Vicki Miles-LaGrange

Raised in northeast Oklahoma City during the civil rights movement, Vicki Miles-LaGrange had an interest in law and politics from a young age. Inspired by the politicians she respected who started their careers as lawyers, Miles-LaGrange studied at Vassar College and Howard University Law School, while also spending a summer at Ghana University. During her the time at Howard, she worked as a congressional intern for U.S. House Speaker Carl Albert.

After graduation, Miles-LaGrange worked as a law clerk and at the U.S. Department of Justice before returning to Oklahoma in 1983. She worked as an assistant district attorney, prosecuting DUIs and sex crimes. In 1986, she was elected to the Oklahoma Senate after a grassroots campaign supported by her parents, becoming the first Black woman to do so. After serving two terms, she was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 to become the first woman to serve as U.S. Attorney to the Western District of Oklahoma. However, her time as U.S. Attorney was short-lived. In September of 1994, she was nominated to be a federal judge in the six-state Tenth Circuit, where she served until her retirement in 2018.

Much of Miles-LaGrange's career centered around advocacy for women and underserved communities. Her work went global in 1999 when she joined the International Relations Committee of Judicial Conference of the United States. In 2001, she helped to reestablish the justice system in Rwanda following a brutal genocide. Due to her hard work and passion, Miles-LaGrange has earned many awards, including the Journal Record Woman of the Year Award in 2004 and the Oklahoma Bar Association's Fern Holland Courageous Lawyer Award in 2006.