Dina LaPolt lives her life with an ethos of doing the right thing and doing right by the people who need her help the most.

Her activist streak sprang to life in high school, when the administration unfairly fired a popular guidance counselor, keeping students in the dark. A despondent LaPolt came home in tears. What was she going to do?

“I realized, I’m going to take a stand,” LaPolt said, noting she had to shake off the fear of getting kicked out of school or suspended. “But this felt right to do.”

She organized a full school walkout, and the guidance counselor was reinstated.

LaPolt has spent a lifetime since working on behalf of entertainers and marginalized communities, trying to be a force for good. She was a UCLA Extension instructor for 19 years, and last summer released the motivational memoir, “Street Smart: Succeeding in a Man’s World."

“This book shows how every perceived failure I ever had, I learned something important from,” she said. “If I had just stopped every time someone said it couldn’t be done, I’d still be in my hometown, playing in a bar band and waiting tables.”

LaPolt grew up in a small town in New York with the dream of becoming a music artist. She earned her bachelor’s degree in music, but her career sputtered.

“It was very hard for me to be an artist. I could see how hard the path would be,” she said. “I was 25, with no health insurance and touring in a van.”

Even amid the struggle, however, LaPolt showed an acumen for business. She booked her band’s shows and ran logistics. Attending a panel at a music business conference changed her life.

“That was my epiphany,” she said. “There were three music lawyers. And although all of them were men – one had long hair and a ponytail, another had tattoos on his arms and the third had pierced ears. And I was like – this is what I could be.”

LaPolt earned her juris doctor from John F. Kennedy University, and she has since built LaPolt Law into a leading entertainment industry law firm. Entertainment law oversees record deals, publishing, touring, merchandising, sponsorship endorsements and more.

Her reputation was further bolstered by teaching Legal and Practical Aspects of the Music Business at UCLA Extension. As a dyslexic learner, LaPolt has always preferred a more hands-on approach. Teaching actually helped better her understand the subjects of copyright and trademark law, and she appreciated her student audience.

“The one thing I loved immediately about UCLA Extension – people other than law and music school students could take it, and the majority of people taking the class were already in the music business,” she said.

She invited important industry representatives to discuss the complex topics of the day – especially the digitization of entertainment, which was a huge subject at the start of the 2000s.

“I’d sit in my class and ask my own questions and learn everything I needed to know,” she said with a laugh.

“The most important thing I can say about UCLA Extension and how great it is – you’re being taught be people who are actually working in the field,” she added. “That is incredible.”

There have been obstacles along the way to success. LaPolt was a woman in a male-dominated field. She hadn’t attended a prestigious law school. She had a bunch of tattoos. She was in recovery and she was gay. That just meant she had to find he own way.

“I didn’t have many job offers, so I had to learn how to get by and hustle and advocate for myself,” she said. “Sometimes it can be so degenerating out there, especially for women and black and brown people. Sometimes you feel like, should I even keep trying?”

That’s what sparked her desire to publish a book. LaPolt remembers being inspired by reading about a woman lawyer featured in Billboard Magazine.

“Everyone else was a white guy – just men, men, men. And then there was this picture with a woman – Rosemary Carroll – who was in the middle. I could not even believe that,” she recalled. “I probably carried that magazine around with me for 10 years. It was so inspirational.”

So LaPolt set out to try and be the same for the next generation – laying out all her experiences in the business and what could be learned from them.

Throughout her storied career she has worked on a range of legislation including the Music Modernization Act and CARES Act. Early on, she helped Afeni Shakur, Tupac’s mother, secure the rights to her son’s estate. She wants to inspire others to carve a similar, but unique, path.

“It’s just important to get it out there,” she said. "Everybody has three choices in life: give up, give in or give it all you got. The fact that I chose the latter, I think that kind of defines me.”