Our New President

As many of you know, the Heartland Paralegal Association just elected our officers for the 2024/2025 year. I want to take a few minutes to introduce you to our new President, Jennifer Kempf. Many of you may have met her already. She has become increasingly involved in our organization since joining in 2021. Last year, she served as Vice President 1, and this year she has stepped up to the plate as President.

Jennifer has had a varied career. She started out as a tele-researcher in a call center updating white pages (which I think sounds fascinating), but her favorite jobs were tennis instructor and working at the County Clerk’s office issuing marriage licenses, filing DD-214s and issuing handicap licenses. “Two completely different jobs but both were so much fun.” She loves the work of being a paralegal, the way each day, each case, each client are all different with different needs and requiring the use of different skill sets.

She started her paralegal career in Arizona. In 2018, she left Arizona for Kansas to be closer to family. She started working at Creative Planning where she specializes in estate planning. She gets a special satisfaction from helping people create their estate plans and giving them the power to say what will happen to their estate after they die. She loves it so much that in 2017, she became an Advanced Certified Paralegal in Estate Planning.

She earned her CP through NALA in 2016. Jennifer finds having her CP valuable due to the extra knowledge and continual learning that is provided through NALA. She also enjoys meeting other paralegals at the annual conference and the invaluable network opportunities provided.

Our new president volunteers regularly with the I AM Foundation (https://theiamfoundation.org/home/). The mission of the foundation is to lead, encourage, and motivate at-risk youth and students in underserved communities to see themselves greater than their circumstances. The opportunities that they are providing these students to help themselves grow and learn is absolutely amazing and encouraging. To be a part of these students’ lives even for one day to show you care and are there to help and spend time with them is so rewarding. If anyone wants to volunteer with them at any time, reach out to Jennifer and she will get you information.

Jennifer also enjoys traveling and reading. While she wants to visit as many places as possible, her favorite trip, so far, was to England and Scotland for a Criminal Justice course she took in college. She learned about the United Kingdom’s laws, court system, forensic labs, and prison systems. “The people were amazing over there and it was so much fun to be able to sightsee on the trip while learning.”

Jennifer is an inveterate reader. Her favorite genres are mysteries and horrors and she’s always looking for new recommendations. As with any bookworm, picking a favorite author is nearly impossible, but her go-to authors are Laurel K. Hamilton and Darcy Coates. Recently, she has been captivated by Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing series and she can’t wait for the third book to come out in that series.
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We have several opportunities for you to meet Jennifer. We have a CLE meeting on July 24 where Valerie Sprout will teach about Immigration Law and our ever popular summer social will be in August. Come on out and let Jennifer introduce herself!