Tonya Hansen
Tonya grew up near Eugene, Oregon but spent every school vacation at her grandparents’ farm in Buhl, Idaho. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1977 which she took, briefly, to the Bay Area in California and Seattle, Washington before settling in Idaho to be nearer to the family farm in Idaho in 1981.
Tonya landed in the legal field quite by accident after serving for nine years as the administrative director of the Idaho Association of Realtors. She developed an interest in due process while administering the Association’s ethics and arbitration procedures and expanded that interest while supervising a legal unit for the Bureau of Child Support (now defunct) for the State of Idaho for the next four years.
That was followed by nine years as a paralegal with Risch, Goss & Insinger where she learned the most important lesson of her career from one of the partners who told her it wasn’t about winning cases but helping people through difficult times and her job was to do whatever it took to bring them through the legal process with their humanity intact. She has held that thought as a voice in her head since.
She went on to several years with other law firms, mostly specializing in litigation until she found Strindberg & Scholnick (or they found her). She has found employment law to be deeply personal and rewarding because she gets to listen to that voice in her head that says that people really do matter.
Tonya and her husband, Clay, spend every extra minute working on their farm on the Oregon-Idaho border tending 300 fruit and nut trees and raising alpacas, miniature cattle, pygmy goats, dogs, cats and a family of skunks. They do squeeze in time to cheer on the Oregon Ducks, even when they lose.
