On a fall day at UC Berkeley, I left campus utterly inspired, and it wasn’t from class. It was from talks by Michele Roberts, a respected litigator and the first woman to lead the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). She spoke candidly at a morning coffee with law students about her tough childhood, her youthful aspirations, and a legal career that proved her mettle.

Accepting a citation award later that day, she shared a story about one of her early criminal cases: a young prostitute she helped get off the street and go back to school. It’s a tale that, in the telling, moved her to tears, reminding her of her own hardscrabble road to the top.

Roberts was raised in the South Bronx by a single mother, a domestic worker. As a young girl, she and her mom rode the bus to watch criminal trials at the courthouse; it was her mother’s favorite pastime. Roberts got hooked, too. But she watched as public defenders lost more cases than they won, and African-American men from her own neighborhood were hauled off to jail.

To ensure that “poor people would have access to good counsel,” she decided to become a lawyer. Degree in hand, she rose through the ranks as a public defender, trying 50 jury trials or more. It took hard work and imagination to persuade a jury of her client’s innocence; most jury pools, she said, leaned toward guilty as charged.

Hungry for greater challenges, Roberts started her own private practice and then joined Big Law: global firms with high-profile, complex, pharmaceutical cases. She parried with the big boys: nearly all white and not a little prejudiced.

She admitted that, early on, there were times when she was paralyzed by the discrimination she faced as an African-American lawyer in a mostly white male field. But she had an epiphany: to stop spending time worrying about people’s opinions and just do her job, be herself, and leave her fears behind.

Growing up, Michele had another passion: basketball. She didn’t play, but her brothers and all the young men in her neighborhood did, thinking that they’d be the next LeBron James. When the job opened up at the NBPA, it was a perfect fit—for the players, and for her. She’s now the first female union leader in North American sports history. An inspiration to all the young girls eager to follow in her footsteps.