Sacramento Business Journal interviewed “Women Who Mean Business” honoree Stoel Rives’ Firm Managing Partner Melissa Jones for an article titled “2020 Women Who Mean Business honoree: Melissa Jones with Stoel Rives,” published December 8, 2021. (Subscription required.) Jones, who assumed the firm managing partner job at the start of 2020, discussed how she has been an effective leader during the pandemic, and the challenges of working from home and in her early career.
Jones said that her abilities to remain calm and to multitask have served her well in leading the firm during the months of pandemic-enforced working from home. She noted that though most of Stoel Rives’ employees are working remotely, “[i]t’s gone so well because of our firm’s strong culture of collaboration.”
Jones acknowledged that in her own work-from-home situation, she is fortunate that her two children are old enough — a seventh grader and sophomore — to be more independent in completing their schoolwork.
As to her career, Jones is grateful for the support she had from her husband and mom almost ten years ago when she decided to leave a law firm where she had just made partner because she didn’t want to relocate from Sacramento. “A lot of people thought I was crazy for not moving,” she said, but taking the job with Stoel Rives allowed her to remain in the area and proved to be the right decision for her career and family.