Interview with Margeaux Roush, Class of 2000
Bringing Your Authentic Self
By Emily Bernstein
As my senior year progresses, I am both worried and excited by the uncertainty that looms just beyond graduation. What does life beyond Vanderbilt actually look like? How do my degrees and college interests translate into a real world, professional life? Although I stumbled into my Gender and Sexuality Studies (GSS) minor by accident, I fell in love with the subject matter almost immediately. I took my first GSS course in my first semester because it looked interesting and manageable, never expecting to find myself in a room with some of the most intelligent and thoughtful people I’d yet encountered. The class was full of diverse identities, perspectives, and interests that blended to make an incredibly enriching learning environment. Now, I’m on a pre-law track, but without a clear map of what’s next, eager to talk with an alumna who had navigated similar uncertainty. When I spoke with Margeaux Roush (formerly Margeaux Feore ‘00), she told me how her experience as a student of gender and sexuality studies shaped her path and allowed her to embrace change and uncertainty; it also helped her find authentic pieces of herself to forge a path forward.
Margeaux currently serves as the Director of Talent Acquisition for McGlinchey Stafford, a national law firm with offices located across the country. Although an attorney by training, she now works more as a manager, overseeing a four-person department that counsels lawyers on career transitions and sells job candidates on McGlinchey Stafford. However, her journey to success wasn’t straightforward, something I’ve begun to accept in my own life.
“I had about seven careers before I figured out what I was going to do,” Margeaux assured me, laughing. At Vanderbilt, she majored in Psychology and minored in Women’s Studies. Her original plan was to pursue a master’s degree in social work and become a marriage counselor. But nine months after graduating, Margeaux was in a serious car accident. Between surgeries, she filled her time with ventures that seemed disconnected but later proved to be essential. She sold wine, ran her own wedding planning company, earned her real estate license and sold houses, until eventually deciding that there was no better way to jumpstart her life than by going to law school!
She graduated in 2008, during the height of the recession, “the worst possible time to be a lawyer.” Like many attorneys who couldn’t find work, she applied her legal skills to document reviews for large-scale litigation. The company she worked for noticed her organizational skills and an eye for recruiting other reviewers, so they hired her to join their team full-time as a recruiter. “All of those things came together,” she explained, to bring her to this point. “Now I counsel lawyers on how to take a job, sell them on my firm, and plan events for callback receptions, candidate dinners, and special events. I am very passionate about my job!”
When I asked how Margeaux’s experience at Vanderbilt influenced her work in the professional sphere, Margeaux immediately mentioned Professor Gay Welch as having a lasting impact. Although no longer at Vanderbilt, Welch brought her background in religious and pastoral studies to evaluating the systems that affect the experience, expression, and regulation of gender and sexuality. Back in the 90s, Margeaux explained, “we didn’t talk about gender studies, societal norms, or gender fluidity.” Although the Women’s Studies department at Vanderbilt was small, the impact it left on Margeaux was sizable. “The biggest thing it taught me was the ability to be my authentic self, and the inherent value in that authenticity. “Part of what I do is sell this firm, and part of the reason why I’m so great at it is because I really do believe that we allow and encourage people to bring their full authentic selves.”
Even in Vanderbilt’s 90’s conservative environment, Margeaux learned that students should use their voice to research and engage contentious issues from historical, religious, and political perspectives. “Professor Welch brought this to the table, and it helped me open my own mind and be ready for the changes that were coming. In today’s political climate, being able to speak to this from an interdisciplinary perspective rooted in facts is so valuable. Having a gender studies perspective gives you the capability to speak on some of the political things happening right now, which you would not have been able to do in the 90s. If you had, you were considered cutting edge, a feminist, even an ultra-liberal crusader.”
I told Margeaux that this was what I loved most about the GSS department: the abundance of theoretical lenses we can use to analyze the systems that govern our lives. In our senior seminar, for example, there are eight students with majors ranging from political science, philosophy, business, biochemistry, psychology, and history. Hearing everyone’s stories and perspectives through different analytical frameworks adds to my life and experience as a college student in a way that I didn’t know was possible in an academic setting.
She acknowledges that her transition to college was difficult. “I was raised that you don’t talk about politics, religion, or sex, and literally that is all we talk about now! Being raised this way, it was hard to feel like I had a voice. Finding my voice by having the perspective I gained was really empowering!”
As our time came to a close, I asked Margeaux to reflect on her proudest professional achievement. Margeaux didn’t miss a beat: bringing the Mansfield Rule to her firm.
“The Mansfield Rule focuses on transparency in law firms, especially in the hiring process, but also in promotions and leadership. For every job opening, we must consider at least one-third of the underrepresented population in the legal field.” The crucial part, Margeaux emphasized, is that only the candidate defines what diversity means. “It could mean financial, racial, ethnic, or gender diversity, or a million more different things.”
In 2020, she helped her firm undergo a complete overhaul, from the managing members all the way down. They implemented transparency that allows 60% of the firm’s population to pick up the phone or send an email and immediately learn a managing member’s job description, how one becomes a managing member, and what the election process looks like. “We spent two and a half years putting together job descriptions, explanations on how things functioned, and looked internally to re-evaluate our practices. We really do believe that bringing diverse backgrounds to the table gives us an improved workplace that allows someone to bring their authentic self to work. I am really proud to live these beliefs, and I’m proud to say that I work somewhere that I know people are comfortable bringing who they are to the table.”
The common thread running through Margeaux’s journey and career is authenticity. Her story of personal growth and discovery—from her culturally conservative upbringing to her eye-opening college education and application of feminist principles to improve her law firm—provided some timely, much-needed reassurance. It inspired me to channel my current uncertainty into a more authentic version of myself. Margeaux reminded me that careers aren’t based on one big life decision, but rather on a combination of decisions guided by the values, passions, interests, and experiences we pick up along the way. This ability to be your authentic self, and believe that each individual has value, might be the most important lesson Gender and Sexuality Studies has to offer.