Mindset An unending love for learning fuels growth of Texas attorney By Tom Kirvan
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s a student at the University of Wisconsin some four decades ago, Juli Fournier said she quenched her educational thirst by “drinking from a firehose for learning,” immersing herself in all academic subjects to become equipped as an independent thinker.
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It was a path she elected to take after growing up in the proverbial school of hard knocks as the only child of parents beset by lifelong mental health problems. “My childhood, and my upbringing in general, was difficult, to say the least,” said Fournier, whose parents divorced when she was 2 years old. “My father was a paranoid schizophrenic, while my
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mother was what I would term a highfunctioning crazy person who would go on to have five more marriages. “Coming from that kind of family background, I was determined to be self-sufficient, so I absolutely poured myself into my studies in order to give myself a chance at success,” she said.