I was born in Poland during the communist days, when Poland was run by a communist government. My parents wanted to leave because life was pretty gray, pretty brutal. My dad had a chance to work in Libya as a university professor, and so that was kind of our way to get out of Poland. After staying in Libya for three years, we ended up moving to Germany, and then we were able to get a green card and go from Germany to the US.
As an immigrant, you’re always the underdog. You have to compete. You have to fight to beat other people. Because in the end, you win or you lose. And you always want to win. I actually like being the underdog because it gives me the freedom to just be myself.
I think the difference between the Bay Area and everywhere else is that as an immigrant, it feels like home because everyone here is from somewhere else. I feel like we have a common bond because I know how hard it is for someone to leave everything behind and come to America and start a new life.
When the clients come to us, they’re coming to us because their life has been turned upside down. And so understanding where they come from, understanding how they struggled, and then the struggle that they have now is all really important. We have clients who had come here looking for the American dream, for justice, for fairness, for all those things. And then when something really awful happens, they think there’s going to be justice, things are going to work out okay. Well, they don’t.
This system that is set up is not designed for fairness. It’s not designed for justice. It’s designed to put more money in the pockets of the insurance companies that are essentially making money by not providing the very service that they’re being paid to provide. What you have is an individual with no knowledge and no resources. Then you have a multi-billion dollar insurance company on the other side with an army of doctors, nurses, lawyers, and adjusters who are trained to make sure that the adjuster pays as little as possible to the person who’s been hurt.
When you do hire an attorney and one that’s been doing this for a while, what you’re doing is leveling the playing field. And if you can level the playing field, you can win. At Venardi Zurada, our job is to right wrongs. And that’s our only job, and it’s a job we do well.
