Pam Vavra is a practicing attorney and educator. In her law practice, Pam works at a small boutique firm in Santa Clara where she focuses on helping tech startups and small business owners. As an educator, Pam creates innovative multi-disciplinary experiential opportunities for law students and business students at Santa Clara University, where the emphasis is as much on who the students become as what they become. Pam will be addressing timely and powerful issues like: dealing with racism and depression.

Starting her career with a B.S. degree in both math and psychology, Pam found ways to combine the two disciplines in her work for NASA and other government agencies by developing algorithms for real-time vision systems and conducting applied research in artificial intelligence. Her journey from engineer to attorney-educator has taken a number of twists and turns through which she’s served as founder and executive director of several nonprofits, political campaign manager, photographer, skydiver, candidate for public office, farmer, and student of permaculture design. Pam has lived in eight states – CT, MA, AL, TX, MI, OR, ND, and CA. She is married to a retired poker player, Zen Buddhist, philosopher and fly fisherman, volunteers at SCORE and worships as a Quaker at Palo Alto Friends Meeting.