Daniels School alumna and faculty member Cara Putman remembers the exact moment she decided to become a lawyer.
“I was 12 years old and my mother took us to the state capital for a hearing about homeschooling, which was very new at the time in Nebraska,” she says. “There was a push to make it illegal, so there were lawyers on both sides of the issue. Everyone was taking notes and listening, and I remember thinking, ‘I want my words to matter.’ If that meant becoming a lawyer, then that’s what I wanted to do.”
Putman, who was homeschooled from fifth grade through tenth grade, graduated from high school at the age of 16 and began her path to law school at Mid-Plains Community College in North Platte, Nebraska. There, she earned an associate’s degree in political science, became active in student government and was a finalist for the prestigious Truman Scholarship. “I graduated with my first college degree at the same time that my friends were getting their high school diplomas,” she says.
She continued her studies in political science at the University of Nebraska, where she earned a bachelor’s degree and was once again nominated for the Truman Scholarship, this time winning. “As a first-generation college student, that was critical for me,” she says. “I knew I wanted to go to law school, but had no idea how to pay for it. I’ll always be grateful for the opportunities the Truman Scholarship afforded me.”
Before pursuing her Juris Doctor degree, however, Putman decided to explore the political world, working for a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. “It was a crash course in the importance of mission-driven work and engaging with donors,” she says. “It also gave me the opportunity to travel, visit college campuses, and try some teaching, which I discovered I really enjoyed.”
Putman’s newfound passion for teaching only grew when she attended law school at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School. “They had a program in the legal research and writing area where they hired third- and fourth-year students to teach first-year students,” she says. “I was close to graduating with honors but needed a little boost to my GPA, so I applied to the program, got in and loved it.”
Putman’s performance in the classroom led the school to hire her as adjunct professor upon graduation, at which time she also began a clerkship with the United States Court of Federal Claims. Her next intended stop was the Department of Justice, but her husband took a job at his alma mater, Purdue, where he joined the College of Agriculture as a fundraiser.
“We moved to West Lafayette and my career hit an absolute wall,” Putman says. “There’s no federal government here. There’s no law school here. I wanted to practice public interest law and teach on the side, but those opportunities seemed far away at the time. And I had passed the bar exam in Virginia, but moving meant I had to take another to practice in Indiana.”
It didn’t take long for Putman to begin building her career, however. “I started doing some networking and met with an attorney from Bennett Boehning & Clary for lunch,” she recalls. “They called me in for an interview the next day and hired me immediately.” She remained with the firm on a full-time and then part-time basis for the next 20 years, handling adoptions, estate planning, business litigation, and appeals.
Putman’s work with the Daniels School began in 2006 when she was hired part-time as a lecturer in business law. As her course load increased, she began focusing more time on teaching than law, and joined Purdue full-time in 2016. Along the way, she picked up her fourth degree through the Daniels School’s Weekend MBA program. “I loved everything about it—the curriculum, my cohort, the faculty,” she says. “It was more fun than work.”
Teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level, Putman was named a Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professor by Poets & Quants in 2022 and joined the Purdue Teaching Academy in 2023. She has also taught or led six study abroad programs, served as assistant area head, and was the inaugural director of the Daniels School’s honors program through the John Martinson Honors College.
“The biggest challenge for honors students in the Daniels School is finding a scholarly research project,” she says. “When you think about research, it’s usually in a lab setting, so we had to define what research looks like in a business school. Once we clearly articulated the problem, it was easy to find a solution.”
Today, Putman serves as a clinical associate professor of law, communications and ethics, as well as director of the Brock-Wilson Center for Women in Business. In this latter role, she develops strategies and programming for the center as it works within the School of Business to help recruit undergraduate students and develop programs that empower students to graduate as confident leaders.
Putman is also a prolific author. She began writing fiction in 2005, got her first book contract in 2006, and won her first award a year later. She’s gone on to write more than 40 books in the World War II, romantic suspense, and legal suspense genres, and was named a finalist for the top prize in Christian fiction in 2024. “I tend to be left-brained and strategic in my teaching, but writing feeds my creative side,” she says. “I feel blessed to get to do them both.”
For Putman, however, it all comes back to teaching. A proponent of active learning, she strives for continuous improvement and engages her students with storytelling. “I love helping them find their unique voice,” she says. “They all have such amazing potential to go out and change the world, and to play even a small part in that brings me joy.”
