Type 1

At 17, La’Toyia Slay had mapped out her future. The straight-A student from Greenville, Mississippi, would attend Sewanee in Tennessee, then head to medical school with an eye on becoming a pediatrician.

Two medical matters changed everything. In high school, she says, “I was always thirsty, always hungry, and always tired.” And she was losing weight.

She attributed these symptoms to studying hard and playing six sports. But during a soccer match one afternoon, her mother witnessed some alarmingly aggressive behavior—Slay smacked a competitor, chastised a referee, and stormed off the field—so she took her to the local family clinic. There, doctors discovered Slay’s blood sugar was more than five times the normal amount. She had Type 1 diabetes. “That was the day my life changed,” she says.

Slay and her family met with a nutritionist, who informed them that her favorites, pasta and cornbread, were now off limits. The endocrinologist told her, “Look, your pancreas went on vacation and it’s not coming back.” She was given a choice: Give yourself daily injections or wear an insulin pump 24/7.

Slay went with the pump and has worn it every day since. A sensor on her arm tracks blood sugar levels and prompts the pump on her stomach to inject insulin. “It’s not a closed loop system,” she adds. “I still have to tell the pump I ate ‘x’ amount of carbs.”

The second life-changing moment occurred in college when Slay started an internship in the emergency room at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. “We lost a patient that day,” she says. “I went home crying and said, ‘My mental world can’t take this every day.’”

It was her college adviser who suggested law school, confessing, “I always wanted you to go to law school, but I didn’t want to push you toward it.”

Today, Slay is a partner at Butler Snow, where she focuses on commercial litigation, insurance, environmental litigation, and compliance, governmental and white collar litigation. She spends her free time volunteering as a board member of the Mississippi chapter of Breakthrough T1D, whose goal is to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes and help adults, children, and their families affected by it.

“I started on the board because I wanted to help raise money for research and resources to improve the lives of those with T1D,” says Slay. She joined in 2016 and took a break from 2022 to 2023 to give birth to her daughter, Laila.

She says her T1D chapter raised $110,000 in its annual OneWalk in 2023 and $360,000 during its most recent gala. “All of that money goes toward finding a cure,” she says.

She especially enjoys working directly with families, noting that one person with T1D changes the lifestyle of the entire family. “Imagine meeting with a mom of a 3- or 4-year-old who’s been diagnosed with this disease and you have to explain how they have to wear this device on them, and they have to send them to school and hope they don’t have low blood sugar or high blood sugar,” she says. From firsthand experience, Slay knows how to guide families through T1D’s constant highs and lows.

Slay also sits on Butler Snow’s pro bono committee, where she advocates for volunteerism inside and outside the firm. “I want to build a community that I’m proud for my child to grow up in, and in order to do that I need to use my talent and my resources in a way that’s beneficial to everyone in the community,” she says. “You have to put in what you want to get out.”