When Yolanda Guadagnoli walked into her first Bay Ridge Lawyers Association meeting, she didn’t know a soul. Encouraged by a colleague to stop by, she showed up at a dinner with some hesitation.

Within hours, she found herself surrounded by attorneys who treated her as if she had been part of the group for decades. Then-president Lisa Becker welcomed her “like we had been friends for 25 years,” Guadagnoli recalled. By the end of the night, she knew she found a professional home.

Guadagnoli’s story begins much earlier, though, with a Brooklyn upbringing steeped in family, language and hard work. A first-generation Italian American, she grew up in a household where only Italian was spoken until kindergarten. Her parents, Leo and Dina, had come from the same small town in Italy and their fa

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