Newsmaker: Joy Flowers Conti

Joy Flowers Conti

Age : 60

Family : Husband, Anthony; three sons.

Occupation : Federal judge

Education : Bachelor's and law degrees, Duquesne University, where she was the first law student to graduate summa cum laude and also served as editor-in-chief of the Law Review.

Background : Clerked for late state Supreme Court Justice Louis L. Mandrino; first woman hired by the Downtown law firm now known as K&L Gates, leaving to become a tenured professor at Duquesne Law School and later returning to private practice; became partner at Kirkpatrick and Lockhart and a shareholder at Buchanan Ingersoll; appointed judge in the Western District of Pennsylvania in 2002 by President George W. Bush; former president of the Allegheny County Bar Association; was a governor of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and served as co-chair of its Task Force on Legal Services for the Poor; fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy and a member of the American Law Institute; currently a counselor and a member of the executive committee of the W. Edward Sell American Inn of Court in Pittsburgh.

Noteworthy : Named a recipient of the American Inns of Court's 2009 Professionalism Awards for the Third Circuit. The American Inns of Court Foundation includes more than 26,000 federal, state and local judges, lawyers, law professors and law students in more than 350 chapters nationwide.

Quote : "It's very humbling that people think that highly of me. It's flattering and humbling."