Born and raised in Summerville, South Carolina, Hope Bergquist, a 2005 English alumna of College of Charleston had much to say about her experience at The College when I interviewed her. We covered her experience in the English department, as well as her life before and after, which all paved her path in becoming Senior Commercial Counsel at Zscaler, an IT security company offering enterprise cloud security services.
After attending high school in Summerville, Hope started college at the University of South Carolina. For her at this time, the distance from home was important for her independence. However, she found herself returning to Charleston on many occasions to soak up the coastal environment and downtown Charleston. She said, “I have so many more memories and connections with Charleston” so she decided to transfer to the College of Charleston. At the start of her junior year she began taking classes through the English department and immediately, she knew the change was a positive one.
When asked about how this transition went for her, she said, “I immediately was fully immersed in the English Department. The quality of the professors was phenomenal… [The College] was much closer to a small school atmosphere where I was getting lots of direct connections with students and professors… and I truly learned more.” Her favorite class at College of Charleston covered The Romantic Period, and her professor Bishop Hunt was such a profound influence in her academic studies that she took more of his classes afterward. He was a “larger than life kind of figure but very humble and kind of quiet… he kind of reminded me of an old English man..” she said while smiling.
“He was very thoughtful and did a nice job at challenging you to think about something in a different way… I really respected his opinion.. His classes were so enlightening.”
Hope also took one of Dr Myra Seaman’s first classes at College of Charleston. She said of Dr Seaman, “she was really new and she was great.” Additionally, while Hope thoroughly enjoyed learning about her favorite genres and authors of literature, like the Romantic Period and Chaucer, she was also very interested in “learning about the history surrounding when different pieces were written.. And what was going on outside of the [authors] lives that inspired their writing.” For her, it wasn’t only about analyzing written texts, but also understanding what was happening socially, politically, and culturally at the time of their conceptions.
In addition to being an English major, Hope was also a Historic Preservation minor. In one of the classes she took through this minor, she participated in the efforts of putting a historic downtown building on the historic preservation registry. She also interned with the Art Department for the Antique Symposium hosted each spring where she put together mailers, fielded calls from participants, as well as helped direct people and answer any questions they had at the event.
Then when graduation rolled around, she had already attended many career fairs and participated in interviews but was not exactly sure of what she wanted to pursue next. So, Hope decided to take some time off from academics and step into the working world. For her, “If you would’ve asked me at twenty-two what I wanted to do with my life, it would’ve been something completely different,” therefore looking back on this decision, Hope is grateful. She took odd jobs in stores and companies, one where she was an office manager, but it was her paralegal job in Alabama working for a construction defect litigator which had a most profound influence.
Her experience in court helped her see that life as a litigator was most likely not the path for her, but “the design and architecture element” piqued her interest and had her thinking about law school. Her experience as a paralegal was informed by her English degree as the job consisted of the “natural process of structuring sentences.” Law felt like her niche, and all her experience both academic and professional up to that point in time gave her the knowledge she needed for taking her next steps. Hope decided to return to Charleston and attend the Charleston School of Law with an interest in environmental law.
During her time in law school, Hope knew the experience of study abroad opportunities was invaluable. Therefore, she began searching for such experiences. She found a position to work with a Supreme Court justice in Ireland, but the timing didn’t align. Instead, she chose to study in Greece through Tulane University, during which she studied Maritime Law. Though it was an introductory course, she learned much about how maritime law has many similarities to U.S. law and differing aspects as well in legal proceedings. This knowledge equipped her with the skills to participate in Charleston School of Law’s moot court competition involving Maritime Law.
After graduating from law school, Hope clerked for a judge in Walterboro, South Carolina. During which, she provided legal counsel regarding the Alex Murdaugh case. After taking some time off after this clerkship, she then joined a law firm and gained more experience solidifying her decision to not pursue litigation. After trial and error, she decided she wanted to be a transactional lawyer and began working for Zscaler as she also had an interest in technology. There, she negotiates contracts with mostly high-profile and complex customers. With each customer, she “think[s] through how the contract impacts all parties [to come up with] the correct language on both sides.” In each of her endeavors, Hope has been informed by the priceless skills she learned while at the College of Charleston.
These skills include but are not limited to writing, creativity, reading comprehension, and attention to detail. In her current position at Zscaler, she says she’s “not speed reading.. It’s slow and there’s times where it’s tedious [because] everything is interconnected… [I’m] reading slowly but only to make sure [I’m] being thorough and catching all the details.” Her analytical skills learned through studying literature have aided her in creating contracts in which both sides “have language that works for them and [where] it allocates the responsibilities and risks [effectively] for [everyone].”
Hope currently resides in South Carolina where she’s closer to her family and is raising children with her husband. She works from home for Zscaler, which affords her the flexibility to manage her many responsibilities. Her experience at College of Charleston and the Charleston School of Law gave her many invaluable opportunities and skills which have positioned her well in her current line of work as a transactional lawyer.