Page 5 - May June24 Report

Faith Whittaker Invites You to
Make
Yourself
at Home
By Jacob Richardson
Incoming CBA President Faith Whittaker didn’t grow up in Cincinnati, so she doesn’t have that “what high school did you go to” connection that Cincinnatians are oddly obsessed with, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t consider the city home. It’s been a long and winding road that brought her to the Queen City, yet the unorthodox path she took is exactly why she is the perfect person to hold up the CBA as a shining
Faith Whittaker, pictured here at the Cincinnati Ballet’s Center for Dance, is ready to be right at home as the new CBA president.
Company and she even performed as part of the University of Dayton’s ensemble.
So how does a former ballet dancer and aspiring medical student become partner at one of the most prestigious law firms in the Greater Cincinnati area? A humbling experience of trial (no pun intended) and error. “When I took Pre-Calculus everyone
beacon, a lighthouse, that the region’s legal community can always rely on to provide a warm welcome.
So how does a former ballet dancer and aspiring medical student become partner at one of the most prestigious law firms?
around me seemed like they knew what was going on. I was furiously lost and barely got by, but I really liked my American History class. My brother’s roommate was a history major with pre-law focus and I thought ‘Okay. That sounds cool.’ That’s literally how the switch went.” So, she immersed herself in the History department,
As shown by the Dayton Flyers
thermos adorning a conspicuous shelf
in her spacious office at Dinsmore
& Shohl LLP—where she is a prac-
ticing partner specializing in labor and
employment law as well as the Chair of the Employment Prac- tices Group—she’s fully transparent that her original career plans did not include law, but rather began as a pre-med undergrad- uate. Yet far before these undergraduate years, Faith was a devoted ballet dancer, taking classes as early as Kindergarten all the way through law school. Her skill led her to a spot on the Toledo Ballet
working closely with professors and guiding students as a Teach- er’s Assistant. While the birth of our nation lured her away from the hard sciences, those initial pre-med classes—steeped in dili- gent research, technical writing, and rigorous analysis—taught her many of the same principles she still relies on this very day to maintain a successful practice.
THE REPORT | May/June 2024 | CincyBar.org 5