Even before graduating from law school, UDC Associate Dean Annamaria Steward was involved with bar associations. Now you may recognize her as your newly elected DC Bar President-Elect.

As a member of multiple bar associations, Annamaria has done everything from start a radio law clinic to chair a committee that helped create the Leadership Academy to create a TV show that aired twice a week featuring interviews with prominent lawyers (for instance, the late Ambassador George Haley and Simon Wiesenthal Center attorney Martin Mendelsohn). Her positions have included Washington Bar Association secretary, National Bar Association assistant secretary, and DC Bar secretary and board member. In the meantime, she became an associate at Jack H. Olender & Associates and then Associate Dean of Students at UDC David A. Clarke School of Law in 2008.

Once Annamaria's tenure as president of the DC Bar begins in June 2016 (the current president is Sidley partner Tim Webster, above), one priority is integrating the area's law schools into the bar in a meaningful way. Her own experience as an active member in multiple bar associations started during her 3L year at GW Law, in the Bar Association of DC's Young Lawyers Section. Annamaria eventually became BADC's first African-American female president. After learning of her DC Bar president-elect win on Friday—which coincided with her fifth wedding anniversary—Annamaria tells us she celebrated with a barbecue planned by some of her friends and former colleagues at Jack H. Olender & Associates. She and her husband, who's in the Navy, are on vacation in St. Croix and St. Thomas this week.