Bonnie MacNaughton, ’82

Senior Attorney, Microsoft

In 1979, Bonnie MacNaughton ’82 jumped into her Plymouth Duster and headed out of Minneapolis for California. As she drove over the hills into the lush valley, "Do You Know the Way to San Jose," was playing in her head. "All I knew about San Jose was the Dionne Warwick song," she says. "I was in my Duster with all my worldly possessions expecting to experience that peace of mind."

MacNaughton was born in the "Icebox of the Nation" (according to Wikipedia, the town was the model for "Frostbite Falls," home of Rocky and Bullwinkle) and spent her childhood and her college years in Minnesota. She studied business and English at Gustavus Adolphus College, a small Lutheran liberal arts college in rural, Minnesota. It was time for a change.

In the ensuing 30-odd years, the world has changed dramatically (in law school MacNaughton used a typewriter and in her first years of legal practice, sent her briefs to WANG word processors the size of voting booths), and MacNaughton has been able to have three exciting careers.

After graduating from Santa Clara Law in 1982, she worked at Petit & Martin and Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro in Los Angeles as a civil litigator. Wanting more trial experience, in 1987, she became an assistant United States attorney in Los Angeles and then in Seattle, where she was promoted to chief of the Narcotics Unit. After 14 years with the U.S. Justice Department cracking international drug conspiracies, she joined Microsoft’s Worldwide Anti-Piracy Team "ferreting out top-tier counterfeit producers and distributors of the software giant’s products," she says.  She is now a senior attorney and manages a team of lawyers, criminal investigators, intelligence analysts, and forensic specialists in enforcing Microsoft’s intellectual property rights.

"It’s been fun to do a variety of different things," she says. "I think people tend to think of the legal profession as one where you become one type of  lawyer and work in that field for your entire career. That hasn’t been my experience at all."

MacNaughton agrees that women are underrepresented in the technology industry "at all levels," and that "the gap is wider at the higher levels of management." And she is doing something about it. "This past year, I joined our legal department’s diversity committee to help Microsoft in its commitment to close that gap and recruit and retain a workforce that is truly representative of our customers."

MacNaughton credits SCU with giving her the confidence to make her career moves and to aim for the top.  "For me, SCU Law was a very supportive, nonthreatening environment. It built me up and made me feel confident to go interview at large law firms in L.A., to work for a prestigious San Francisco firm, and to go for the very competitive job of being an assistant U.S. attorney. I’m very grateful to SCU for helping me build a strong foundation for my legal career."

Santa Clara Law also provided MacNaughton another unique opportunity: to play football. She was one of the inaugural members of the famous Eleven Easy Pieces, the flag football team made up of female students of the School of Law.

Now an important part of the history of the law school, the Pieces (later renamed the Attractive Nuisances) include the legacy of a law school scholarship for female athletes.

These days, MacNaughton has given up her football cleats and spends most of her free time deftly maneuvering her minivan through Puget Sound traffic, hauling her eight-year-old twins, Mara and Faith, to soccer games. She is married to Brian Kipnis, a McGeorge Law School graduate whom she met at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. She has not told her daughters about her former role as a football star.