“Someone told me after I won, 'thank you and you have really broken through the glass ceiling.' I hadn’t even thought about that. It makes my head tingle because that is just awesome. I really hope this will show other women that you can do anything that you want to do.”

 

Megan Clark did not always fit in and she was not always a winner. She didn't care. The one thing she did know how to do was work hard, be tough and assertive, all of which she credits now for her success. 

 

"I will never forget. I was in high school and someone called me a 'sell out.' There was always in Farmville a black and white line. In school it was very much us versus them, so I didn’t really feel like I fit in with any particular group of people.”

 

Clark is a self-proclaimed "classic nerd" saying that education was something that was just expected of her. Her two parents, Lorenzo and Theresa, always wanted her to excel and do better than they did and have more opportunities for herself. They always told her to "do her best." So she did. 

 

After graduating from Prince Edward County high school at age 17, Clark continued her education "with no sense of urgency" at the nearby Longwood University in Farmville, Va, where her mom was a teacher. At Longwood she majored in communication studies, minored in Spanish and was the president of the senior honor society Mortar Board. 

 

Typically when you think of communication studies, people think of media, journalism or public speaking, but that was not what Clark liked the most about her major. She was more into the research and writing aspect of the major and at the end of her senior year, she knew she needed another degree, so she decided to go to law school. 

 

“It wasn’t one of those situations that I grew up and always told myself 'I want to be a lawyer, I want to be a lawyer.’ I really wanted to go into journalism and so it just sort of happened that I stumbled upon law school.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When applying to law schools, her first choice was to go to the University of Virginia, but she got waitlisted. She then got accepted to William and Mary (among others) and "never gave any other school a second thought." She soon realized that her favorite classes in law school were criminal based, which led her to becoming a prosecutor after law school.

 

But before she could become a prosecutor, she needed to pass the bar exam, not knowing she would learn an important lesson about hard work and never giving up after barely failing her first time around.

 

Her biggest failure? “Failing the bar by three points the first time I took it. You have to have a 190 and I got a 187.” 

 

After failing, she went home and cried in her parent's bed, but soon after got up and went back to work. After telling her boss at the time that she failed the bar, he made a deal that he would pay her to go study, all she had to do was come in on the days they had court and on all of her days off, she needed to study. So Clark went to the funeral home her godmother owns, found a place in the back office, and studied 10 hours a day for the next bar exam which is only offered twice a year.

 

“I got bar results on that Friday and started studying again on the Monday after because I never wanted to feel like that again.”

 

Her second time around … She passed. 

 

She said with a smile, "My best feeling ever was passing the bar. That test took years off of my life.” 

 

While working as a successful prosecutor, Clark was approached about five years ago to run for commonwealth’s attorney of Prince Edward County, but according to her, "it was not the time." In December 2014, she was approached again, and after missing her hometown and consulting with her family and God, she decided it was the time and put her name on the ballot the next year. 

 

After moving back to Farmville, she began campaigning, winning over the community and getting ready for the elections. Her main goal was to fix problems within the community, because she "felt like we were in a regression." Not only did she return with passion and more knowledge after years of law school and after having worked jobs as both a teacher and a prosecutor, but she returned to bring what she had learned while she was away and give it back to her hometown. 

 

“It is always good to take what you learn and go back home with it.”

 

After the primaries in June 2015, Megan won and she was “ecstatic” … and then the backlash began.

 

“I knew that I wasn’t going to have an opponent in November, but I also knew that there were some very angry people in Prince Edward.”

 

Those people were angry for many reasons.  They were angry about the results. They were angry that Clark even decided to run.

 

“Some people had the belief, ‘how dare she come in and do this and mess up our system or our machine.’ They had the successor picked out and they just sort of looked at me like how dare you come in here and mess this up.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clark tried not to listen to the negativity and blocked most of the negative things on social media. She did though, remember one thing she read that she will never forget: 'Why doesn’t she wait her turn? Why doesn’t she allow (her former opponent) to win and then apply for a job under him.'

 

“I never mentioned my race and I never mentioned my sex in any of this, but the undertones were still there. I wanted people to see me based on the merits of things. You look at me and you can tell that I am a person of color and that I am a woman. Moving right along! Let’s focus on what I can do for the community.”

 

On November 3, 2015, Clark became the first woman, African-American and Prince Edward County high school graduate, to be elected to serve as the commonwealth’s attorney of Prince Edward County. Her next goals are to use her position to rebuild her community.

 

 

N: Do you think being women helps us or hinders us? 

I think it can do both. I have always been taught to stay two steps ahead of everybody else, because it is more difficult. 

Some of the things that come out of my mouth could be perceived as better if I was white or if I was a man. It is a fine line that women have to walk in terms of balancing what society has deemed appropriate for us and how we act, and sometimes our real personality traits. I have a more masculine communication pattern. To people who don’t know about that, they just think I’m a bitch and that is just the way that is. I am very direct.

 

N: What advice would you give younger Megan?

Not to stress as much.

 

N: What are some things that people don’t know about you?

I am really goofy. It’s really bad. I am a kid at heart and I get along great with my little seven year-old niece. I am super competitive, but people already probably know that about me. I play tennis. But I am so goofy it is terrible.

 

N: What advice would you give to little girls or women who want to establish credibility and find success in any field they want?

One: Don’t take no for an answer.

Two: Stay a step ahead of your competition. Which requires you to really think and plan.

Three: You can say anything you want to say, but it is the way in which you deliver it, which is very important.

 

“I am a hard worker. I don’t like to fail. It happens, but I am a very hard worker and I will tell anybody that any day. I don’t really know if I am that intelligent or I just bust my butt.”