A Life of Good Fortune
A planned gift from Linda Peterson (’76) will help meet the unpredictable needs of future BU Law students.
Across the phone lines, you can hear the smile in Linda Peterson’s voice as she reflects on her wide-ranging career. “I was fortunate,” she says. “It was a lot of good stuff.”
After nearly 40 years of practicing corporate law—often as the only woman in the room—Peterson (’76) retired in 2015 as an associate general counsel at Occidental Petroleum Corp. in Los Angeles, where she was respected for her practical, incisive legal analysis and beloved for her warmth and approachability.
Peterson credits her law degree with making such a rewarding career possible and now gives back generously to BU Law—helping plan reunions, serving on the Dean’s Advisory Board, and making financial contributions.
When Peterson enrolled at BU Law, she envisioned a career in legal services. After graduation, a promised job with New York City’s public employees union fell through, and Peterson instead found work at Allegheny Power, where she specialized in securities law and discovered her talents as a corporate attorney. Peterson went on to work for the Liggett Group, a large business conglomerate, and the New York law firm Webster & Sheffield, before returning to her native California in 1989 to work in the legal department at Occidental.
“The good news about Oxy was that it wasn’t ever dull,” Peterson says of her 26 years with the company, “and the bad news about Oxy was that it wasn’t ever dull.”
“When I came to Occidental, Armand Hammer [the company’s famously eccentric chairman] was still alive, and it was a very weird conglomerate,” she says. “We had Arabian horses, a movie company, a coal mine in China, a meat-packing company, and all sorts of things.”
When Hammer died in 1990, his successor began a massive restructuring, selling off non-core assets. Peterson negotiated many of those deals, selling everything from Kentucky coal mines to a bull sperm bank. By the late 1990s, Occidental had shrunk enough to begin growing again, and Peterson shifted focus to acquisitions.
In 1997, Occidental won the bidding to buy the Elk Hills oil fields from the federal government. The $3.7 billion deal was the largest privatization of public land in US history. Peterson led Oxy’s negotiations with a roomful of government lawyers, and the deal remains one of her proudest accomplishments—partially because of the legal complexities she navigated and partially because the acquisition marked a turning point for Oxy, which is now ranked among the Fortune 500 as one of the largest oil and gas companies in the country.
Peterson is also proud to have been an ethical force within a powerful company like Occidental. She helped develop Occidental’s code of business conduct and worked with faith-based shareholders to create a human rights policy that has real teeth. Upon her retirement, Oxy’s then-CEO Stephen Chazen praised Peterson for her thoughtfulness and for her “enormous personal integrity.”
Among Peterson’s favorite duties at Oxy was overseeing an internship program for first-year law students. Alisha Burgin, now an associate at Perkins Coie, recalls meeting Peterson at the beginning of her internship: “I was really impressed that she was a woman that far up in corporate law—particularly in mergers and acquisitions, which is very much a boys’ club.”
“Linda used to really surprise the interns,” says longtime Oxy colleague Scott King. “At first, they thought she was just bubbly sweetness and light, and she’s a lot more than that. There’s another level that’s very analytical and critical and incisive. She’s a great lawyer.
Peterson wins similar praise from Susan Kurland (’76), her BU Law moot court partner who remains a dear friend. “Linda is a quality person,” says Kurland, who works as deputy commissioner of air service development for the Chicago Department of Aviation. “She’s genuine. She has one of the kindest hearts. She understands principle without being rigid. She is the person you would want as one of your very closest friends, and she is a person you would want representing you.”
Looking back on her career, Peterson says, “I feel blessed that I always worked with very bright people on problems that required us to be creative.
“It was an enjoyable career. I loved practicing law,” she continues. “It was never the same job. I never knew what it was going to be on any given day.”
Another perk of working for Oxy, she says, was the company’s policy for matching employees’ charitable gifts. During her years at Oxy, the company directly matched all of Peterson’s annual gifts to the BU Law Fund. “It’s particularly wonderful when you give a dollar and you can immediately double your impact,” she says.
Now that she’s retired, Peterson can give to BU Law in another way: by volunteering her time. She helps promote and support the school as a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board, and she cochaired her 40th class reunion. “It was really lovely to catch up with folks I hadn’t talked to in a long time,” she says. “And we did quite well on our fundraising goal, so it was very satisfying.”
Peterson recently revealed that she’s set aside approximately $2.5 million from her estate for the school. “It’s actually an old gift,” she says. “BU has been in my will a long, long time. I don’t have children, so my schools are two of the places where the bulk of my estate will go.”
By making her gift public, Peterson is helping BU Law meet its goals for BU’s fundraising campaign. She also receives recognition for her gift as a member of BU’s Claflin Society, which pays tribute to alumni and friends who’ve made bequests or other planned gifts to the University.
Rather than establishing a named scholarship or professorship, Peterson has left her estate gift unrestricted, to be used at a future dean’s discretion. Just as her legal education prepared her for an unpredictable career, Peterson hopes these flexible funds will be helpful in meeting the unpredictable needs of future students.
This feature originally appeared in The Record, BU Law’s alumni magazine. Read the full issue here.
Reported by Corinne Steinbrenner (COM’06)