Shannon Llenza, Assistant General Counsel at Microsoft and Commander, U.S. Navy Reserve (retired), reflects with Reed Smith data coordinator Mark Butterfield, a member of RSVets, Reed Smith’s veterans business inclusion group, on how her military service has impacted her legal, governmental, and corporate career. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith Podcast, Inclusivity Included, Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions, and challenges, past and present, all with a goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, Inclusivity Included. Mark: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Inclusivity Included. I'm Mark Butterfield. I'm a proud member of Reed Smith Vets here at Reed Smith, and your host for today's episode. With my own military service background and my ongoing doctoral studies, I'm deeply committed to exploring what service means in and beyond the military. Today, we have a truly unique guest, Shannon Llenza, a seasoned attorney and former member of Reed Smith's Business Leadership Council. She brings remarkable experience from both the military and corporate worlds. Shannon began her career as a full-time Navy JAG officer, moving into the reserves where she held key legal roles with the National Security Agency, the Department of Defense, and tackling issues with national impact in those roles. Now at Microsoft, she continues to apply the expertise that she builds, navigating critical intelligence and security matters. So Shannon, thank you so much for joining us to share your journey of service, leadership, and resilience. Shannon: Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here. Mark: It's a real pleasure for me. I would like to start by asking, first of all, what motivated you to begin your journey with the Navy? Shannon: Yeah, you know, it's funny. I didn't join the Navy until I actually commissioned my second year of law school. and the motivation to join the Navy is actually a funny story. It was my father who told me that I should go into the JAG Corps. And the reason he told me that is because there was this show called JAG that he loved and he thought it was just so cool. So he, you know, suggested it to me and I had no idea what the JAG Corps was. It never even occurred to me to join the military. At that time, I was 29 years old, so I was older. So I started exploring the opportunities my second year, and I interviewed with some JAGs. I was just really impressed by the program and the experience that I would be able to gain going into the JAG Corps. And so once I was offered a position, I sealed the deal and I went in. I commissioned and then I commissioned. Yeah, so it was great. Mark: And did you have a family history of military service? Shannon: You know, it's funny. No, no, I didn't have a family history of military service. In fact, I was the first person in my family to even graduate from college. So going to law school was a huge deal. And then joining the military was even a bigger deal. So, yeah, I'm the first. Mark: Yeah, we have similar overlap there. I'm the same. It's been my grandparents that served in the sailor into the Second World War. Shannon: Oh, my gosh. Wow. Mark: And then, yeah, for me, again, one of the first to go to university as well in the family, which was, yeah, so very similar in those respects. Shannon: Yeah, yeah, that's great. Mark: You've held significant roles across the military and the civilian sectors that I've briefly alluded to, particularly in regards to things like national security. And has this background sort of shaped your approach to your current position and challenges at Microsoft? Shannon: Yeah. So it's interesting. I got out of the JAG Corps after four years of active duty when I had my son, because my husband was also active duty. So it was kind of challenging for us. And that's when I went into the reserves. So when I got out of the Navy, I started working for the U.S. Government in various capacities that led to really a career in national security. I started at the Department of Defense, working on Guantanamo Habeas Matters. And then, like you said, I moved over to the National Security Agency and then ultimately ended up at the Department of the Justice writing counterintelligence and counterterrorism FISA's. The interesting thing in the JAG Corps and the reserves, I did serve in our national security litigation section for a period of time. So I did do some national security work as well in the JAG Corps. And the interesting link between the two really is how, when I had my job at the Department of Defense, I worked with the intelligence community, and that's when I really became interested in transitioning over into the intelligence community and becoming an attorney in that area. And it was people in the reserves that I knew that were working in the intelligence community that sort of helped me parlay my job from the Department of Defense into the National Security Agency and then into the Department of Justice. So even though the reserves, I wasn't directly involved in these agencies when I was in the reserves, the reserves had a huge part to play in me really advancing my career and helping me get to where I wanted to be in the intelligence community and government. And then the way that worked with Microsoft was really interesting. I actually applied for a job. My original job at Microsoft was, I was the attorney advising on when Microsoft would receive legal process from the federal government, state, local government, national security FISAs. And so all of that experience I had in the government really, really transitioned over to Microsoft so that I, you know, it was sort of a unicorn job at Microsoft. You had to have national security experience and FISA experience. And I was like, oh, my God, that's the job for me. Right. And so then that's how I was able to take all of that experience that I had in the U.S. Government and transfer it over to my role at Microsoft, my original role. Mark: Yeah, it's a really unique and interesting CV for me to read through. Yeah. It's just so varied. I suppose you must have spent a lot of time sort of juggling these multiple roles and your family life and everything else. How do you balance that in terms of your service commitments, your family commitments, your various career roles? Shannon: Yeah. You know, it was, it was challenging. It was hard because when I was full into the reserves and working full time, you know, my kids were little and my husband was active duty. So it was, it was definitely challenging. You know, it just, I just made the commitment to, to do that, that balance. And, you know, I, I honestly like looking back, like, I don't know how I did it. You know, I just did it. Right. It's like, you're sort of in it and I was committed to staying in the reserves. I just figured it out, I guess. The most important thing to me always was my family and taking care of them. What's interesting is when I was about 15 years into it back in 2000 or 17 years into it, I guess, back in 2019, I actually was tagged for an involuntary mobilization to Djibouti. And so at the time, my daughter was 9 and my son was 14. My husband had just gotten off active duty and they sent me away for about 15 months. I had 12 months boots on ground. You know, that was interesting and difficult. And, you know, again, it's just one of these things that you just get through it, right? Because you've made that commitment. And as much as I didn't want to go, and I didn't want to leave my daughter and my son, but you just got to do what you have said you're going to do. Mark: Absolutely. And the 15 months, I'm always astonished by the U.S. duration. Our deployments in the British military are usually half that. So that length of separation must be really challenging. If you've got a husband who's in the service, some bit of understanding there as well. Shannon: Yeah, he was definitely understanding. He, you know, as I worked and I was in the reserves and had kids, he did five deployments, much shorter. His were between as long as seven months, but then they would be about three or four months. So, so he, you know, I knew, you know, I had experienced a deployment, he was active duty, he knew what he was in for, but, but it was a really long time to leave, to leave my husband and my kids, you know, and then it actually overlapped with COVID as well. And so that, that made for an even more challenging experience. So yeah, it was, it was a little bit difficult. Mark: I can imagine. So I suppose being in the military, you're, you're learning a lot of unique lessons. What unique lessons did you learn in the military about resilience, dealing with high stakes decisions and managing change, these sorts of things that could be potentially valuable to people in a corporate setting? Shannon: Yeah. I think you learn how to manage change pretty easily. I think that things are always changing and moving and fluid, especially, for instance, I'll just go back to the deployment, right? You know, I mean, it was just, you're in a combat zone, even though it's Djibouti, things are moving quickly. My job was to advise the commanding officer of the base. So it was a lot of very, you know, there were decisions that had to be made, they had to be made quickly. And so you just, in that. Experience, really, it allowed me to become more confident in myself and understand like, okay, I am a good lawyer. I do understand this. I can't advise a commanding officer, right? And so it really just helped me gain confidence as an attorney and my abilities, and then also just helped me learn how to just roll through change and deal with issues as they came up. The resilience part definitely was there as well. Just staying strong while I was aw