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WORK DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A FOUR-LETTER WORD
Our Distinguished Speakers Series offers practical, personal insights on finding fulfilling careers
To grow into a vital and productive member of society, young people need to identify and embark on a viable career path. That may sound like a no-brainer statement, but for a young person navigating myriad challenges of the modern world—rapidly changing economies, emerging (and vanishing) technologies, the skyrocketing cost of advanced education, entering a competitive job market out of a socio-economically disadvantaged school system—it’s not quite so simple.
 
That’s why PESA created its Distinguished Speakers Series, in which guests from a range of endeavors speak with students to offer real-world insights on their field, its potentials and pitfalls, educational requirements and more. Speakers have ranged from judges to journalists and athletic coaches to auto mechanics. 
 
One such recent speaker was Judge David S. Wesley (ret.), who had a virtual chat with students at Downey High School about his journey to becoming a judge and how it led him to found the Los Angeles Superior Court Teen Court program that now bears his name.
 
During the presentation, Judge Wesley went back to his roots to make a relatable case for why becoming a judge is not such a lofty and unattainable goal. After all, he explained, as the son of a butcher, he attended a predominantly African American middle school where, being in the minority, he experienced his share of bullying; enlisted in the Marines where, as the only Jewish soldier in his unit, he again was the odd man out (“At only 5’9”, they made me the dummy in hand-to-hand combat training,” he said); and was the first in his family to make it to grad school—and he worked for his dad throughout law school. 
Wesley talked about how those experiences helped inspire him to choose law as a career. In addition to making him more empathetic to others’ plights, he says, “When I got out of the Marines, I was really tired of all the rules. I decided to become a defense attorney.” He eventually was named to a judgeship in 1993. 
 
In recounting his career to the students, there was one particularly wrenching case that has stayed with him as an example of how Teen Court, had it been in existence at that time, may have had a profound impact on the defendant's trajectory. “I had to sentence a 22-year-old kid to death, and I thought, jeez, if I could have gotten to him before he did all these terrible things, he wouldn’t be facing the death penalty.”
 
The Teen Court program is centered on, among other things, peer review. “I’ve always believed that peer review is the best tool that we have,” said Wesley. 

It’s exactly these types of up-close and personal interactions with working professionals offering firsthand insights that we believe can inform and inspire young people on their own career paths.ed time only" or "only 7 remaining!"
If you’d like more information about our Distinguished Speakers Series or to support PESA’s many social and educational initiatives, please contact us.