The honorable Chief U.S. District Judge Patti Saris was born on July 20, 1951. She would go on to attend the esteemed Boston Latin School and then, eventually, Radcliffe college, a school of Harvard University. Like many young adults then, and like many now, she changed her ambitions, originally wanting to become a journalist, writing for the school newspaper the Harvard Crimson, but then deciding to pursue a career in law. Saris graduated from law school in 1976 and became a clerk to justice Robert Braucher on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. In 1979 she moved to Washington D.C. and worked on regulatory reform to improve government operations with the Senate. In Saris’s time, female lawyers were not very common and decided to apply as magistrate judge after being approached by the Women’s Bar Association, herself having her own reservations about the position as a very young woman. It was on Jan. 1st, 2013, that Patti Saris became Chief U.S. District Judge for Massachusetts, succeeding Judge Mark L. Wolf.