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Home for her first Christmas vacation since coming to the US to attend grad school at The Ohio State University, Lorraine Hernández was frank with her mother. She wanted to move back home to Puerto Rico. The big experiment wasn’t working out.
“I think a big part of my own personal success was the knowledge that my family was supporting me no matter what,” she says. “They may not have been able to financially support me, but I knew that if I decided to move back home, they would have understood and stood beside me.”
But Hernández stuck it out, earning a master’s in chemistry and slowly adapting to the cultural norms around her, like that saying hello to someone didn’t include a kiss on the cheek. More importantly, Hernández’s career thus far has proven that it can be very hard to succeed in a new country and a new environment, but she’s done it twice. The current senior intellectual property counsel at Owens Corning has switched geographies and careers. And she wants you to know that you can, too.
Hernández attended undergrad in Puerto Rico and didn’t ultimately move to the States until she was twenty-five. She was always ambitious; she felt the urge to stretch beyond the familiar. She was the first one in her family to come to the US to pursue her education. But she wouldn’t be the last. Today, her sister and mother live just fifty miles away from her Columbus home. But it was Hernández who did the trail blazing.
After grad school at OSU, the chemist entered the pharma world. She learned precision, how to lean into her innovative spirit, and the intricacies of the compliance world. But the limited scope of her research meant her work felt repetitive. The spirit that had pushed her to come to the US in the first place felt betrayed somehow. She needed more variety, more substance, and more challenge.
“I had exactly one law class that was rudimentary and in no way prepared me for law school,” Hernández says, laughing. “But I figured I could use my chemistry background if I got a law degree. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into, and I think that’s safe to say now.”
Law school was a daunting transition. Unlike chemistry, where answers are definitive, the law presented a limitless supply of options. Hernández recalls moments of doubt, but with time, she adapted and grew to love the field.
“I remember thinking that this could be one incredibly costly mistake,” the lawyer says. “But it just took me some time to adapt my thinking. I came to love it.”
The lawyer, then in her thirties, emerged from law school with a fully formed plan. She would get as much variety of experience as possible at a law firm and go in-house as soon as it made sense. And that’s exactly what she did. She found diverse clients and sectors in private practice over a decade. She eventually rose to director and co-chair of the IP practice at firm Kegler, Brown, Hill, & Ritter.
Upon joining Owens Corning as in-house counsel, Hernández encountered a significant new challenge: the expectation to quickly master the technologies central to the company’s innovations. This transition required Hernández to draw deeply on her chemistry background, enabling her to understand complex technical matters and provide effective counsel.
How has that transition gone? When the inventors she supports at Owens Coming were honored with an innovation award, they requested that Hernández be included along with the actual inventors.
“My job is to support these incredible people,” the counsel says. “But obviously, it made me feel appreciated to know that they’re comfortable coming to me. They allow me to be part of the process and to solve problems for them. That makes me proud, because it lets me know that they trust me with their creations.”
The attorney is conscious of how few women, let alone Latinas, break through in chemistry and law. She takes her role as a mentor very seriously. She admits that it is not easy, and it’s never been easy. But that’s also part of the point.
“You have to get out of your comfort zone,” she says. “Persistence and hard work are required.”
Hernández says her own perspective as a minority is different, precisely because she wasn’t considered a minority for the first quarter-century of her life. But she now appreciates the significance of her own success and values the opportunity to create meaningful change for the next generation of Latino leaders.
The senior counsel says she’s grateful for the amazing team that surrounds her at work, and the family she can be close to, even though they’re 1,800 miles from Puerto Rico. Hernández has made an incredible life for herself, and she’s brought along family in the process.
Lorraine Hernández, an experienced intellectual property attorney, leads initiatives that align innovation with business strategies across a global portfolio. Calfee, Halter & Griswold, a full-service law firm, is proud to partner with Lorraine and her team at Owens Corning in implementing those goals through proactive, collaborative legal counsel. Calfee works closely with Lorraine and her team to translate business objectives into effective, industry-leading intellectual property strategies. By combining legal depth, technical expertise, and practical insight, Calfee helps advance Owens Corning’s innovation priorities while protecting and maximizing the value of its intellectual assets. For more information, visit Calfee.com.
