Meet Our Staff: Tish Gotell Faulks
Tish Gotell Faulks
State Courts Director
Strengthening State Courts for the Future of Democracy
Tish Gotell Faulks comes to AFJ at a precarious time in our fight for democracy and her competitive spirit drives her as she starts her State Courts Director position. She was inspired to join AFJ because she’s playing the long game, looking specifically at what the 2030 redistricting cycle will look like and recognizing that our salvation from non-competitive elections – partisan and racial gerrymandering — is not going to come from the federal court; it’s going to come from state courts evaluating state constitutions. “I wanted to work in an environment that recognizes the value and importance of state courts as we continue our experiment in self-representation,” said Tish.
Tish has deep personal experience identifying the impacts courts make, with a couple of things really pushing to the forefront. She is an advocate for the Deep South and rural communities across the country. Decisions about access to the full range of reproductive health care, especially for people living in rural areas, are vital. Crucial discussions around this topic are missing, and she has witnessed the risks of viewing reproductive health care, including abortion, in isolation, ignoring broader implications. Her goals throughout her career are to ensure that those discussions occur across the country, especially in rural communities. With deep family ties in middle Georgia and having lived and worked across the Carolinas and Alabama, she’s seen how the loss of community hospitals that treat people in rural settings is costing lives for treatable, survivable medical emergencies.
As we know, advocacy work can be draining. Tish credits senior professionals who” poured into her” with both professional knowledge and guidance about the importance of work-life balance in guiding her and keeping her motivated. This support has stayed with her throughout her career, and she carries the responsibility of continuing that tradition. ”About every five to seven years I have a new generation of people who are excited to do this work and have no idea what they’re in for,” she notes. “I pour into people because people poured into me. I wish more people identified their motivation by what they can impart to those coming behind them rather than the success they will see in their own lifetime.”
Tish is pleasantly surprised that she has seen some successes she never thought she’d see; the election of a Black president and marriage equality. But she also deeply feels the losses we’ve experienced, such as Roe v. Wade being overturned. Tish thinks we experience some of those losses because generationally, we forget how hard we fought for the successes.
Remember that competitive spirit that was mentioned at the beginning of this piece? Well, it’s back, and maybe not in a place you might expect…cooking and baking. Tish loves baking and experimenting with chocolate chip and sugar cookies, and she says matter-of-factly, “I make the best chocolate chip cookie you will ever put in your mouth.”
She also teaches her kiddo Thomas how to cook his favorite foods, which isn’t all that much fun but necessary. Her competitive cooking gene is activated again when she thinks about her husband’s (Andy) cooking skills. He is a professional line cook now, but that wasn’t the case when they first met in 2003. He grew up working on industrial farms in the upstate of South Carolina, so he never had the privilege of learning to cook for pleasure. So, when he observed Tish spending all her money on eating out, he thought that was ridiculous. He was committed to being able to create home-cooked meals. Andy soon enrolled in some cooking and fancy knife skill classes, and the next thing she knew, he was the best cook in their house. Many might sit back and say “great, can’t wait to see what you’ll cook for me,” but not Tish. As noted, she’s competitive, so she had to immediately start learning how to catch up. She started by being a little sneaky, asking him to share some of the things he was learning. He gladly agreed because some of Tish’s cooking techniques were —by her own admission —“crazy.” She had never seen a spice she wouldn’t try to cram into a spaghetti sauce.
Today, Tish reflects on how cooking is soothing, relaxing, and beneficial because of the results. And how her competitive spirit has guided her both in her cooking and throughout her career.