Melinda Ghilardi
Episode 36: Plan Your Time Like You Plan Your Finances
Good afternoon everyone. My name is Lynn S. Evans and I am the host of Power Of The Purse Podcast. There was a time in my life, not long ago when I believed three things about money. First, women are not supposed to talk about or be included in any conversations about money. Two, women don’t have the natural ability to understand anything about money and three, men know best how to manage money.
Those truths I made up about money guided me for years until I realized money was not a foreign language or some other obscure academic exercise. It was something I could not only understand but teach to other women. Too many times, I’ve heard stories from women who ought to know better but didn’t until they were forced to because of divorce, widowhood, job loss or the approach of retirement.
This podcast will add another chapter to a rich history of successful women who when faced with some personal challenges found the ability to step beyond them, will examine some of the truths they made up about money from their life’s experiences and how that shaped the path they choose. My mission is to help women have a healthy, positive relationship with money. With that in mind, my guest today is attorney Melinda Ghilardi.
Melinda Ghilardi is the First Assistant Federal Defender for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the federal defender’s staff in 1986, she was an Assistant District Attorney in Lackawanna County. She’s a member of the American Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, the Federal Bar Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. She is a past president of the Lackawanna Bar Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
She is past president of the Lackawanna Bar Association and the treasurer of the Association of Women Lawyers of Lackawanna County. She is the co-chair of the Geisinger Health System’s Women’s Health Volunteer Leadership Council and the co-chair of the Geisinger Northeast Advisory Council. She’s also a member of the Board of Girl Scouts in the heart of Pennsylvania and is on their executive committee.
She was a recipient of the Women of Distinction Award presented annually by the former Scranton Pocono Girl Scout Council and was the chair of the 2006 Women of Distinction Awards program. In 2005, she received the Lynette Norton Award presented by the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession. That same year she received the inaugural Athena Award presented by the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce. She has also served on the Lackawanna County Commission for Women, the Friendship House Board of Directors, the Board of Directors of the Scranton Division of American Heart Association, and the Board of Directors of the Former Community Medical Center Healthcare System. She has volunteered as the national sponsor chair for the Northeastern Pennsylvania Race for the Cure.
She is a past chair of the Board of Family Service of Lackawanna County and she’s a member of the Peckville Business and Professional Women’s Club, and was named their Woman of the Year in 1999. She served on the University of Scranton’s Board of Trustees, where she chaired the Student Life and Presidential Search Committees. The University honored her by establishing an Ignatian Scholarship in her name, and in 2000, presented her with the Frank J. O’Hara Alumni Award for outstanding achievement in the field of law. She is a current member of the Board of Visitors of the University’s Panuska College of Professional Studies.
She and her husband, attorney Sidney J. Prejean, recently received the Robert J. Munley Award for Distinguished Service from Lackawanna Pro Bono. Melinda is a 1976 graduate of Scranton Preparatory School and a 1980 magna cum laude graduate of the University of Scranton, where she received the Departmental Award for Public Administration. In 1983, she was awarded a juris doctor from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Welcome, Melinda.
Lynn, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and your listeners about the Power of the Purse.
I’m thrilled. Nice work. You did all that. I want to tell you, your bio is just so powerful. I wanted to make sure I hit the highlights and I want all of our listeners to know that there’s much more in here, but I just thought we would probably get a very good idea of who you are and your commitment to service and to the people and the institutions that you served. I want to say also as a citizen of this area in Lackawanna County, in Northeastern Pennsylvania, I say thank you for all the things that you’ve done.
That’s very nice of you. Thank you. I must say that I have enjoyed every minute of it. I truly have.
That’s really great. I want to start by asking you something that really from my perspective, it goes back to my own ignorance of what this is but I’m just wondering if people who are listening would also have the same question if they really thought about it. I know what the district attorney’s office does in each county in Pennsylvania. I’m aware of it because it’s always on the news and we always know what’s happening but I rarely hear anything about a federal defender, so what type of cases do you work with as a federal defender and what’s the population that you serve?
I am a federal defender in the federal district court that is called the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The Middle District of Pennsylvania covers 33 of the 67 counties in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We have two other federal district courts in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We have the Western District of Pennsylvania and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The Western District of Pennsylvania is Allegany County and the counties that surround Pittsburgh and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is Philadelphia County and all of the suburban counties that surround Philadelphia.
The Middle District of Pennsylvania is everything in between. We cover a very, very large area and we have in our district because our district is so large, we have three offices. Our main office is in Harrisburg and we have two branch offices. I’m in a branch office is Scranton which covers the northeast corner of the district. We have an office in Williamsport and as I said earlier our main office is in Harrisburg.
We are appointed by the federal court to represent individuals who are under investigation for or have been charged with committing federal offenses. We do exactly the same thing that the public defender offices in the counties in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania too. It’s just that they only do it in Lackawanna County Court or Luzerne County Court or Pike County Court, we do it in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Until—
What are… Go ahead.
You’re going to ask me what type of offenses, right?
Yes, exactly.
There is a lot of crossover between state and federal offenses so for instance, drug offenses, firearms offenses, child pornography offenses, they are crimes that could be charged in either federal court or state courts. Bank robbery, that’s another crime that can be charged in either federal court or state court. In those type of situations where there is what we call concurrent jurisdiction between more than one sovereign, the law enforcement agencies in those areas decide amongst themselves who’s going to prosecute this case.
Is it going to be the Luzerne County District Attorney? Is it going to be the Attorney General of Pennsylvania or are they going to refer it to the U.S. Attorney’s Office? There is concurrent jurisdiction in a lot…in really most of our cases.
We also do a lot of immigration, get a lot of immigration charges. You normally won’t see those charged in state court. That pretty much is exclusively federal. We deal with anything having to do with banks so I said before bank robbery. We would also deal with bank fraud, bank larceny. Anything dealing with the mails or the post offices. A postal employee who steals mail, that’s a federal offense.
Mail fraud, wire fraud, all types of what you would consider white collar type frauds. Any type of tax charges. We don’t get a lot of tax cases because the major requirement for the court to appoint us to represent people is that they’re indigents and they have no money. It’s been my experience that people who are usually charged with tax evasion, you’ll generally have the ability to hire a private counsel. We don’t do a lot of tax cases but we do get tax cases.
You’re defending the people who have been charged with these crimes, correct?
That’s correct. We do.
When you were the district attorney in the district attorney’s office, you were prosecuting the crimes, right?
That’s correct, yes.
Now, you’re on the other side.
I switched from prosecution to defense and I switched from state court to federal court.
I got it. Very clear. Thank you very much. I always wondered what the difference was between all that. I never could really get that in my head. One of the thing I wanted to ask you about for what I just… when I recited some of the things that you’ve been involved with. I know that you’ve been involved with business and professional women’s clubs, especially the one impactful for a long time. I see your picture in the paper all the time with all the other ladies who are there. What was about that organization that got you so involved in it? What appealed to you about that?
I joined that organization back in 1984 when I first started practicing law and when I… A lot of things have changed in the legal profession in the last 33, 34 years that I have been practicing. One of the major things that has changed is that there are lot more women involved in the profession today than there back in 1984 when I first started practicing. I did not encounter many professional women in my practice and I wanted to be able to network with other female professionals and my… I grew up in Peckville and my first grade teacher, Virginia Tedesco, was a member of the Peckville BPW when I was a student. That’s the connection.
Okay. All right.
When I started practicing law, that organization invited me to be a speaker in October of 1984 at one of their meetings so I go to this meeting and I see my first grade teacher and other women from the mid valley that I have known over the years. I joined the organization that night.
No kidding.
I spoke to them. It was in October of 1984. The subject matter was women in government. I was a woman in government and there were two women who were members of the organization: Carol Fronduti who was from the mid valley. She was a court reporter and Morita Peperili, also from the mid valley. She was the law librarian for Lackawanna County and they invited me to speak at this meeting.
How many women were there?
We used to get around 50 people at a meeting.
No kidding. 50, wow. Was that your first speaking engagement?
It was. I was a brand-new baby lawyer. I had only been practicing for less than a year. I was invited to be their speaker. I was very, very warmly welcomed. I looked around the room. I see all these people that I know and admire and I thought, ”This is where I want to be.”
All right. That’s great. Were you nervous?
Terribly nervous. Terribly nervous.
You survived. I love it.
I did and I’ve been a member of that organization ever since.
Wow. Have you done any other speaking engagements or what do they call it?
I do speaking, actually frequently. I have spoken. I’ve been invited to speak by the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce Women’s Network. I’ve spoken to them about mentoring and I do also legal speaking. As an attorney, in order to maintain your license, like in many professions, you have to have so many continuing education credits. It might be like that in the financial services industry as well.
It is.
I have a sister who’s a dentist. They have requirements and I know in many professions. We have to have so many continuing legal education credits every year and so I have done speaking mostly on ethics. In fact, I recently did an ethics presentation in upstate New York for a friend of mine who is the federal defender in the western district of New York. I was in Batavia, New York at the beginning of April to speak to her staff and other attorney there about ethics. I do speak on various legal issues to lawyers for purposes of continuing legal education credits.
I also noticed, and this is of course something that’s near and dear to my heart because I was one of the original founders of the Women’s Resource Center, but I see that you are part of the Barbara J. Hart Justice Center.
Yes.
That really was a great spinoff which came from a very important need for a lot of the women who were using the shelters and the services of the Women’s Resource Center to get the kind of legal help they really needed. How long have you been involved with that and why did that particularly talk to you?
I have been on the legal committee for two or three years. The past chair of the legal committee, Joan Samuel, is an attorney that I know here in Scranton and she asked me if I would consider joining that group and I was honored to join the group. When I worked in the district attorney’s office back in the mid-80s, I met Peg Rutty. Peg started working in the Women’s Resource Center I believe in 1984 when I started working in the district attorney’s office.
A woman by the name of Mary Beth Woody was the executive director of Women’s Resource Center at that time and Peg had just started working there. I’ve known Peg my entire legal career and when I was an assistant DA, I had an opportunity to work with the Women’s Resource Center on a day to day basis. As years went on, I didn’t work with them so much but they would call me every now and then when they would have an issue particularly regarding an undocumented alien if they had immigration questions, that sort of thing.
I am not an expert on immigration but I know people who are. I have had the opportunity to collaborate with the Women’s Resource Center over the years so when Joan asked me to join the legal committee, I was absolutely thrilled. I adore Peg Rutty and she has done so much for domestic violence in Lackawanna County as well as in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and we are so fortunate to have her at the helm of our organization here in Lackawanna County.
We are indeed. She is truly a gift.
She is.
I can see also that a lot of the activities that you’ve been involved with, the organizations, much of them had to do with women and girls and building them into strong women. I’m guessing that that’s obviously a passion with you.
It is and it has been for a long time. I think that it has become even more so as a result of my work in the federal defender’s office.
How so?
So many of my clients, of the women that I see in my case load are people who if they were Girl Scouts and if they had good women role models in their lives, their lives might have been very, very different. If they had someone who instilled self-worth and self-confidence in them, they might not associate themselves with people, primarily men, who take advantage of them and use them. I feel that by being involved in organizations that foster leadership and self-confidence in women and girls that I am trying to do my part to pay it forward.
I was very fortunate. I grew up in a family where I was the eldest of three girls and my father and mother never treated my sisters and I any differently because we were girls. They never treated us as if we couldn’t do anything and everything that we wanted. They never said, “Oh you can’t do that because you’re a girl.” It just never happened in our household. In fact, I will tell you that I am very proud that when I started Scranton Prep back in 1972, I was in the first class of girls that started as freshmen.
Yay.
I have been a trailblazer for a long time, Lynn.
That’s wonderful. I didn’t realize you were in the first class. How many other girls were with you in that first class?
There were 30 of us.
Wow. That’s great.
There were 30 girls and 100 boys in our class.
That’s still good. That’s still a good mixture. I like that. Do you know what it is now today? Is it half and half?
At least. Actually there might be more girls than boys in each class.
Wow.
Just six years later when my youngest sister went there, it was 50-50.
Wow. That’s good. I didn’t realize, it was that fast. That’s great.
It changed very quickly.
This is so perfect.
We must have done a good job for being the first class’s freshman girls.
I’m sure you did. Look at what you did, magna cum laude and everything else. Wow. I’d say that’s quite a wonderful tribute to the fact that whoever you all were, they pick from really good ones. I would say that.
I’m very proud of that and I think that my female high school classmates feel the same way.
Good. I’m sure if get back and took a look at all of those young women and who they became, it would be very impressive.
It is impressive, I agree.
That’s a perfect segue for me to go into the other part of this which was I wanted to get some idea of your background and your learning about money and the first question I was going to ask, you’ve already answered pretty much was what was your family like when you were growing up. You’re the oldest of three and you never had anybody tell you, you couldn’t do anything because you were a girl.
That’s absolutely correct.
All right. That begs the obvious question then how was your relationship… How was the relationship between your mother and father? Was your mother someone who never said, “I’m a woman. I can’t do certain things”?
My mother was a very traditional mother.
Really?
Yes. Very traditional. My mother had a very, very traditional role in the family. My father did not want my sisters and I to have that same traditional role.
It was your father?
Yes.
Oh my goodness. I love it.
Yes. It was my father who said they’re not going to do the dishes and they’re not going to learn how to cook and they are not going to do the laundry. Everyone in this family has a job and my mom’s job was to do all those things and take care of us. My father’s job was to work and to make money to provide for the family, and my sisters and I our job was to go to school and to get the best grades we possibly could and to get as much advanced education as we could so that we would have a profession and we would be able to be self-sufficient and would never have to be dependent on a partner or a spouse for our livelihood.
Beautiful. Can you clone them?
My father was a very old-fashioned Italian Catholic male.
That’s extraordinary.
You would never expect him to be so progressive but he wanted his daughters to be self-sufficient and independent.
That’s wonderful.
That’s the way my parents raised us.
You mentioned your sister is a dentist, one of them.
I have a sister who’s a dentist, yes, and my other sister is a businesswoman. She and her husband own a funeral home business along with their son in Pittston.
Wow. I love it. That’s great.
My sisters and I all have advanced degrees. We all have advanced degrees.
That’s great. I love it. I think that’s fabulous. Is your dad still with us?
No. I’m afraid he isn’t.
I’m sure he saw you all get to that point where you had your degrees and you were educated.
Yes. In fact, I will tell you both of my sisters are married and they each have two sons. My parents went from having three daughters to having four grandsons.
That’s so cute.
I was the last to get married and my father who was in ill health at the time I married, passed away four months after I got married. God bless them. I really think that he was just waiting around to make sure I got married and she passed away.
I know.
She passed away four months after that.
I have a similar story. I am the oldest of three and I didn’t get married for the first time until I was 48. My mother truly, she breathed a big sigh of relief that she had all three of us married. I think she purposely hung on to the world until I got married.
We definitely had that in common, Lynn.
Yeah, for sure. It’s really funny. They made us so independent that we just never really felt the need.
Exactly.
Oh gosh. That’s great. What was your first memory around money?
My first memory around money is at age 16, my father told me that I needed to have a checking account. I will tell you my father was an accountant and my mother was a bookkeeper. We talked about money in our house on a regular basis and I think that because of my parents’ background in finances, that my sisters and I were educated to not be afraid of money and to be planners as far as money is concerned.
When you're educated about money, it gives you the space to plan your money. Click To TweetWhen I was 16 years old, my father took me to the bank and he opened a checking account for me and he told me that it was now time for me to learn how to manage money. At age 16, he said if I could drive a car, I should be able to learn how to manage money.
If you can learn to drive at 16, you can learn to manage your money at 16. Click To TweetThat’s brilliant. I like that. What did you learn other than having the checking account? What did you learn about money with the checking account?
I learned how to manage my money because he gave me a certain amount for whatever I wanted to use it for. He gave me a certain amount every month and that was for me to buy clothes, to go out with my friends, to go to the movies. However I wanted to spend… I don’t even really remember how much he gave me on a monthly basis but that was mine to do with what I wanted and I couldn’t ask for anymore during that month, that was it. It was his way of teaching me, I think some financial responsibility.
That’s a good way to do it. The bottom line is were you a saver or a spender?
I’m a saver.
You had money at the end of the month?
Not a lot but yeah, some.
Well done, Melinda. Well done. Then as you grew up what lessons did you learn about money from that experience? Did you learn anything differently that obviously at some point that stopped, the money that dad was putting into that account stopped. Then from that point forward, how did you get money in and out of checking accounts or savings or whatever?
My parents did still provide me with financial support but when I had a job, my money would go in there and I learned to make do with what I had that I could have 10 things that I wanted to do but I had X number of dollars to do it with. I had to make some choices. It wasn’t until I started working, until I got a full-time job that, again, with my father’s direction learned how to save money and to begin then planning for retirement.
No kidding? How old were you at that point?
25.
You started planning for your retirement at 25. I love it.
Yes.
What a breath of fresh air that is. When you were in college and when you were in law school were you working? Did you have any part-time jobs or summer jobs?
I did have part-time jobs. I worked part-time in the summer. I did not work during school. I had my first full-time job after I graduated from law school and passed the bar when I worked in the district attorney’s office.
You started in public service from the minute that you graduated from college from law school?
That’s correct.
Wow. You’ve never worked in a private firm?
I have not.
Wow. You know your peers are always probably telling you, “Why don’t you come and work with us?”
They were always telling me I can make more money.
Exactly.
Honestly, that’s not really important to me. I mean certainly, I like nice things and like to go on nice vacations and want to live comfortably but I also want to feel satisfaction from my work and feel like I’m helping people because as I explained on a regular basis, I really think I’m a social worker at heart and that’s why working as an assistant federal public defender fits me so well because it gives me the opportunity to help people while still practicing cutting edge criminal law. That’s very intellectually stimulating but also I feel like I’m trying to do my part to make the world a better place.
You are indeed.
I have eight years of Jesuit education and so St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches us to be men and women for others and I took that call very seriously.
You certainly did. That’s interesting because I wanted to ask you something about your husband, Sid Prejean who’s also an attorney. Is Sid in a private firm?
He’s actually retired right now but his last job was at the public defender in Lackawanna County. He was a public defender in Lackawanna County for five years. Sid was in the Lackawanna County Public Defender’s Office, I was in the federal public defender’s office and our office had worked very well with each other because we had a lot of mutual clients.
Is that where you met?
No, actually, we met before that. We met when Sid returned… Sid was in the Air Force for 22 years and when he was getting ready to retire from active duty, he went to law school at night while he was on active duty during the day. When he graduated from law school and passed the bar, he came back to Lackawanna County and he started his career, guess where? Lackawanna County District Attorney’s Office.
Exactly.
Where I had started many years earlier. We were introduced by a mutual friend when Sid came back to Scranton in the late ‘90s.
That’s wonderful. That’s nice. How long before you two met each other, did you decide that he’s the one, she’s the one and you got married?
We got married two years after we met. We got engaged after one year. We knew pretty quickly that we were meant for each other.
That’s great. That’s really good. Nice little story there.
It is. It is.
That’s great. What’s he doing in retirement? Is he driving you crazy or is he doing something?
Oh no. He loves to golf so he does golf and he does a lot of volunteer work, most of which on how I got him into. Sid is also a graduate of the University of Scranton like myself and he is the adviser for the university’s mock trial team.
That’s great.
They started a mock trial team two years ago and Sid has been involved as their attorney adviser and he is enjoying that so very much and I think the students really enjoy working with him. He sits on a number of boards. He’s on the board at the Salvation Army and at the Arc. He’s a member of the Kiwanis Club at Scranton and is on their board of directors. He also teaches business law at Lackawanna College. He is involved in many things. As I said he loves to golf. He’s a member at Glen Oak Country Club and he loves golfing there. He helps me take care of my 93-year-old mother.
That’s wonderful. That’s really great. That’s a nice story. I like that.
He always says he does it… He did most of these things while he was working. He always says he has no idea how he did it because he doesn’t seem to have much time anymore.
It doesn’t sound like he does. Wow. That’s a very full retirement. I love listening to that. Let me ask another question. What are some of the best and the worst financial decisions you’ve ever made?
Probably the worst financial decision I made was I took a loan from my 401K.
Okay.
I did that to pay off some debt. Certainly I lost the interest that I would’ve had on that money. I paid it back as quickly as I could but that was a very poor financial decision and I would advise anyone and everyone to never do that and I have seen people where I work, people who are strapped for cash and are thinking about taking a loan from their 401K and I have consistently and very loudly told them they should not do that. Certainly everybody has to make their own decisions but I generally chime in and advise them not to do that, that you should find another way.
Well done.
I mean I was disciplined and I take the money back. The damage was done but I still paid the money back. Maybe not everyone would do that. The fact that these loans are available from retirement accounts, I don’t know that it’s such a great thing but anyway I feel like I have to tell people… I advise people not to do that. That was my worst financial decision. Probably my best financial decision was to contribute the maximum amount I could with my 401K.
One of the best financial decisions you can make is to max out your 401K. Click To TweetGreat. Are you looking at retirement at some time in the next five years?
Possibly but probably not. I think Sid would like me to be retired but I’m not sure that I am ready for that in the next five years. I suppose time will tell.
I think the thing is that more and more people are making the choice. I was going to say women but I think that’s true because it’s new to us really more than anybody else but people in general are really rethinking the idea of retirement as being something where you no longer work and earn money. What you just mentioned with Sid, he’s doing a lot of very important things and very involved. I think a lot of people are afraid of walking away from a job that they love because they love what they’re doing but they also like getting paid.
It’s one of those things that we don’t have to do that anymore. We used to just shoot for 65 and say, “Can’t wait.” There are those people who just count down the years, the months, the days and they’re happy that they finally reach that point but many of those people are the same people that once they are so-called retired, they’re bored to tears. That’s not you I don’t think.
It isn’t and I have an example of that in my life. Again, my father. My father retired, I think, three times.
Really?
Yes. He always went back to work. He tried to be retired and it just didn’t work for him. He wasn’t somebody that had hobbies. Work was his life.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
I’m maybe like that. I’m not so sure but I feel that I will retire from my job when I feel like I can’t do my job well anymore.
That’s a good point. The question is, will you know that or will others have to tell you that.
I hope I will know that because I have seen people and I’m sure you have too. I have seen people who have stayed in the workplace for too long.
I have, yes.
They’re not leaving when they’re at the top of their game.
Correct.
I want to leave while I’m still at the top of my game.
That’s a good place to be. It is. How do you keep going with all the different roles that you have in your life? I mean you have your 93-year-old mother. You’re a wife, you’re a daughter. You’re an extraordinary volunteer. How do you juggle it all?
I’m organized. I’m an organizer and I plan. I’m a planner. I schedule everything. I schedule exercise. I schedule everything. I firmly believe that if you plan just like you have to plan your finances and so forth. You can’t sit down at the end of the month and say, “Okay. So I have these 10 bills to pay. How am I going to do all of this when I only have this much money?” You have to plan. I plan my time like that too.
I don’t do it all myself. I have lots of help. I work with extraordinary people in the federal public defender’s office, professionals as well as attorneys, as well as professional staff. My husband helps me with everything that I do. I think that as long as we plan, we can get to do most of everything that we want. Maybe I should go to the gym every day for two hours. Maybe all I can plan is an hour but so an hour is better than nothing. Sometimes you have to make compromises but I do think that if you plan and you schedule and you’re organized, I think you can do most of it.
Last question for you. Would you do anything differently? Any regrets?
Not a thing.
I love it. Great answer.
I really wouldn’t.
I love it.
I don’t even have to hesitate to think about that. I wouldn’t change a thing. I have been so blessed with wonderful parents, wonderful family, fulfilling life’s work, a superb husband. I just would not want to change a thing.
That’s great. That’s really wonderful to hear somebody say that. I love it and thanks so much for doing this. Thanks to my guest, attorney Melinda Ghilardi and to all of you in my Power Of The Purse community. I hope today’s podcast was helpful in enriching your understanding of money and how it can help you achieve your life’s goals. If you like to spend 15 minutes on a call with me and ask me questions about your personal finances, please go to my website, powerofthepursepodcast.com. Select the contact tab and find the time that works for you.
Thanks again, Melinda, for sharing your time and your knowledge and until the next time. Thanks for listening and remember, money is not the enemy, your ignorance of it is. Let us know how can we find you if we need to. Is there an email address where people can reach you if they have some questions?
Yes. I can be reached at Melinda_ghilardi@ F as in federal, D as in defender .org, O-R-G.
Tell us how you spell your last name.
G-H-I-L-A-R, D as in dog, I.
Thank you so much. Until the next time. Thanks everybody. Goodbye.
How to contact Melinda:
- Email: Melinda_ghilardi@fd.org
- Website: http://pam.fd.org
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