West Virginia Executive Spring 2017 | Page 94

Tammie Clark Alexander Member Steptoe & Johnson PLLC ALICIA ELKIN Photo by Chuck Warner Photography. TAMMIE CLARK ALEXANDER remembers thinking at an early age that being a lawyer might be a good fit for her, but it also seemed far-fetched given that there were no lawyers in her home- town of Cameron, WV. The legal path was long, but she perse- vered, and today she is a member at Steptoe & Johnson PLLC, where she leads the firm’s Banking, Real Estate and Financial Services Practice Group. “I got to where I am today because I didn’t let adversity get me down,” she says. 92 WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE Alexander grew up on a 400-acre dairy farm where her first job was picking berries and selling them to local customers. The day after she graduated high school, she moved to California to be with her sister, and she went to work for a company that supplied hardware and test cell accessories to the transporta- tion industry. She went on to find her first job in the legal pro- fession as a paralegal for a sole practitioner in Morgantown, WV, which eventually led her to Steptoe & Johnson. “I learned a lot from those early jobs, but the greatest lesson