If you drew a Venn diagram representing everyone in the history of the world who at one time or another has been a catalog model, an Air Force mechanic, a rock picker, a member in good standing of the Brethren religion, a volunteer tax preparer, a habitual smoker, a marathon runner, a law journal editor, an adoptive mother of Guatemalan toddlers, a cucumber picker, and a law firm partner specializing in estate planning, business law, and real estate, it’s fairly likely that the sole point of intersection would be Madison attorney Charity McCarthy.
(If you want to seal the deal, you might also mention that her grandfather was one of the oldest surviving U.S. World War I veterans before his death at the age of 109 – then again, if you read her bio, it’s clear that McCarthy’s never really needed any help when it comes to making an impression.)
But despite a curriculum vitae reads like something out of The Odyssey, if you talk to McCarthy directly, you’ll likely conclude that, first and foremost, she’s a charming, down-to-earth, hardworking, accomplished professional who just happens to have led a colorful life.
A recently enshrined member of the 2011 In Business 40 Under 40 class, McCarthy, 36, caught the attention of the IB editorial staff, who thought her story deserved a more thorough telling.
Of course, that story began rather humbly, on a farm in northern Wisconsin as the ninth of 11 children.
“I think that it does seem probably a little puzzling,” said McCarthy of the circuitous path that saw her go from being a member of the Brethren religion (a Christian denomination that advocates simplicity and a bare-bones lifestyle similar to that of the Amish) to being a partner with Melli Law in Madison. “The early part of my life – that was all sort of the result of my parents, the Brethren religion, and they were part of that, until I was maybe 6, and we were at the farm until I was around 6 as well. We were pretty religious even after, and we were still part of the farming community. One of my first jobs was picking rocks from farmer fields and picking cucumbers for canning factories.”
A model worker
Working on a farm tends to instill a sense of responsibility, of course, and McCarthy was well on her way to a lifetime of hard work. But thanks to her adventurous mother, she was about to switch gears – radically. When McCarthy was 8, her mother decided to go into modeling – and eventually made her career a family affair.
“I remember she took my youngest brother with her because he was still very young,” said McCarthy, “and then she would go to modeling classes [in Milwaukee], and then the mall that was nearest to us was the Pine Tree Mall in Marinette County, which was about 40 minutes away. They would have our family do modeling shows, like runway shows. My mom with all those kids would model the clothes and do fashion shows and would also do advertisements in the local magazines.”
In high school, McCarthy worked 20 to 30 hours a week and prepared her own tax returns (she thought it was fun). She graduated from high school a year early, attended college for a year and a half, and then took some time off to travel, living in several countries, including Barbados, where she decided to take her life in another radically new direction. She joined the Air Force and trained to become a computer operator for AWACS spy planes. That was before meeting her future husband, Michael, while they were both outside smoking. They eventually decided they didn’t want to be separated, so McCarthy switched gears yet again, ultimately becoming a military mechanic.
“At that point, I met my husband and we each had two very specialized jobs, and he was further along in his training,” said McCarthy. “And so I made the decision to switch … because otherwise I could only be based in Oklahoma, he could only be based in California. So there would be no way for us to be together if we continued with our specialized jobs.”
And while working as a mechanic in the Air Force, McCarthy – naturally – volunteered to do tax returns.
“My husband and I went to [IRS] training for a week, and then we would spend a couple months doing tax returns, so it was a nice way for us to get out of our normal jobs and also do something together,” said McCarthy. “I had no natural aptitude as a mechanic, so I don’t know that they missed me for those couple months. I think I was of better service doing tax returns.”
But while McCarthy may not have had a natural affinity for tools, she was a natural hard worker, and being a military mechanic was, at least in part, a means to an end. “I had to pay for my education,” said McCarthy.
“That was the only way I was going to get to college, so I didn’t think I could be too choosy at that point. College was important, and with 11 kids, there’s no money to pay for that.”
Eventually, McCarthy completed her bachelor’s degree at Chapman University and attended the UW Law School, where she was senior editor for the Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal – an experience that helped her hone her already impressive organizational skills while working on her diplomatic skills.
“I would work with the authors to go through and edit their materials, and would check all their sources they had cited, so I would be in stacks in the libraries trying to find all these obscure resources they had cited,” said McCarthy. “It was kind of like a treasure hunt in many ways. But it was a good experience – it was good to have the experience of working with different authors because you really get a sense for different personality types, and you have to be very tactful with them. You know, they were kind of like a client; you have to deal with them with respect and gently.”
Of course, with such a rich background – and after a lifetime spent embracing challenges – it would be odd if McCarthy didn’t have a way with people. Her work in estate planning, business planning, and succession planning at Melli Law is not as far removed from her colorful life as one might think.
“[In my work], sometimes you have to plan around different personalities or different situations – a family comes in and they say they have a situation and they need to plan around it, like a child that may need some special treatment as part of the estate plan because of whatever circumstances, or you have families that come in and people maybe aren’t getting along for one reason or the other,” said McCarthy. “First of all, I feel like I have a pretty good insight into a lot of different personality types. I’ve dealt with a lot of different people closely, and secondly, I think my background makes it so I’m not judgmental at all.
“And being from a big family and having the experiences I’ve had, I’ve seen a lot, and so nothing really comes as a surprise.”
What’s next for McCarthy? She and her husband are currently in the process of adopting a son from Korea, who will join the twins the couple adopted from Guatemala in 2007. It was the couple’s decision to start a family, in fact, that inspired them to switch gears yet again – and, of course, knowing McCarthy, her next move was bound to be another head-spinner. They decided to quit smoking, and while most people would probably try to fill that void with nicotine gum or junk food, Charity and Michael started training to run their first marathon.
“We quit smoking right when we started the adoption process for our twins, because we wanted to be healthy when they came home,” said McCarthy. “We wanted to set a good example. So we thought we really needed to change our lifestyle, because if you just quit smoking and everything else stays the same, it’s hard.”
So how might one account for the inexhaustible energy of a woman whose rich and varied experiences make her, as IB quipped in her 40 Under 40 write-up, a “renaissance woman”?
“You do things out of necessity when you’re from a big family, and you maybe don’t balk at things the same way as other people might,” said McCarthy. “And we weren’t very catered to, so from an early age we did whatever job came up, and we learned to work really hard. And like I said, picking rocks was one of my earliest jobs, and that’s not glamorous by any means, and so you do what you have to do.”
