When Rhonda Peck (‘20) served as President of the Student Bar Association (2018-19), her primary focus was on building a cohesive student community; so she threw herself a birthday party and invited everyone at the law school to attend. “I love bringing people together and creating opportunities for people to build relationships and friendships,” she said. “I wouldn’t have enjoyed my law school experience without putting that part of myself into it.”
Rhonda is graduating with joint degrees in law and educational leadership and plans to pursue a PhD in higher education. “I am fascinated by educational reform and competency-based learning,” she said. Rhonda is open about her own educational struggles—she has dyslexia and was not expected to read past a fifth-grade level. However, she graduated with honors from Brigham Young University-Hawaii with a bachelor’s degree in political science. “When life gets discouraging, I think about the people that I know that have been marginalized or who haven’t been given the same opportunities as me. My legal education has taught me how to use the privilege that I have and leverage it.”
As an intern with the Utah System of Higher Education, Rhonda had the opportunity to work on policy revisions, something she found “enthralling.” Throughout law school, she has been able to connect with administrators and lawyers in Utah, who are doing policy work.
“Even though we can’t fix everything, there is leadership in being a lawyer,” she said. “At BYU Law, I have learned to have more compassion and to see things from different angles. I have had to have difficult conversations, but I’ve learned to do that in a way that brings about change.”
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