All hail the Queen of Reinvention.
In most stories, Edda Santiago achieving her dream would be the six-figure private practice law firm job she landed immediately after law school, giving her the financial freedom she’d never imagined possible. But that was only one reinvention. Getting to law school after, internships working in Washington DC, and personal detours. Santiago wasn’t having it. She pushed back, noting that she was the first in her family to make serious money—that she hadn’t had the luxury of unpaid internships or starting out at $50,000 a year straight out of law school. She’d taken a longer road, but she was there, and that was the point. But most important one would come later.
Just when things really got good, Santiago, current SVP and deputy general counsel at Covenant House International, a nonprofit that provides shelter, safety, and comprehensive support services to young people facing homelessness and survivors of human trafficking, realized she couldn’t keep living what she felt was a double life.
The turning point came at Grand Central Terminal in New York City. After a seminar on wealth preservation for ultra-high net-worth clients and en route to a firm event in Connecticut, Santiago stopped for a meal in the lower-level food court.
There, she noticed people, likely unhoused, pulling leftovers from trash cans, eating the discarded remains of commuters’ meals.
“I had just finished a seminar talking about shielding assets for multiple generations,” Santiago remembers. “And someone is literally eating out of the trash a few feet away. I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Santiago had a great job, advising ultra-high-wealth families on tax planning with colleagues she respected and enjoyed working with. Off the clock, she was always volunteering in communities where that was the last worry anyone had. She no longer cared about the pay cut; she just wanted to feel good about where she was devoting her time on the clock.
So often, people who enter nonprofit work after starting their career in the private sector are labeled as people who couldn’t hack it in the rough and tumble corporate life, some kind of washout from the big leagues. For Santiago, it couldn’t be further from the truth. She just needed to live her truth.
The skepticism remained. In interviews, she was asked if she’d burned out, if she truly understood what she was signing up for. They seemed to miss the fact that she’d been doing volunteer work for most of her life, which included homeless outreach in multiple cities.
Santiago wasn’t about to let that go unchallenged. She pushed back, pointing out that she was the first in her family to make serious money—that not everyone had the luxury of unpaid internships or starting salaries of $50,000 right out of law school. She certainly hadn’t. But she was there.
Her candor paid off. She joined Legal Aid’s tenant defense unit in Harlem, helping keep people in their homes during one of the most volatile housing moments in recent memory. During the pandemic, she became an unofficial spokesperson, doing Spanish-language media appearances to explain shifting eviction moratoriums and the rights of tenants under evolving laws.
Big law offered prestige, but in this role, Santiago finally had peace. The job wasn’t the best fit, and the financial hit was admittedly “disastrous,” she says, laughing, but her soul felt good. She just needed to find the right place for her skillset.
Santiago joined Covenant House International in 2021 in roles that would let her stay close to the issues she cared about, but would allow her to contribute her strong transactional experience and exposure to litigation that she never cared for. Such positions are rare, but when she discovered an opening at Covenant House International, it felt like a convergence of everything she’d done before.
At Covenant House, the attorney says she finally feels she can bring her full self to work, then log off and lead what she describes as a healthy, grounded life, one that includes trail runs, hikes with her daughter in a carrier, and a continued commitment to professional growth through roles like chief compliance officer for the Hispanic National Bar Association.
She’s also helped significantly evolve the organization’s parental leave policy, using herself as the guinea pig to try out, then further evolve, the nonprofit’s policies.
During her journey through IVF, pregnancy, and a complicated path to motherhood—unfortunately, including emergency surgery and pregnancy loss—Santiago experienced firsthand how patchwork parental leave laws can leave caregivers exposed.
Santiago became the first employee to use the new parental leave, then returned from leave ready to revise and refine the policy based on lived experience. “My experiences have made me better at my job,” she said. “The question is always, ‘How can we make this better for the next person?’”
The SVP doesn’t want to be misunderstood; her move is not for everyone, and she doesn’t believe it should be.
“You can build a career in the private sector and still show up for your community, advocate for equity where you are, and use your skills and resources to make a real impact,” Santiago says. “Many of my peers in the Hispanic National Bar Association and the other organizations I value do exactly that, and I am grateful for their unwavering support.”
But if you, like her, don’t feel like you can do all the good you want to off the clock, nonprofit work is there. The work is hard, sometimes heartbreaking, and the money is never the reason for taking the role. But for some, it’s the only way. And that’s how the Queen of Reinvention got much better sleep at night.
For 100 years, St. John’s Law has opened doors to those traditionally denied access to legal education—immigrants, first-generation college students, and working New Yorkers determined to build better futures. As she advocates for and uplifts vulnerable youth at Covenant House, alumna Edda Santiago reflects the Law School’s mission of expanding opportunity and preparing lawyers to lead with purpose. Together with fellow Latino alumni like Hon. Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, Counsel at Greenberg Traurig, and Michael J. Molina, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel at BusPatrol, Edda exemplifies the excellence, prominence, and impact that distinguish St. John’s Law and its graduates.
