Who am I?
My name is Amanda Palmer, but that is merely a name. I am so much more. Here is the story of how I came to be who I am and why I do what I do!
My parents bought a house and I grew up in the village of Creston, in Platte County, Nebraska from the age of about 4. I attended elementary school in Creston.
I would guess this picture was probably kindergarten.
My parents divorced when I was only nine years old. The next several years were difficult. My parents did not have an easy divorce. They have a good relationship now but back then, it was not so civil.
In fact, their divorce largely shaped the choices and decisions I would go on to make for myself. And I firmly believe that if they had someone like me to help them through their divorce, maybe things would have gone better.
I graduated from Leigh High School in 2000 and enlisted in the US Navy in 2001.
Military was all around me growing up. I was surrounded by military veterans in my own family and my community. Here I am with my best friend in 2009 at the Creston Memorial Day celebration.
I was stationed in Puerto Rico, California and Nebraska. I deployed twice with VFA-113, once each to the Pacific and to the Arabian Gulf.
While in the Navy, I got married and started my family a few years later. When I finished my service in the Navy in 2009, I became a defense contractor and continued doing the same work I had done in the Navy. I took a job in Iraq for a little over a year and then moved my whole family to England for another defense contracting job for over four more years.
But being away from home and family is hard. In 2015, I decided we should come home. I took advantage of my military benefits and enrolled at Creighton University to finish my degree in Political Science. I finished classes in fall of 2016 and walked across the stage for graduation in May 2017.
I went to work as a legal assistant for a prestigious law firm in Omaha and realized that I wanted to be the lawyer and not the assistant. So I went back to Creighton and completed the 2-year Accelerated Juris Doctorate program in May 2020.
After graduation I went to a firm specializing in estate planning and probate in rural Nebraska. We did estate planning for complex and high value estates, many consisting of ranches and multi-generational family farming companies. I learned a tremendous amount about simple and complex estate planning and generational wealth management, but it wasn't quite exactly what I wanted to be doing. I most enjoyed the clients with modest estates. Additionally, I started performing mediation while I was with the firm. I especially enjoyed helping people find mutually agreeable resolutions using mediation in law school but there wasn't much opportunity to use it at the firm.
So now, here I am, doing what I love everyday. I help ordinary people find practical solutions to the things that trouble them.