Bayer & Borlase

Heather Borlase

I was born in Santiago, Chile. My great-grandfather was President of the Chilean Supreme Court in the 1950s, and a central part of my family history. Although I never met him, I was raised with a very strong respect for the rule of law and the role of the judiciary in a democratic society.

My formative years were spent in Miami during the tumultuous 1970s and early 80s. I witnessed the Liberty City race riots and the Mariel Boat Lift. The city’s racial tensions were never higher, and they stirred questions in me. I thought of myself as part Spanish, but when I told people where I was from, I was met with disbelief and comments like, “You don’t look Spanish.” “What does Spanish look like?” I wondered, as I stared at my pale skin, red hair and blue eyes in the mirror.

My father worked for a multinational company. When he was promoted and transferred, we moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. I started junior high school there 13 years after a federal judge mandated that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district bus black students to predominantly white schools, and white students to predominantly black schools. I was one of seven white runners on the 50 member girls track team. Many of my black friends had to get up for school more than an hour earlier than I did to make the school bus. They also got home more than an hour after I did when track practice got out. It didn’t seem fair to me. That was the first time that I’d seen such stark de facto segregation, and was exposed to one of the (albeit, imperfect) ways a community chose to remedy it.

My father succumbed to a massive heart attack six weeks after we arrived in North Carolina. His heart attack came the day after returning home from a business trip, on his way to another meeting. It was a Saturday. He had only worked for this company for a few years, and when he died the company told my mother that they were under no obligation to help our family because my father hadn’t worked for them long enough. Clearly, that experience shaped my early views of corporate America.

We moved again, this time to a small community in rural northern New Hampshire. I started to wait tables at the age of 14. Over the next 17 years I continued working in the hospitality and retail industries through college, grad school and law school, frequently working more than one job at a time.

I went on to college in Washington, DC, where I studied criminal justice and graduated with my B.A. from American University. I then obtained a Master’s in Forensic Science from George Washington University, and planned to become a criminal prosecutor.

I attended law school in San Francisco at Golden Gate University School of Law, still preparing to prosecute. I clerked in the Domestic Violence Unit of the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office after my 1L (first) year. After taking a “Lawyering Skills” class, I was inspired to become a legal advocate at the Homeless Advocacy Project of the Bar Association of San Francisco. I spent much of the summer helping homeless and destitute people expunge criminal records, resolve public intoxication citations, keep their housing, repossess their automobiles, and obtain medical care. It was an eye-opening four months that not only changed my worldview, it changed my career.

I then interned at the Women’s Employment Rights Clinic at the Golden Gate School of Law, where – without question – I found my groove. I helped people obtain unemployment benefits, fight discrimination and get the wages that they were owed. I witnessed first-hand how stable employment relationships can provide dignity, self-worth, and personal empowerment. After a year in the clinic, I graduated with the confidence that I not only understood where California workers were coming from, I could help them get to where they wanted to be: from discrimination to equality; from pay inequity to payment-in-full ; and from fear and intimidation to courage, justice and respect.

I opened my solo practice, Borlase Law Offices, in 2002 – one month after being sworn into the State Bar of California - helping employees to resolve their legal matters. After three very successful years I was joined by my husband, Alan Bayer, to form Bayer & Borlase.

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