‘Full of Dreams’

Daisy Ayllón’s definition of success is less about where you end up in life than the distance you traveled to get there. And she doesn’t know anyone more successful than her mother.

“This is a woman who doesn’t have more than a sixth-grade education; who grew up in a deeply impoverished farming community in Mexico where women were not valued; who was one of 11 children; who, somehow, without knowing a word of English—and who was utterly reliant on men to provide for her—managed to move to the U.S. as a mother of three, get a good job, learn the language, become a homeowner; and see one of her children become a lawyer, another earn an MBA, and another earn an advanced degree from Johns Hopkins,” says Ayllón. “I have a deep admiration for her because it’s so hard to go out into the world and just do that, just push.”

Ayllón grew up in Mexico, where the family operated a small convenience store; Ayllón and her brothers worked after school. “Things were really rough,” she says. “For us, there was very little mobility. No matter how hard you worked, how intelligent you were, or how ambitious you were, there was just no opportunity to move from deep poverty into the middle class.”

So the family decided to try life in the U.S., arriving in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, when Ayllón was 13. The move gave her the guts to dream.

“I always resented being treated as a girl,” she says. “I remember from a very young age being really rebellious and talking back to my parents because they were raised up in this culture where women were less than. I wanted to be seen as someone highly capable and full of dreams. It was impossible to feel those things in Mexico. When we came to the U.S., I saw girls did go to school, I saw professional women. And everything changed.”

When we came to the U.S., I saw girls did go to school, I saw professional women. And everything changed.

It didn’t change quickly, however. For the first year, Ayllón says, she cried every night. The language barrier made everything harder: making friends, learning in school. Her family of five lived in a single-wide trailer with her grandparents, her aunt and uncle, and cousins.

For all the challenges, there was hope. Through night-shift work, her parents saved enough to buy their own single-wide and, eventually, a double. There was an American studies teacher who saw Ayllón’s potential and gave her a computer. Another teacher who spoke a bit of Spanish encouraged her. And then she met Michael Perna, a lawyer in town, during one of his many community volunteer efforts. He gave her a job.

“The very first thing that I admired about him was that all of these people were coming up to him and asking him for advice on different things in their lives,” Ayllón says. “I remember thinking, ‘What a wonderful position to be in, to be able to problem-solve for people.’”

Today, Ayllón solves problems as a personal injury attorney and partner at Chicago’s Romanucci & Blandin. “I’m really passionate about helping working-class people because I don’t think they often get high-quality legal service. There are a lot of lawyers who are not honest brokers who take advantage of people who work hard,” she says. “I also think I have a responsibility to help my own community. Those two things light me up.”

Sexual abuse is a growing area of Ayllón’s practice, and she is one of the team members who represented hundreds of women alleging sexual abuse by a former Chicago-based OB-GYN.

Heading into her 10th year of practice, Ayllón reflects on one of the first job reviews she received as a new lawyer: She was “too soft” and “not aggressive enough.”

“I remember being perplexed by these two men telling me I wasn’t strong enough and thinking, ‘Do you have any idea what I overcame to be here?’” she says. “I think you need to ask me how many times have people knocked me down and how many times have I stood up before you can tell me I’m soft. I felt that they didn’t see me.”

It’s the same problem faced by her clients, who often approach the firm because they’ve been dismissed, or not taken seriously, elsewhere. In one particular case, she recalls meeting with an immigrant woman alleging sexual abuse. When Ayllón informed the woman of other cases filed against the alleged abuser, she had one question: “Was the woman who was finally believed white?” 

“It broke my heart to have to tell her, ‘Yes,’” Ayllón says.

“These corporations say, ‘They must be lying, they must be exaggerating,’” she says. “But when you dig deep into their stories, you see how much they have accomplished, how well they take care of their families, and how far they’ve come. I know those people. And so, in my work, I want to make sure that people see our clients’ whole stories.”