2024 Forty Under 40: Roya Porter

Senior Corporate Counsel | Strada Education Foundation

Roya Porter’s mom always stressed to her the importance of a college education as a way out of poverty. Roya listened. “I guess I do what I do for all of the people in my family who never were afforded the opportunities that are at my fingertips due to the political times in which they grew up,” she says. Porter is the primary legal adviser for the Strada Education Foundation’s HBCU initiative, human resources, real estate and insurance, a job that helps the organization strengthen the link between education and opportunity. “It is going to take more innovative solutions from institutions to ensure students from all backgrounds have an opportunity to a quality higher education,” she said.

Getting here: Porter’s first job after law school was doing tax compliance at a Big Four accounting firm. But she always wanted to practice law. Her first position advancing that goal was clerking for Tanya Walton Pratt, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. From there, she went into private practice, then to Ice Miller for four years, where she worked in a range of practice areas, from litigation to mergers and acquisitions, and BCforward, as director of compliance and corporate counsel.

Givebacks: Annual giving chair, Hendricks Regional Health YMCA of Hendricks County. She has also served as treasurer and vice president for the Marion County Bar Association.

Influential moment: “There were moments where I had to decide what I wanted my work/life balance to look like—and that looks different depending on the ages of my daughters. Now, they are at ages where it is important for me to be involved in their extracurricular activities.”

Advice: “Evaluate your employer every two years to make sure your current role is aligned with your overall five- to 10-year personal and professional goals and that you’re on a path of development to those goals.”•

Check out more Forty Under 40 honorees.