Leadership In Law Podcast

S03E119 Trusting Your Intuition, Building Your Career Path with Rhonda Coleman

• Marilyn Jenkins • Season 3 • Episode 119

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What if the fastest path to a top-tier legal career isn’t straight at all? We sit down with commercial attorney and strategic advisor Rhonda Coleman to chart a nonlinear route from high school English teacher to Big Ten Network dealmaker, from Axiom to Accenture, and finally to Google, before leaving to build a thriving fractional counsel practice built on autonomy, impact, and trust.

Rhonda breaks down how complex technology transactions actually move: align with the business early, collaborate with solutions architects to map the tech, and turn risk into clear, workable contract terms rather than roadblocks. We get tactical about master services agreements, outsourcing, and licensing, and we talk through the habits that shrink negotiation cycles, playbooks, prioritization, and tight feedback loops, especially for mid-market legal teams stretched thin. Her perspective across multiple clients reveals patterns that save time and money without ripping out tool stacks.

Beneath the tactics is a bigger shift: confidence and clarity don’t magically appear with a brand-name badge. Rhonda shares how executive coaching helped her unpack imposter syndrome, set real boundaries, and define success as the energy and freedom to do her best work. That values-first lens guided bold choices, including stepping away from a coveted role to build a business that lets her partner directly with general counsels, scale with specialized contractors, and bring enterprise-grade judgment to companies that need it most.

Reach Rhonda here:
www.rhondacolemanwandel.com

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SPEAKER_00:

The Leadership in Law Podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. I'm your host, Marilyn Jenkins. Please join me in welcoming my guest, Rhonda Coleman, to the show today. Rhonda is a commercial attorney and strategic business advisor with experienced spanning law firms, fortune popular companies, and Silicon Valley. She's the founder of RCW Strategies, where she provides fractional senior legal counsel to high-growth companies navigating complex deals and technology matters. Rhonda's also served as the go-to-market strategy leader at Google and lead counsel on major transactions at Google and Accenture. She's the host of the Rhonda Coleman Londell Podcast, where she shares the career journeys of ambitious professional women, and she's a dedicated mentor supporting startups and women-owned businesses. Rhonda joins us from Chicago, where she lives with her husband and three grown kids. I'm excited to have you here, Rhonda. Welcome.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to be here, Marilyn. Thanks so much for having me on. This is like a different experience for me being on the other side of the microphone.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that. I love that. Yeah, and it's always a different, a little bit different perspective to be a guest than to be a host. Absolutely. I'm excited to talk about your journey and the different things you've done. So tell us a bit about your leadership journey.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. So I am currently a commercial transactional lawyer, and I've done that for the past 12 plus years or so. But I've not always been a lawyer. I was a teacher first for 10 years in Memphis, Tennessee. And yeah, I taught high school English. Patience. And this Yes, exactly. So I have used a lot of my skills, and my a lot of my skills have transferred from teaching to law, like patience. Yes. But I after 10 years and I had two children and a divorce, I was just like, I want to do something different. I teaching was no longer enough for me. The ceiling was too low. I was an entrepreneur, but I realized I knew nothing about building a business really. You know, I would hire consultants, and I'm just like, I need to be able to know how to do this myself. And law felt like a good next step. I felt like my options would be greater, and I was correct. So I moved from Memphis to Chicago with my first and third grade daughters to go to Loyola in Chicago for law school. And it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. It was a big decision. But looking back, I sometimes think I was nuts. Crazy. I left all my family, my support system in Memphis to move forward into what it felt right. It felt like this is what I need to do next to be the best version of myself. So you followed your intuition and took the lead. Absolutely, absolutely. Which learning from that experience, the value of following my intuition, I'm able to take that into my professional life now because my legal journey was not an easy one necessarily. It wasn't a straight road like I thought it would be. I came from a really secure network in Tennessee, like in the education community. Didn't have to worry about where I was going to work. And if I want to work over there, then I can work over there. And I thought that my legal career would be the same. I was naive. That naivete served me though, what allowed me to take the leap. But I wish that I had been a little more knowledgeable about how competitive the legal landscape can be because I would have prepared differently while I was in law school. So I thought I was going to graduate law school and go and work at a firm and work my way up to partner. And then they were like, okay, yeah, what you got to work 80 hours a week. And I was just like, I'm not 22. I've had a whole career. I have a family that are my kids are super important to me. I can't do that. And so then I was like, I'm gonna have to work in-house. And at the time, so this was like 2013, there still was no direct path from law school to corporations as a lawyer, like an in-house lawyer. They were like, oh, you gotta work at a firm first before you can come in-house. And I was just like, well, how am I gonna do that? Because I can't do 80 hours a week at a firm to get in-house. So I just had this conundrum of what do I do? What do I do? A lot of pressure. I've spent all this money on law school. I've got these two little kids who depend on me. And one of my advisors told me, she was like, Look, you can look at other areas in the corporation that hire lawyers to do work, commercial transactional work. And then you can use that as a gateway into the legal department. And I said, Okay, okay. So I at that moment I had to kind of let go of my notion of what my path was going to be, right? The traditional path. And I had to be open to alternatives that were not as sexy and were not in my mind anyway, definitely gonna get me to that top seat. So I ended up taking a position at Big Ten Network. A friend of mine was the only lawyer in the building. She was the manager of contract administration. And she guessed, she says, I got a lot of overflow. You want to come in as a contractor? And I said, sure. So I came in, and Big Ten Network is a subsidiary of Fox Entertainment. And so I came in as a contractor, helped her with overflow. Little did I know. She had a plan. Like she moved from Big Ten and moved to Pac 12 in California. And she's like, hey, give her my job. So I ended up managing all of the contracts for Big Ten Network, drafting and negotiating all of their on-air talent agreements. And I was a liaison between Fox and Big Ten. And so I ate it up for two years. I loved it. I was just like, oh, this is great. This is great. This is my first real job out of law school. I'm getting all of this experience information. I just loved it. And but I was the only lawyer in the building. So I hit a ceiling as far as growth. And I recognized that. I was like, okay, I need to be around more lawyers. I need to report to a lawyer so that I can grow. I couldn't move to LA to work for Fox. That was an option, but I couldn't do that at the time. So someone else in my network, a senior level lawyer woman who I had lunch with regularly, she said, there's this organization called Axiom that will they take the top 1% of lawyers and they put you in Fortune 500, Fortune 100 Corporation legal departments. And that would give you flexibility to do this other thing that came up for me, which was to manage a professional chess player. Exactly. So I left Big Ten, worked for Axiom, and I worked in Aon primarily as an in-house attorney. And at the same time, I managed a professional chess player who is still currently ranked the number three highest ranking chess player of all time, Fabiano Caruana. And I managed him for a year. And from my gig through Axiom, I decided, okay, I'm gonna go join a firm. I had an opportunity to join a firm. It was a women-owned firm, a spinoff of Kirkland and Ellis, which is a huge law firm. And I said, I think I can build a book of business. So that entrepreneurial spirit was there. I felt like I had corporate contacts and I had contacts in the sports and entertainment world from my work with the chess player, and I felt like I could build a book. So I joined SharfBanks Marmor for a year, which was wonderful. But it's not easy building a book of business without a nice salary to go along with it. And I had kids who were on their way to college. So I said, I need something a bit more stable and I like technology. I had been approached by Facebook Oculus. They saw my resume and they're like, oh gosh, you fit perfectly in in our world. And I was like, I never thought about that. I didn't think that my commercial transactional, I didn't even know that's what I had. I didn't know that would fit perfectly into what they needed in their contracting world. And I said, at that point, I said, I've already accepted this job at this firm, but I'll do an exploratory interview. And so I was looking ahead, like if when I'm ready to leave the firm, I'm gonna look into tech. And that's what I did and joined Accenture. And then from Accenture, I got positioned at Google, where you know, that was my last in-house role.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. What a different on-ramp than you envisioned, but it got you to where you wanted to be. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That's pretty interesting. And the and then the tech just happened. So you've always been a tech, and you that's what you enjoy working with.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I really love it because I was just like, okay, it's always changing, moving quickly, tons to learn. I'll never be bored. And yes, that I felt like it was a valuable skill set to have to be able to work on technology transactions. And so that's what I've done at Accenture. Accenture is a managed services firm. Huge. So any outsourcing deals, that's a specialty niche thing. I worked on those licensing, just Accenture providing consulting, technology consulting services and negotiating master services agreements with enterprise customers. Done that. So you could say that I'm a deal lawyer. And when you work on deals, it's like you gotta be able to speak a little bit of antitrust, a little bit of tax, a little bit of a little bit of everything. And of course, you can lean into the experts in the company or at out at outside as outside counsel when you need to. But so didn't even realize like I was building this super rich, valuable skill set along the way that was positioning me for that top position or that top role. But I had to, I had to let go of the idea or that external outside idea of what that looked like. If I wasn't able to do that, and it's not easy, it's not easy. Like little by little, I would not be, I would not have had the courage to say goodbye to Google and launch my own business, my own, it's like half-law firm, half business consulting strategy firm.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow, very interesting. But you saw the big picture, so you were able to make that happen and go with it. I love the different steps you took to get the experience that you needed, not realizing how important that was to Facebook and Oculus and that and Google. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yeah. So it's I appreciate that recruiter for reaching out, although that's what they do. But I didn't have tech anywhere on my resume, not really, but uh thinking about your contract negotiations.

SPEAKER_02:

Obviously, from where you're looking at, that's there's a lot of moving pieces when you're making deals. So those are gonna be con very complicated. What uh what makes it an what how do you make your process an efficient contract negotiation to try to get, like you said, all these different pieces to work together?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so you definitely gotta be able to collaborate effectively with your cross-functional stakeholders, right? You need to know when you have to bring them in and be able to establish a good rapport with them. And that number one cross-functional stakeholder is gonna be the business. Because I'm legal, right? I'm coming in and it depends on the corporation where you are. But usually the business is okay, legal's coming in to tell me no or make things harder for me. So you gotta get rid of that. You gotta say, no, I'm coming as a partner. Uh, I want to help you accomplish what it is you need to accomplish. And I don't want to tell you no, I want to tell you yes. So establishing that um up front is very helpful. And trusting the business too. Fortunately, I worked with some really smart people at Accenture and Google, where I could trust that they knew the business, right? And allowing them to educate me on the deal. And on tech transactions, I also have to lean into my tech specialists and some some entities we call them solutions architects, where they understand the tech, they understand how it works within the customer's environment, and they educate me on that so that I can protect the corporation appropriately in the contract. So those two relationships have to be really solid. I have to be open to learning, and I have to acknowledge and respect and appreciate them as specialists in their area. And that goes a really long way when I have to say, okay, our exposure here for limitation of liability, for example, is too high. We've got to do X, Y, and Z to get that down. And because I've extended trust and respect to them, then I get that back as a lawyer.

SPEAKER_02:

Sounds like being a teen player is the way to do it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Everybody has their eyes on the goal. Absolutely. Do you so in your practice now, you help small businesses or business owners with their contract negotiations and different things like that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I would say my target customer, mid-market, to large enterprise corporations, because that's what I've worked in my entire career. And I can bring lots of value as an outside resource, having been an inside resource or an inside person for my entire career. So I speak their language. I know how to quickly acclimate to their environments. I know the what they hate about an outside counsel coming from a firm. And I can say, that's not gonna, that's not me. I know exactly what you need. You don't need me to quote you the law, you need me to tell you whether or not this is gonna work quickly. That those are my that's my target customer. And then mid-market companies, a lot of times, they've got fledgling legal departments or very small legal departments. It's just the GC and maybe one other person, and they lean heavily on outside counsel. Sometimes they have like backlogs of agreements, they need resources such as playbooks. And my experience having worked in enterprise corporations is very valuable in helping them get their arms around their own legal departments without breaking the bank.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. Exactly. So you've been the in-house, you've been out out outside of cancer. And obviously it's the negotiation. And uh how do you make that work so well that you work for multiple companies? Is it just it's so much easier to be an outside counsel, in your opinion?

SPEAKER_01:

It for me. I enjoy not having to deal heavily deal with the politics of being an in tech counsel, right? I like that I also get to come in and help you solve a problem, and that's my role, that's my goal. I'm already, I'm like built-in added value. And I enjoy that, and I enjoy being able to do that for multiple companies, so multiple clients, because one, I get to see the trends, I get to see, because for instance, I worked on a project with a company, a mid-market company. GC brought me in because she had a backlog of agreements and she was new to this particular company, needed to get her arms around things. And she's oh my goodness, we're working across three or four different platforms here, managing this process, like the contract pro contracting process. We need to streamline it. And I said, This is really not that bad because over here at this company, this huge tech corporation that I've worked for, uh we're working across like 15, which is also it's maddening, but you're not doing so bad. So I'm able to bring in that perspective. And I say, just changing this one or two little thing here will get you what you need. You don't have to overhaul and get rid of all your systems.

SPEAKER_02:

Love that. It's like, you know, my I've got a coach that says you can't see the full picture if you're in the frame. So you're coming in from outside can actually bring a new perspective. And I love the that you bring in the team player aspect of it. You've got a problem to solve.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, and I enjoy that. And I enjoy that. And when we go back to me having an idea of what the top legal position was that I was aiming for, whether it's partner of a law firm or general counsel of a company or corporation, I followed my own path, right? Worked with an executive coach. I have another, I have two executive coaches, actually. One's a business coach. So I'm a big supporter of coaching. So I didn't get there all by myself. I had, like you just said, that external perspective to help me. But when I look up, I'm like, oh God, I am talking to general counsels every other day, people who lead legal departments as an equal and not just an equal, somebody who's coming in to help them fix a problem or solve a problem or solution. Whereas five years ago, I felt like almost intimidated to be in the presence of a general counsel because I thought that's that was where I wanted to be. Oh my God, looking up to them and all of that. And now it's the tables haven't turned. And because my business, the way it's moving, is scaling quickly. I can't handle the volume all by myself. So I engage other attorneys as contractors. I was just on a call a couple of days ago. Somebody sent someone my way who's been general counsel of all kinds of amazing companies, and she's I'm basically interviewing her. I didn't even realize that she wants to work with me and learn from me. And to me, that's just mind blowing. But I'm also grateful that the that I did put, I set priority. Along the way in my career, even when I was just like, I think I may be taking a risk here with respect to my career, or I don't know if this is gonna work out, or I don't know if this physician is gonna do what it needs to do on my resume. Not sure, but this is the best I can do right now in this moment. I'm making the best decision with what I have. And I look back and it was all perfect. It was all perfect.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow, just I love it whenever it all ends up the way you wanted it to. Now, and you're going into this, so the tables have turned. You're going in with no imposter syndrome because you've seen that side, you know what you bring to the table.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Did you have to get over imposter syndrome at some point? Or did you just move forward and just keep marching?

SPEAKER_01:

No, so I had to get over it, but in in stages, I guess, when I didn't even realize that I was getting over it. About four years ago, I was just like, I think I had just started at Google and I felt stuck. Believe it or not, like I just started at Google, which is like everybody wants to work there. And I still felt like stuck. Like I was walking uphill. And I said, I need somebody, I had enough sense to realize I need an outside perspective. I need a coach to tell me what it is that I'm doing or not doing. Cause I didn't feel like it was something in my brain. I felt like it was something on another like level, something I was missing. Something I was missing. And reached out to some people in my network. They sent me a couple of names and I looked at one of the profiles. I was like, okay, she sounds perfect. And worked with her. Her name's Angie Garg. I think she's one of the best executive coaches out there because she really helps you. She's more of a guide to help you go within to figure out what it is that's keeping you stuck. And you go down roads that you didn't think you'd go down when you're going for career support. So looking at your inner child and going, like going back, like pulling back layers to see why is it that I feel intimidated when I'm talking to someone in a senior level position? Or why is it that I'm afraid that if I speak up against that in a meeting, then somebody won't like me? You know what I mean? But obviously, you need to create space for yourself. You need to let people know you when you want to rise up within a corporation. But why is it that I'm afraid to do that? And so working with her, I was able to go back and to things that I just didn't imagine. Oh my goodness, 14, being in school, and you got two or three girls who are very kind to you, like wanting to fit in and being hurt because you didn't, and then not really wanting to risk being vulnerable because of that experience when you were 14 or in college or whatever. And working through that, finding healing around those things that we've experienced in our lives unrelated to work, but that show up in our work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I think it's I agree, helping someone helping you find your stories that you don't know you're carrying. Those things can get in your way, and having someone help you explore that. And then, but I want to jump into your your career pivot. You said the career pivot is spiritual. So going back to, I think all of this ties together, figuring out your stories around why you feel this way when you're talking to people. And then what do you mean when you talk about the career pivot is spiritual? Because I know that you made a big pivot and you ended up right where you wanted to be.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. So I think following your intuition and then also figuring out who you really are, like absent from being able to kind of just get out of the noise of what my colleague thinks, what the world thinks, what my parents think. What is it that I want? Right? What are my goals? What are my career goals? What makes me feel good? And then what when you do that, or especially when I did that, I was able to set natural boundaries. It's like I want to at the end of the day have the energy to enjoy having dinner with my husband and not have the stress of thinking about what happened at work that day. That's a goal. You know what I mean? And so then when someone gives me an opportunity and I filter it through that goal, and that's not my only one, like I have a list. If it doesn't work, then I've already decided this is something I need to be happy, whole, and healthy. And anything that goes against that isn't worth it. So that almost like level setting with yourself, I think is key and has been key for me. And so that helped me leave Google. It wasn't easy because Google is a wonderful place, wonderful benefits, great on the resume. And I had to look like, am I am I getting the am I able to use all of my skills and talents in this role? Because I need that to be happy. I've been to what 20-something years into my preferenced professional career. I want to soar. I want to feel like I'm happy in in my job every day, that I'm providing value, that I'm using all of these wonderful skills that I've built. And I wasn't allowed to do that anymore in the siloed corporate setting. Even though I didn't know exactly what the next thing was going to look like, I knew that working as an independent contractor felt free. It felt freer, gave me more space to be me. And then I just with guidance, because I do have a coach, my business coach, Stuart Hirsch, she's also wonderful, taking steps little by little to build this business that I'm building.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that. So you built your the resume. And when you got to the point where you had all of this going on, it just wasn't as feeling fulfilling. So you moved on. That's amazing. We have a I've been in my coaches talking about how to find your why. When you found who you are, we I think of it as finding your why. And it only works if you ask five debts why and really get to the root. I like your position of getting to who you are and what you are. And I love that. So thinking about our listeners, uh, what would you want them to take away from this? You've been you've had an inspirational journey to see where you started, where your eyes were, and then how you got to where you are, which is not exactly where you planned, but it sounds like even better. So you what would you want people to take away from this?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I would want them to develop their develop a relationship with their inner voice, right? And uh because it takes time, you have to strengthen it. It's like a muscle, like listening to your body, listening to yourself. Like, how do I feel in this situation? Take the time. It doesn't even take a lot of time, like five minutes. You just sit and quiet, go within yourself, pay attention to how this makes me feel. And it's as simple as if I don't feel good in this situation, if hearing like somebody thinking about doing that doesn't make me feel good, then I need to stop and I need to think about that, right? Because awareness is will go a long way. Once you're aware and you acknowledge that this doesn't feel good to me, things will start to come into your experience to help you figure that out. Like, how do I flip this? How do I feel better about what I'm doing? And that small thing, just doing that consistently throughout your career and life and not looking at the big picture, just looking at this small thing. You'll find when you look back every now and then that the big picture is looking better.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that. I love that. Great advice. Yeah, look and look within and see how you feel. Fantastic. Yeah, I know my listeners are gonna want to connect with you or reach out to you. Where's the best place they can connect with you or learn more about you?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so my website, www.rhonda colemanwandell.com, is you can find everything about me there. I'm on LinkedIn, Rhonda Coleman Wandell on LinkedIn, and then I have a podcast, the Rhonda Coleman-Wondell Podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

And then you can get that on wherever you get to your podcast. And there's information about your podcast on your website. On the website. If you go to the website, it'll get you to everything. And you have a newsletter as well.

SPEAKER_01:

I do have a newsletter. I do have a newsletter, and you can go to my website and hit the subscribe button. It'll get you on the list. And in my newsletter, I talk about fun things. I highlight the podcast guests, but then I also talk about things that I like to hear about, such as fashion and health and fitness and wellness and career advice. So I publish that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

We will make sure we have a link to your website in the show notes. That's excellent. I'm this has been a pleasure conversation. I was so happy to have you here and to hear your journey and some advice that you have for in this. Awesome. Thank you, Marilyn. I had good. Absolutely. Thanks for joining me today for this episode. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. And if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, you can connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take the next step with a digital strategist to help you grow your law firm, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to LawmarketingZone.com to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, thanks for listening to Leadership in Law Podcast, and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing similar challenges and striving for the standard test. Head over to our website at LawMarketingScope.com. From there, connect with other listeners, access valuable resources, and stay up to date on the latest episodes.

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Marilyn Jenkins

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