In conversation, Megha Parekh, the top lawyer for the Jacksonville Jaguars, has a wide self-deprecating streak, able to speak about her many accomplishments while making fun of how she got to where she is now.

Those accomplishments, in brief: After finishing Harvard in three years, she went to Harvard Law School and straight into a job at a big New York sports-law firm.

Her first assignment was working on Shad Khan’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to buy the St. Louis Rams. She later worked on his acquisition of the Jaguars in 2011, then on Jimmy Haslam’s purchase of the Cleveland Browns the next year.

That experience helped lead to her getting hired by the Jaguars as vice president and general counsel.

At age 27.

Now, at 32, she has an even gaudier title: She’s the team’s senior vice president and chief legal officer.

But let her tell you about the somewhat awkward New Jersey teen she felt she was — the daughter of Indian immigrants, trying to fit in, banging on drums and listening to heavy-metal music, joining every school club possible, yet studying for long hours at a time and watching "Walker, Texas Ranger" while other kids went out at night.

She’s been driven to succeed as long as she can remember; even her relaxation can be a bit driven. She laughed at how she recently made sure to set her calendar on a Friday night so she could watch a Netflix documentary on bitcoin. Good times.

And consider her recent vacation. "I vacation as aggressively as I do everything else," she said. "I went to Paris this past summer for the first time, and I walked 22 miles in a day. That’s ridiculous."

That stay in in Paris, by the way, lasted 40 hours, total. That’s all that could fit in her schedule.

To be sure, it’s a busy schedule: Parekh has worked on numerous projects for the Jaguars and Khan, including such giant ones as the Shipyards redevelopment, Daily’s Place, the stadium’s swimming pools, the giant scoreboards and Khan’s purchase of the English soccer team Fulham.

Parekh said that for her it’s sometimes tricky balancing work and her personal life. "If you’re a professional woman, that means on the personal-life side, people aren’t as understanding when you say, ‘I have a lot of work to do’ or ‘I actually like working — my entire purpose in life isn’t just to be someone else’s wife.’ People don’t always appreciate that."

She’ll be speaking about that, and more, at Everbank Field on Thursday, as part of a speakers series called She is Fierce!

Melissa Ross, host of public radio’s First Coast Connect, started the program in Jacksonville after its successful introduction in St. Augustine by Kelly Youngs. The goal, Ross said, is for women to tell of both their successes and their struggles.

"Women get up and tell their real story," Ross said. "They don’t present a shiny, packaged version of themselves. I think that’s why women love these events, because nobody has a perfect, easy path in their life."

STRUGGLES AND SUCCESS

Parekh said that preparing for the presentation has given her the chance to slow down a bit, and think about her life. In the spirit of the event, she’s prepared to talk about some of the things she’s struggled with.

She said she’s had an eating disorder since she was 12, which is something she’s never really talked publicly about. Though she’s been within 20 pounds of the same weight since she was that age — and was never what society would consider overweight — she’s often eaten far less than she needed.

As a teen she’d tell her parents she’d eaten, but would really hide or throw her food. She’d eat three cookies in a day and persuade herself that was enough to last her.

At her lightest, she dropped to 95 pounds. Even in 2012, while working at a law firm in New York, she dropped to 100 pounds. She was working long hours, and it was easy to skip meals. She said she’d send emails to her then-boyfriend that revolved solely around her weight.

"You get a little bit addicted to watching the number go down," she said. "Another guy at work sort of figured it out, and he would leave food on my desk; he knew that if it was somehow there, at least I would eat it."

That’s in control now, Parekh said, but never far from her mind. "The thing that’s odd is that, at almost every meal, there’s sort of a little inner monologue with yourself: What am I eating? Is it healthy?"

Another topic that might come up in her presentation Thursday is her recent decision to have her eggs frozen: She’s 32, unmarried, and wants to have control, she said, of her desire to one day have children.

"I am not getting any younger, as my mother likes to remind me," she said. "I have to be practical. Even if I met Prince Eric from ‘The Little Mermaid’ tomorrow, we’re not going to get married right away, and then we’re not going to have a kid right away."

This year, Parekh said, seems like a year of change.

A couple of harrowing incidents showed her that.

In March, she was playing guitar in her back yard when she got a text from her childhood best friend. She said she knew what it was even before reading the text: Her friend’s brother, a longtime heroin addict, had overdosed and died.

Parekh went home and stayed a week, thinking she could still get work done while she was there. She didn’t get any work done though — there was too much grieving to do.

It turned out to be her longest vacation ever, and yet somehow everything at work still managed to get done. How vain she was, she said, to think that everything would stop if she weren’t there.

Then one August night, after leaving a concert at Daily’s Place, she was driving with two friends when she saw a man near the stadium, hitting a woman and slamming her to the ground. Sitting at a light in her car, she had only a moment to decide what to do. When the man walked a few feet away, Parekh made her move. She got out of her car and persuaded the woman to come with her to safety. Some people might not recommend that, she knows, but she’d seen what was happening. What else, she said, could she do?

"It’s been a very odd 2017, and both of those things have been sort of rattling," she said.

A WELL-KEPT SECRET

Back home in Manalapan, N.J., Parekh’s parents still live in the house where they raised their two children. They had an arranged marriage in India, and came to the U.S. in the early 1970s. Her family was solidly middle class, and her parents, she said, encouraged their children to succeed.

"Sometimes I think that immigrant parents think there are only professional jobs — go be a doctor or a lawyer, and that’s it. That’s kind of true. The goal is to really be financially independent, and that’s what I spent most of my 20s being focused on."

It worked out. As a teen she dreamed of living on the beach, on the water, and now she has a place at the beach with a view of the sunrise over the ocean. That’s been one of unexpected bonuses, she said, of living in the place she’s come to call home.

"I had no idea how beautiful Jacksonville actually was. In the Northeast, you hear about Tampa, you get plenty of people who move to Boca and Miami, people know about Orlando because of Disney. Jacksonville — it’s really a sort-of oddly well-kept secret."

Matt Soergel: (904) 359-4082