouth, pretty much the same person I am now, but with a lot of. Growing along the way. So I I've listened to the podcast, my friends have done 'em. It's been really fun to hear the stories and the journeys of our classmates. So thank you for doing this. And I knew the question was coming, so I thought about it and decided that in many ways, I'm, exactly the same person I've always been, for better or worse. I think maybe a pretty genuine person. I think I just had a lot, I was very naive when I came to school. I was very well loved, but I had not traveled much. I hadn't been to many places. I didn't have much exposure to many. Of the things that some of my classmates were very familiar with. I had my first kiss at Dartmouth, my first beer at Dartmouth, and all of the growing that I did in those years was really awesome, but I was still the same person and I still am the same person, again maybe for better or worse at times, I still have costume bins in. Perfectly labeled and organized in my basement and color coded bin system for different holidays and it's often pillaged for high school parties now that I have teenagers, but I still use them myself or whenever I can find out that there's a theme party going on, I'm there, which I am pretty sure was me at 17 and 18 too. And frankly, that was me in high school. But when we were in school, I always say to the kids, things were really hard in the eighties, mostly, like when we were watching Stranger Things. So I didn't like aliens or anything, but you know, you, it was much more segmented who you were, right? You if you were a nerd, and I was a athlete that I was a runner. So that's a nerd athlete. So if you were a nerd, you were the nerd and you didn't get, it's not like I was turning down beers. I didn't get invited to the parties with the beers. I was babysitting and studying and running and doing these other things. And I felt like at Dartmouth I got to be all more fully me. And I keep being me.
LJR: So what I'm hearing you say you are is uber organized but with a mean streak of fun. So that's kind of what I remember and that seems, that seems to be right. So where did the thought about who you would not, not so much the values and the kind of intrinsic who you are, but how that would manifest in the real world outside of those four years. When did you start thinking about what that was gonna look like?
AB: Again, I think it's probably, I. All along, this is kind of what I would have wanted to do. The path that I took to get where I am is, you know, maybe the Plan B used to be a joke that you know, not in the contraceptive sense, but in the sense of maybe not always taking the most linear path that my friends made when I was in college and that I think continues to this day sometimes in terms of I think I'm gonna get to this certain place. It doesn't go the way I think. I'm relatively tenacious. That's probably also a quality that I've always had. And so I still ultimately get there. But like, wow, that was an interesting journey. So I have ended up kind of exactly where I would've, I think hoped. And it's kind of cool, you know, when I was a federal prosecutor people would say sometimes as a joke in the elevator when someone would say, how are you? They'd say, oh, living a dream. And I remember thinking, I mean, literally, this is like actually literally my dream.
I live in the nicest suburb that any of my cousins lived in, and I have a better Jeep Wrangler than the one that I had when I was in high school. And it is full of my husband and my free kids and my black lab. And I love my job and I wanted to be a trial lawyer like you see on tv. And that's what I got to do. So that's all super awesome and I'm blessed and grateful that that has worked out. And I have wonderful friends and awesome family, but also like life is hard and all kinds of crazy things happened along the way and are continuing to happen. I got a call from my teenage daughter like three minutes before this started and she's like, can you talk? And I was like, Ugh, no, I'll call you back. So there's gonna be some situation that's gonna maybe involve, I don't know, you know, kids who knows? It’s is either like in a total crisis or she wants to borrow the car. I don't know.
LJR: Well, I hope the car. So all of this is amazing. I love that you're living the dream, but how did you have such a big dream? Because I think particularly when I've talked to other people, like we didn't really even have visions or like mental models of all the things we could possibly do. And a federal prosecutor does not compute with my 18 year old self of knowing that that's a thing. So where did that come from? Or was it that big or was it a…
AB: No, it was, I mean, I don't know that I knew that term or what it was, but I wanted to be a lawyer like you see on tv. I thought would be cool like a courtroom lawyer and. Murder She Wrote was like my favorite show along with Golden Girls. I was, didn't mention I was a little bit of a nerd. And when I say was, I mean am. So I think that kind of. I think I probably thought of what is now, what turns out to be an ADA would've been the kind of thing that I wanted to do. Or a defense lawyer, which I've also, you know, been in and out of working at big law firms and I've also taught adjunct at law schools. So that world of courtroom lawyering and criminal procedure and that type of thing was, I think something I saw on TV or in the movies. I certainly didn't know anyone that was any of those things, but it looked really cool.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. So you said that this kind of road to get there kind of has these loops and goes back and forth and things, but when did you decide law school, was that a direct after or did that take you a while?
AB: It wasn't. Someone who talks as much as I do gets told that they should be a lawyer from an early age. So I think that that was something people had told me when I was a little girl, but I never, I didn't know how to do that or what that looked like. And then some of my friends at Dartmouth were taking the LSAT, so I took that, but I prepared for it. Like I waitressed the summer before. You know, I, I have a very blue collar background, so I waitressed this summer before senior year. I didn't really even understand why people would get internships or what that looked like because I can make a lot more money waitressing. So I waitressed and I ordered some old LSAT tests and I would take them on the beach and then I'm good at standardized tests. So I did well and I thought, that's cool. I could go to law school, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do and I think I wisely thought maybe I should work for a little bit and get out of the bubble. And I did that. I moved to Boston and that's kind of where I realized that I came from such a small place. You know, when I went to Dartmouth, it was another small town, and so I didn't realize how many of the people around me had experiences that were so much richer and cooler and bigger than I had known about. And that, so that was another bubble when I came back to Boston, I kept running into my cousins in bars. Right. I have a big Irish Catholic family and I felt like it was really small and that's when I decided after working for two years, that I would go to law school and I would go to New York City, cuz that seemed like the big baddest place, one could move. And I thought it would be fun to explore being in New York. And so I went to NYU and then I kept staying, you know, another year, another year, another year. And I ended up being almost 10 years in New York.
LJR: Wow, okay. And directly into kind of the criminal side of things?
AB: Yeah. No. Oh, yes and no. I worked at a big law firm and I was in the white collar practice there, and it was, a big sophisticated firm that had a white collar practice, global firm where I felt like in some ways I was Eliza Doolittle of the firm. You know, I was a little like Red Sox fan and they had like double carpeted hallways. Everything was very quiet and I was like loudly barreling around. But I worked with some amazing attorneys who had formerly been federal prosecutors, and that's where I understood that, okay, assistant U.S. attorney is a federal prosecutor and that's the type of work that they do, and that would be what I would really like to do. That's sort of like honed in on my dream while I was there. But you know, so bumpy roads, right? I didn't go there right away to law school. And part of that was because I had the small bubble and part of it was because, you know, I, I was kind of stuck a little bit in the Dartmouth world because I had started dating—controversially at the time, although less so now—a freshman when I was a senior.
LJR: Ooh.
AB: And that ended up like still happening. So that kind of kept me like a little back and forth into that world. And then I moved to New York and loved that, and he moved to New York and then we broke up and then, later we got back together. So now we've got three kids and the controversy of our ages is still brought up, I would say every couple weeks. So it's, we're really past it.
But no, I was at a big law firm and I decided that I wanted to be an AUSA and I was working with a lot of former AUSAs who had really good connections in the southern district of New York. And so I thought that would be great. I could apply for a job there that would increase my chances of getting it.
I explained that to my husband and he explained that he wanted to go to business school and then I also thought I wanted to have a kid. When were we gonna do that? So we kind of worked out a plan where I would try to have a baby and then we would go to business school and I said he could go wherever he wanted to go, and then I was hoping we could maybe move to Boston for the rest of our lives, and he was receptive to that. He's from Toronto. That was his first choice, but I couldn't practice in Toronto. So, but then I couldn't be an AUSA, so we went to back to Dartmouth. He went to Tuck and I taught at Vermont Law School and I had another baby. And then we came back to Boston and the US Attorney's office wasn't hiring. There was a federal hiring freeze. And so I went to a law firm again, waited for a couple years, and then they lifted the freeze and I applied again and, or I applied for the first time. But long after I decided that that's what I would want to do. And I got the job then and I stayed there for 10 years.
I was in the cyber crime unit the whole time and when I left I was chief of the cyber crime unit and got to do some amazing work both in the cyberspace and national security space. I did cross office team that I co-led that did human trafficking work primarily. It was a criminal civil rights but in Massachusetts that's primarily sex trafficking and some labor trafficking. So I got to do that type of work. I did economic crimes. I really had a very rich experience there and it was exactly what I hoped it would be, and I loved it. I just, you know, got there years after I thought I would, because I thought that path would happen in New York and it happened, you know, in a couple steps along the way where I also got to like teach in Vermont and work in another law firm and have another experience there and support my husband being where he wanted to be. So that was great and I bring that up regularly that I supported him and got to do what he wanted to do. So you know, hybrid.
LJR: It's teamwork. Exactly.
AB: My turn.
LJR: Okay. And so when that assistant US attorney…
AB: AUSA, Yeah. Assistant US attorney. Yeah.
LJR: When that assistant US attorney job came up, was, could it have been in Boston? Was it in Boston?
AB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every, yes, there are US attorneys, every district in the country and Massachusetts has one and then everyone who works for them as an assistant US attorney. So federal prosecutor, I worked closely with the Department of Justice Lawyers in the cybercrime and intellectual property section. And I also worked in nationwide with the other cyber lawyers. So that was really fun. We had a great nationwide network and yes, that was right outta Boston. And then after 10 years I left again and went back into private practice and found that the cyber world in private practice was much more narrow and focused on either incident response, cyber incident response or privacy laws. And I really had enjoyed having a, a broad background of different things. And so I certainly had done ransomware cases and cyber incident response and nation state actor stuff, but it was very narrow and private practice and covid, you know, that was the worst. Turns out I'm an extrovert. And so working at a law firm after leaving, like this whole group of people are always used to very collaborative investigations and agents and other prosecutors and a lot of buzz. And we worked right in the courthouse and I loved that. And then all of a sudden I was like working out of one of my kids' bedrooms, and I hated that part of it. I was very isolated. And then one of my kids got very sick, had a serious illness, and he's doing awesome now, and that's in our rear view mirror. But that led me to take a step back and decide to go back to the government. And so now I'm a trial attorney at the Securities &Exchange Commission, the SEC. In Boston, but I work around the country, including most of my cases right now are in the southern district of New York. That's kind of fun because that brought me right back to where I thought it would be, you know, if I was applying to be in AUSA there, now I'm working with the prosecutors that, you know, just sort of like 10 years ago, I thought I would maybe do that and I kind of did it in a circuitous way.
LJR: Yes. Okay. So that sounds amazing. But that does not sound to me like stepping back or having kind of a, I don't know what the structure is, but to make a change for a family crisis and that sort of thing. It sounds like a very big job. How does that work exactly?
AB: He's doing great now.
LJR: Okay. Okay.
AB: I stepped back and took some time off when my family needed me. But, it we are now through that, the woods on that.
LJR: So you used the stepping back as also a time to recalibrate and say, what do I really want? And then made the shift.
AB: Exactly. I had been thinking that it wasn't a great fit for me where I was. But there's a clarifying aspect to one of your kids being sick and your family needing you, and also getting out of something that you are in, that you are telling yourself is gonna be okay, right? It comes back to like maybe how everybody's good things are their bad things and as I mentioned, I’m self-reflective enough to know that I'm very tenacious and that can be a really good thing. And when misapplied, that can be a bad thing. And I had set a goal and I was going to do it, and it was hard for me to see, actually this is not what I had hoped it would be. It's not working. I need to readjust. You know, being hardworking and focused on achieving your goals isn't good if your goals need to change. And so I adjusted my goals and have been incredibly happy in this role.
LJR: And it's not like there's a lack of really interesting cyber stuff going on at the federal level these days.
AB: No, it's totally fun. I mean, I was here less than a year and was, you know, co-leading the FTX investigation and litigation work with another Dartmouth alum in Chicago and one of my good friends in the attorney's office who moved here. And that type of work—working with witnesses, working on investigations, working with the agents and the people who really dedicate their lives to like figuring out tricky problems—that has always been the most fun work. So I feel really privileged to be able to go back and do it.
LJR: Yeah, collaborative with that kind of extrovert spirit and the nerd part, like this seems really in your wheelhouse, in your wheelhouse.
AB: Yeah. My wheelhouse.
LJR: Awesome. So when Amy, you think back to…You say that you haven't changed, that you're still the same Amy, you feel as though….If you were to go back to the younger Amy and say to her, Hey, look, look at this whole trajectory and where we are. Would she have like gone, oh, I didn't really think that was possible and be excited about that? Would she not believe you? What would, what would she say?
AB: She'd probably be, you know, quite excited about? She always was. I think I wouldn't be, my life is very different than, certainly, you know, kind of like in a socioeconomic way than anything that I was even aware existed when I was a kid. And that part I think I would've thought was hilarious. I mean, I first started skiing when our junior high had a program where you could go to the Blue Hills, which is like right outside of Boston and you could pay $10. And I skied in jeans with sunglasses and like a scarf wrapped around me. And only one person I knew had dedicated ski pants, which I thought was like the fanciest thing ever, right? And now my kids like drop into the trees at Deer Valley and Alta and they're like buzzing around. I'm like, you know, you guys are total spoiled…This is crazy. So I don't think I even knew that those were places that people skied or things that happened. And I think I would've probably been psyched. Like, I'd be like, wait, that's your house? That's awesome. I would've been very happy about how it all turned out, but you know, again, along the way it's, it's hard. It's hard to have three kids. It's, you know, my dog is beautiful and I love her, and I also had to get allergy shots every day for two years because it turned out I was like wildly allergic to her. And then she ate Tylenol one day and she almost died and we spent $7,000 like having her like restored to health. And I was like despondent and crying every day. And my husband's like, you didn't even like the dog. I'm like, it turns out I love the dog. You know? So, you know, life is like rich and often kind of gritty. And sometimes like really scary. But through it all, I have had awesome family, awesome friends, and you know, whenever I can manage to do it, a lot of goofy fun along the way.
LJR: Well, that is fabulous and I love the goofy fun and I love the gratitude. I think both probably serve you daily probably both in work and a busy home life. And so Amy, thank you so much for sharing all this with us. I really appreciate your being here.
AB: You're welcome. It was really fun to talk with you and thanks for doing this. It's a really great way to stay connected with people.
LJR: That was Amy Harman Burkart, a litigation specialist who has been associated with many esteemed law firms and has had a variety of experiences in the law. Her dreams of serving as a federal prosecutor came true when she served as an Assistant United States Attorney for nearly a decade and was the Chief of the Cybercrime Unit. She is currently a trial attorney at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. She lives with her husband and kids in the Boston area and is always up for a fun time. So call her if the need for a costume box should arise.
We are always up for a good time, too, and delight in bringing you the full range of life's experiences with our guests each week. Please continue tuning in at RoadsTakenShow.com or wherever you find your podcasts and do consider following, subscribing, rating and reviewing us. It will hopefully help bring new listeners to my guests and me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on Roads Taken.