Women's History Month: Jessica Hardin

In celebration of Women's History Month, Robinson Bradshaw is highlighting women from the firm throughout March. Meet Jessica Mering Hardin, a trusts and estates attorney.

Describe what you do at Robinson Bradshaw.

I help individuals and families build tax-efficient succession plans for their wealth and businesses. I work with our clients to prepare estate planning documents, make gifts to family members and charities, implement asset protection strategies, and comply with federal income and transfer tax reporting.

What do you most enjoy about your job?

My practice area allows me to form very rewarding relationships with our clients. Our work together touches some of a family's most personal spaces, since a family's history and values guide its decisions about how to transfer its wealth, to whom and under what circumstances. It is my privilege to learn those stories and to work with a family to honor that history and equip the next generation to continue the family's legacy.

What advice do you have for other women in the workplace?

Everyone around you knows something you don't. A willingness to seek out the unique expertise of others – in the workplace and elsewhere – makes for better results and, I think, richer relationships.

Who is your female role model?

Katharine Graham, the former publisher of the Washington Post. She is best known for publishing the Pentagon Papers and building the Washington Post into a venerable national newspaper. While those are remarkable accomplishments under any circumstances, I find it particularly inspiring that she achieved them only after great personal tragedy and at a time when women in business and the media had few opportunities to lead.  

Tell us something about yourself that we wouldn't learn from your website bio.

There is nowhere I am more at home than a bookstore or a library. I love to read and constantly question whether the convenience of my Kindle is worth the loss of an actual book. The jury is still out.