Ling-Ling Nie, the top lawyer for the Georgia Institute of Technology, struggled in law school and at the beginning of her career as she decided what kind of law to practice.

“I had to do some soul-searching,” said Nie, a metro Atlanta native who went to the University of Georgia for undergraduate school and Washington & Lee for law school. Upon graduation, she clerked for a local court in Portsmouth, Virginia, leading her to conclude she wasn’t interested in criminal law. Then she spent about a year at a firm handling divorces and medical malpractice work, which also failed to spark an interest.