If you’re lucky, if the right blend of preparedness and determination meets opportunity and good timing, you find a career that’s a calling – one that does more than pay the bills and fulfill professional ambition. It gives purpose.
BakerHostetler alum Shanisha Smith smiles as she sits in her office at the Houston headquarters of global chemical industry titan LyondellBasell. Her position as the company’s Health, Safety, and Environmental (HSE) Senior Counsel could have been custom-made for her: Smith’s leadership in, among other areas, advising LyondellBasell on environmental justice risks while ensuring that the company is mindful of the neighborhoods surrounding their assets and facilities – regions that often consist of low-income families and communities of color – taps into a bone-deep passion for advocacy that has always compelled her to speak out.
“From the time I was a small child, I could not tolerate injustice or inequity. It literally rumbles my soul,” says Smith. “Speaking up has always been core to my values.”
Since 2022, the company has benefited from Smith’s strong convictions and diverse legal skills that facilitate her consulting with not only lawyers and regulatory experts but also scientists, engineers, toxicologists and others to assist LyondellBasell in making informed decisions that are both environmentally sound and economically viable. The legal field is a perfect fit for a natural-born advocate, and Smith’s trusted and thoughtful guidance is responsible for influencing a docket of complex issues related to chemical management, product stewardship, sustainability and environmental justice for the third-largest petrochemical company in the world.
It’s an impressive perch compared to her humble beginnings.
After all, bustling downtown Houston is a world away from her grandparents’ rural home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. No indoor plumbing, leading her younger sister on adventures through remote woods, picking crabs like a pro as a toddler – Smith’s early life was simple and hardscrabble.
Still, the spirit that now drives her work inside sleek LyondellBasell Tower helped shape her identity in that impoverished stretch of the Chesapeake Bay.
“I was in an environment where I basically had to fend for myself and take care of my sister, and that protective role really extended to other situations as well. I defended any kid who was vulnerable; I confronted bullies and told them to leave people alone. … If something didn’t seem right, I would not shut up,” Smith says with a laugh. “It’s a gift that, eventually, I had to learn how to manage. I just could never be meek or mild in the face of injustice.”
She was the first in her family to seek a higher education when she headed to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania – the nation’s first degree-granting historically Black college and university – where she planned for a future as a social worker rushing to the aid of children at risk.
Of course, when she encountered inequity as a student, she didn’t hesitate to act. In 2008, Smith was forced to wait seven hours in pouring rain to cast her vote in the U.S. presidential election due to a lack of election resources and an inadequate and inconvenient polling place established by Chester County, Pennsylvania, despite officials being warned in advance that the location could not handle the anticipated number of voters. Smith’s frustrating experience mirrored that of hundreds of other Black voters registered in the Lower Oxford East precinct.
Two years later, she was among the plaintiffs in a federal civil rights suit filed by a coalition of civil rights groups on behalf of Black residents and Lincoln University students, charging that the County Board of Elections and Department of Voter Services deprived the community of its right to vote.
“Voting is everyone’s right. Being involved in this lawsuit [allows] those who come after me an opportunity to exercise that right,” said Smith in a January 2010 statement by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania on the racial discrimination case. The matter was settled six months later when Smith and the other plaintiffs won, among other things, the polling place’s relocation to a more suitable place at Lincoln University and sufficient future election resources, as well as attorneys’ fees.
“In my eyes,” Smith continued, “being the voice of my peers and standing up for what’s right is not an obligation but a responsibility I welcome.”
The legal triumph was an inspiring precursor to Smith’s shift toward law.
“I thought, maybe I can advocate in a different way,” she says of her move away from social work – a profession that, she quickly discovered, was particularly “heavy” for someone who’d endured her own challenges as a youth.
In 2013, Smith graduated cum laude from Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law and followed with an LLM from University of Houston Law Center in 2014. Smith clerked for a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas; worked at the Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates the gas industry and pipeline safety; and served at the National Hydrocarbons Commission in Mexico City during the Mexican energy reform.
Her talent and insights on laws related to environmental health and safety captured the attention of Houston office Partner Poe Leggette, BakerHostetler’s Energy team leader. Smith was hired by the firm in 2016 and Leggette served as a powerful mentor, guiding her as she advised clients on federal environmental laws, including enforcement defense before state and federal agencies and courts, compliance counseling, permitting, due diligence and transactional support.
Partner James Phillips, Litigation Practice Group leader for BakerHostetler’s Houston office and deputy chair of the Product Liability and Toxic Tort team, was just as influential. “He really pours into the associates,” says Smith, noting that Phillips was a wholehearted supporter of her pro bono work championing minority-owned businesses and DEI initiatives. Phillips was also a trusted sounding board when, after five years with BakerHostetler, Smith weighed the “very difficult” decision to move to LyondellBasell, advising her on the pros and cons of going in-house.
Today, Smith is settled in her role and relishes juggling the mix of environmental and civil rights laws that, paired with the company’s mission, furthers LyondellBasell’s approach to environmental justice and engagement with the community.
Of course, she does so with a keen eye on equity – a trait that her 5-year-old son, George Walter, has clearly inherited. “He definitely has the heart of an advocate; he cares too much. If he thinks someone is mean to one of his little friends, he gets so worked up, like, ‘Mom, that’s not fair!’” Smith says with a grin, shaking her head. “I tell him you have to pick your battles.”
“Then again,” she adds, “I have to remember where he got that from.”
