Paula Boggs


Paula Boggs is the founder of Boggs Media, LLC, a business that manages her music, speaking, and other creative business activities. She is a philanthropist, fundraiser, public speaker, and musician. She is also a board member of numerous for-profit and non-profit organizations. She served as executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of law and corporate affairs at Starbucks Corporation from 2002 to 2012.

Early life

Boggs is the oldest of four, and was born to parents Janice Barber and Nathaniel Boggs Jr. in Washington, D.C. In 1972 her parents divorced and her mother took the kids to Europe, where she accepted teaching and administrator positions in Germany and Italy with the Department of Defense Schools System. Her father was awarded Howard University's first PhD in zoology in 1963.

Career

Boggs served as vice president, legal, for products, operations and technology at Dell Computer Corporation, and as a partner at the law firm of Preston Gates & Ellis, LLP. She served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and in various capacities as an attorney for the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense and the White House Office of Legal Counsel. She served as a regular officer in the United States Army, and earned Army Airborne wings and a Congressional appointment to the US Naval Academy, among America's first women to do so. She served in the policy-making body of the American Bar Association's House of Delegates. Boggs also served on the Iran-Contra task force during the Reagan administration.
Boggs serves on the boards of Avid, a leading provider of digital media technologies for media organizations and independent professionals, and Seattle Symphony Orchestra.
She is a former governor of the American Bar Association, trustee emerita of The Johns Hopkins University, former board member and secretary of public radio station KEXP and former director of School of Rock LLC. She was named NASDAQ's top general counsel in 2009. Boggs served as a member of the White House Council for Community Solutions from 2010 to 2012. She is also a former Chair of Legal Aid for Washington, and a former board member of the Seattle Art Museum. She was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2013 as a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. She resigned from the President's Committee in August, 2017, co-signing a letter of resignation that said in reference to President Trump, "Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions." She also served on the board of governors for the national American Red Cross.

Music career

Paula Boggs has written and recorded three full-length albums fronting the Paula Boggs Band, recorded one live EP and owns over 30 U.S. copyrights. She is also a voting member of The Recording Academy, Pacific Northwest Chapter and member of the Americana Music Association. Paula Boggs Band is sponsored by Deering Banjos, Breedlove Guitars and Radial Engineering, Inc.

Education

Boggs received a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, in international studies, where she was on a 4-year Reserve Officers' Training Corps scholarship and graduated first in her ROTC class. She then attended the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She also completed the U.S. Army Infantry Airborne School and earlier received a Congressional Appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy.

Awards and recognition