2011 Nov/Dec - Diversity & The Bar Magazine

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® November/December 2011

RAINMAKERS REEL IT IN PAGE 22

EMPLOYER OF CHOICE RECIPIENTS! SAGER AWARD WINNERS! INNOVATIVE COMPANIES! PAGE 36

VERNON JORDAN

A LIFETIME OF

ACHIEVEMENT

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& PHOTO PROVIDED COURTESY OF DEPAUW UNIVERSITY OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

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D I V E R S I T Y

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K E Y

I N G R E D I E N T

At Perkins Coie, diversity is an essential ingredient that helps us create the best solutions for our clients. We value and encourage diverse viewpoints and draw upon them to resolve our clients’ business and legal challenges. Diversity adds perspective and creativity to what we do. It is a key ingredient to our success.

ANCHOR AGE · BEIJING · BELLEVUE · BOISE · CHIC AGO · DALL A S · DENVER · LOS ANGELES · M ADISON · NEW YORK PA L O A LT O · P H O E N I X · P O R T L A N D · S A N D I E G O · S A N F R A N C I S CO · S E AT T L E · S H A N G H A I · WA S H I N G TO N , D . C .

Contact: 800.586.8441 Perkins Coie LLP ATTORNEY ADVERTISING

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When different ideas come together, anything is possible.

Looking at things from every angle sets Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto apart from the others. Smart, diverse and flexible, our attorneys view intellectual property from innovative and inspired perspectives. We respect and value the unique talents and knowledge that come with diversity, and encourage a broad spectrum of individual views, original thought and creativity. This is reflected in the innovation, success and exceptional service we deliver to our clients.

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November/December 2011

FEATURES

16 A Lifetime of Achievement One of the great pillars of the legal community graces the cover of this issue. Vernon Jordan’s life story is an American tale of perseverance and advancement. From the housing projects of Atlanta to the halls of the West Wing, Jordan has undertaken challenges for several lifetimes. It is only fitting that MCCA bestowed its first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award on this extraordinary individual. BY KARA MAYER ROBINSON 22 Rainmakers Reel It In

p.16 Vernon Jordan

COLUMNS

DEPARTMENTS

8 Notes from the President & CEO

44 Association Focus

10 Perseverance in Profile Highlighting the contributions and talents of attorneys with disabilities.

Sylvia Novinsky

BY TOM CALARCO

12 Lawyer’s Lantern Offering illuminating professional guidance for your career.

BY LORI L . GARRETT

14 Spotlighting Wanji Walcott

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD

Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals

BY KARA MAYER ROBINSON

46 Diversity News MCCA’s Diversity Honors Gala

BY JOSHUA H . SHIELDS

For the fifth consecutive year, MCCA profiles minority Rainmakers. The top money-making attorneys from around the country combine substantive legal skills with a marketability that enables them to grow their books of business. These legal luminaries share their personal pathways to success.

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD

36 Presenting MCCA’s 2011 Diversity Award Winners MCCA recognized five Employer of Choice companies in 2011: 3M, Altria, MassMutual, PG&E, and UPS. Learn more about those companies, and the five law firms that earned the esteemed Thomas L. Sager Award. And, for the first time, read about MCCA’s Innovators, those companies and firms that think outside the box in regard to diversity. BY ANGELA DODSON

p.22

48 Movers & Shakers 50 The Scale MCCA Weighs the News

BY JOSHUA H . SHIELDS

2011 STRATEGIC DIVERSITY SPONSORS EMPLOYER OF CHOICE

p.36

SAGER AWARD

INNOVATORS

MCCA® Law Department Members The Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA) acknowledges the support of the following law departments whose financial contributions have helped to advance the goal of furthering diversity in the legal profession.

MCCA® Board Of Directors Richard S. Amador Partner, Sanchez & Amador, LLP

Michelle Banks Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Gap, Inc.

Clarissa Cerda General Counsel & Secretary, LifeLock, Inc.

A. B. Cruz III Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc.

Anthony K. Greene Director, Jamison Insurance Group

Gary F. Kennedy Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer, American Airlines, Inc.

Nancy Lee Senior Vice President & Deputy General Counsel Marriott International, Inc.

Don H. Liu Senior Vice President, General Counsel, & Secretary, Xerox Corporation

Hinton J. Lucas Vice President & Assistant General Counsel DuPont Company

Robbie E. B. Narcisse Vice President-Global Ethics & Business Practices Pitney Bowes Inc.

Samuel M. Reeves

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Senior Vice President, General Counsel Walmart U.S. Legal

Thomas L. Sager Senior Vice President & General Counsel DuPont Company

Robin H. Sangston Vice President, Legal Affairs and Chief Compliance Officer, Cox Communications, Inc.

Kenneth S. Siegel Executive Vice President & General Counsel Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Corporation Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Dell, Inc.

Simone Wu Senior Vice President & General Counsel XO Holdings, Inc.

Advertising For advertising inquiries, contact Alexandra K. Kahl, ACC, at kahl@acc.com.

MCCA® Membership Please visit our web site at www.mcca.com for membership and other information.

General Information and Address Changes Send your questions, complaints, and compliments to MCCA®, Editor, Diversity & the Bar®, 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004. Address changes should be sent to MCCA’s Director of Membership and Development at 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004.

Permissions and Reprints Reproduction of Diversity & the Bar in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. The Copyright Act of 1976 prohibits the reproduction by photocopy machine or any other means of any portion of this issue, except with the permission of MCCA. To obtain permission, contact: Joshua H. Shields, Editor-in-Chief, 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004.

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Genentech, Inc. General Electric Company General Mills Inc. GlaxoSmithKline Graduate Management Admission Council Hewlett-Packard Company H.J. Russell & Company Halliburton Harley-Davidson Motor Company Honeywell IBM Intel Corporation International Paper Company ITT Corporation JC Penney Company, Inc. JetBlue Airways Corporation Johnson & Johnson JPMorgan Chase Bank NA JM Family Enterprises, Inc. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. KeyCorp Kraft Foods Kroll, Inc. Law School Admission Council (LSAC) Leo Burnett Company LexisNexis Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Lifelock, Inc. Lighthouse Document Technologies Liquidity Services, Inc. Macy’s, Inc. Marriott International, Inc. MassMutual Financial Group Mattel, Inc. McDonald’s Corporation Merck & Co., Inc. Microsoft Corporation MillerCoors Monsanto Company Morgan Stanley National Grid Navistar, Inc. Neighborhood Defender Service Newegg Inc. New York Life Insurance Company Nike, Inc. Nsoro, LLC Nuclear Electric Insurance Limited Office Depot Pacific Gas and Electric Company Pepco Holdings, Inc.

PepsiCo, Inc. Pfizer Inc. Pitney Bowes, Inc. PPG Industries, Inc. Porzio Pharmaceutical Services, LLC PRAXAIR, INC. Premier Media, Inc. Prudential Financial Quest Diagnostics Incorporated Qwest Communications Reckitt Benckiser, Inc. Reed Elsevier, Inc. Rockwell Collins Rolls Royce North America Sara Lee S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. Sears, Roebuck and Co. Sempra Energy Shell Oil Company Sodexo Sony Electronics, Inc. Southern California Edison Company Staples, Inc. Starbucks Coffee Company Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Synopsys, Inc. Target Corporation Tessera North America, Inc. The Church Pension Fund The Clorox Company The Coca-Cola Company The Dow Chemical Company The Juilliard School The Vanguard Group, Inc. The Walt Disney Company The Williams Companies, Inc. Toll Brothers, Inc. Tyson Foods Inc. UBS UnitedHealth Group United Parcel Service United Technologies Corporation U.S. Food Service, Inc. Verizon Walmart Stores, Inc. WellPoint, Inc. Waste Management Wells Fargo & Company Xerox Corporation XO Holdings, Inc. Zenith Insurance Company

MCCA® Law Firm Affiliates

Mary E. Snapp

Lawrence P. Tu

3M Company AT&T Accenture LLP AdvoServ AECOM Allstate Insurance Altria Group, Inc. American Airlines, Inc. American Express Company American Lawyer Media Aon Corporation AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals Bank of America Benistar Admin Services, Inc. Boehringer Ingelheim Corporation Booz Allen Hamilton BP America Inc. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Capital One Caraustar Industries, Inc. Cargill Inc. Catalent Pharma Solutions Catholic Healthcare West Chevron Corporation CIGNA Corporation CITGO Corporation Colgate-Palmolive Company Compass Group, The Americas Computer Science Corporation ConAgra Foods, Inc. ConocoPhillips Consolidated Edison Co. of N.Y. Constellation Energy Cox Communications Credit Suisse First Boston LLC Deere & Company Del Monte Foods Corporation Dell Inc. DHL Express Diageo North America Duke Energy DuPont DynCorp International Eaton Corporation Eli Lilly and Company Entergy Corporation Estée Lauder Exelon Business Services Company Fannie Mae Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco Freddie Mac Gap Inc.

MCCA® acknowledges the decision of the following law firms who have joined with MCCA to advance the goal of furthering diversity in the legal profession.

Bressler, Amery & Ross PC Bricker & Eckler LLP Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC Butler, Snow, O’Mara, Stevens & Cannada, PLLC Davis & Gilbert LLP DeMahy Labrador & Drake, PA Epstein, Becker & Green, PC Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto Frost Brown Todd LLC Goldberg Segalla, LLP

Ice Miller LLP Igbanugo Partners International Law Firm Kenyon & Kenyon LLP King Branson LLC Lathrop & Gage LLP McGuireWoods LLP Montgomery, Barnett, Brown, Read, Hammond & Mintz LLP Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP Pepper Hamilton, LLP Porzio, Bromberg & Newman, PC Rivero Mestre, LLP

Copyright Copyright® 2011 by the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. Diversity & the Bar is published six times a year and is distributed to supporters and subscribers, 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004.

The information contained in this publication has been provided to the Minority Corporate Counsel Association (MCCA®) by a variety of independent sources. While MCCA makes every effort to present accurate and reliable information, MCCA does not endorse, approve, or certify such information, nor does MCCA guarantee the accuracy, completeness, efficacy, or chronological sequence of any such information. Use of such information on the readers’ part is entirely voluntary and reliance upon it should be undertaken only upon independent review and due diligence.

References herein to any commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, service mark, manufacturer, or otherwise shall not constitute or imply endorsement, preference, recommendation, or the favor of MCCA. MCCA (including its employees and agents) assumes no responsibility for consequences resulting from the use of the information herein, or in any

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

Rooney Rippie & Ratnaswamy, LLP Sanchez & Amador, LLP Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP Steptoe & Johnson LLP Sughrue Mion PLLC Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP Thompson Hine LLP Waas Campbell Rivera Johnson & Velasquez LLP Winston & Strawn LLP Zuber & Taillieu LLP

respect for the content of such information, including (but not limited to) errors or omissions, the accuracy or reasonableness of factual or other data, including statistical or scientific assumptions, studies or conclusions, the defamatory nature of statements, ownership of copyright or other intellectual property rights, and the violation of property, privacy, or personal rights of others. MCCA is not responsible for, and expressly disclaims and denies liability for, damages of any kind arising out of use, reference to, or reliance upon such information. No guarantees or warranties, including (but not limited to) any express or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular use or purpose, are made

by MCCA with respect to such information.

Copyright in this publication, including all articles and editorial information contained herein, is exclusively owned by MCCA and MCCA reserves all rights to such information.

MCCA is a tax-exempt corporation organized in accordance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Its tax ID number is 13-3920905.

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Notes

From the President & CEO

MCCA 2012 FLIGHT TO QUALITY

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ANYONE WHO IS FAMILIAR WITH FINAN CIAL MARKETS WILL RECOGNIZE THE TERM, “FLIGHT TO QUALITY.” It describes the behavior of stockholders during challenging financial times. They decide to invest their resources more judiciously and therefore select stock offerings which provide the greatest assurance of value and return on their investment.

This term also describes our primary goal for MCCA in 2012: We will strengthen the considerable range of assets at our disposal to provide—in this era of more cautious deployment of resources—the greatest value to our stakeholders.

These assets include our CLE and networking events, which attendees at our recent Pathways conference can attest, provide exposure to superb presenters and high-ranking in-house decision-makers (see additional coverage beginning on page 36). Our oft-cited and in-depth research portfolio, as evidenced by the recently released studies on in-house counsel and “Gen Y” lawyers, is second to none and continues to grow in significance. Attendees at the recent MCCA Diversity Honors Gala, held at a sold-out Lincoln Center in New York City, enjoyed unprecedented networking opportunities and saw Vernon Jordan receive MCCA’s inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award. And, of course, Diversity & the Bar® is the most widely read publication of its kind.

Our challenge is to strengthen our assets and link them together for the benefit of our corporate and law firm stakeholders. Our staff is working hard to develop new programming for both our in-house stakeholders and the members of our newly created Firm Affiliate Network (FAN) that will provide sustained and mea-

surable value on diversity and inclusion within their ranks and with their respective stakeholders.

We invite you to give us your input on ways you believe we can be a better, more efficient, and more valuable part of bringing greater inclusivity to our profession so that we can increase retention and opportunities for advancement for all members of our respective organizations. That way, we can provide the type of value that will make your flight to quality well worth the choice.

Thank you, JOSEPH K. WEST

President & CEO

MCCA_law

www.facebook.com/mcca.law

Publications Staff President & CEO Joseph K. West Founder and Publisher Emeritus Lloyd M. Johnson Jr. Editor-in-Chief Joshua H. Shields

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

Publishing Consultants Bill Cox Toni Coleman Advertising Kevin Buck Lucy M. Jones Alexandra K. Kahl Design/Art Direction QuadCreative

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

MCCA® Staff Jennifer Chen Mahzarine Chinoy David Chu Donna Crook Brandon M. Fitzgerald Lori L. Garrett Jessica Martinez Andrea Pimm Connie Swindell-Harding

Contributing Writers Tom Calarco Angela Dodson Patrick Folliard Lori L. Garrett Kara Mayer Robinson Joshua H. Shields

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Perseverance in Profile

SYLVIA NOVINSKY: PRO BONO ADVOCATE

BY TOM CALARCO

Sylvia Novinsky has dedicated her career to helping others. Her work in developing pro bono programs has won awards, and her efforts to instill a desire in law students to give back to others is a labor of love.

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“I

have this notion that education is important and someone has to provide a voice for people who don’t have one,” says Novinsky, the assistant dean for Public Service Programs at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Born in the U.S. to Argentine emigrants and raised in Queens, N.Y., Novinsky spent most childhood summers in Argentina. Her father’s impoverished upbringing and the repressive government in her parents’ homeland inspired her to spend much of her career working for social causes or public service.

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After majoring in industrial and labor relations at Cornell, Novinsky gravitated toward the study of immigration law while at George Washington School of Law. Her parents’ experience, she says, was influential, plus her ability to speak Spanish was an asset. Her first job was as a legal writing instructor at the District of Columbia School of Law. During this time she volunteered at an immigration clinic and began her pro bono work.

“My first pro bono experience was in immigration law,” she says, “and my first job [as an attorney] was with immigrant farm workers. I felt I was doing something very helpful to people, guaranteeing the protections of state and federal law.”

Since then pro bono has become the focus of her career, and her move into the Public Interest Law Program at the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1996 was her launching pad. There she founded and coordinated the school’s Pro Bono Program.

It started, she says, with a student who wanted to volunteer with a legal organization. However, instead of waiting for work to come their way, they started to create projects for unmet needs that they heard about from the legal communities.

The program is open to all law students. After completing 50 hours of pro bono service, they receive a letter of recognition from the dean of the law school, and after completing more than 75 hours they receive a certificate from the North Carolina Bar Association and the law school acknowledging their service at the end of their third MCCA.COM

pinched nerve and I was given steroids. However, the MRI revealed plaques on the brain, a space sending messages to limbs to move.”

Nevertheless, she soon recovered and has not allowed her illness to affect her career. Her pro bono work has been hugely successful and she has since been tapped to oversee public service programming at UNC School of Law. Her pro bono work also has garnered awards, including the Pro Bono Program of the Year, presented by New Orleans Pro Bono Project, and the North Carolina Bar Association Law Student Project of the Year for her UNC Law Pro Bono Program.

“Our program makes young lawyers appreciate the special nature of their skills and how they can give back to their communities,” she says.

Her Pro Bono Program teaches law students how to talk to clients about legal issues and how to provide services under the supervision of licensed attorneys, she says, and it is her hope that when they become licensed attorneys they will consider it the norm to do pro bono. Some 84 percent of this year’s graduating class participates in the Pro Bono Program.

“So many people don’t have access to legal services because they can’t afford it, and students can help to fill the needs of that gap,” she says.

The all-volunteer program relies on philanthropic support. Deans and faculty have been generous in donating funds, she says, and many lawyers in the community outside the school

Our program makes young lawyers appreciate the special nature of their skills and how they can give back to their communities. year. The law school makes a special recognition at graduation of students who have performed 100 or more hours of pro bono service.

Operating primarily from August to April, with special projects going on during the winter and spring breaks, the program matches law students with practicing attorneys across the state to work on cases that the attorneys have taken for free or at reduced rates.

Working on pro bono projects gives students valuable hands-on experience while encouraging attorneys to take on cases that they might not otherwise have the resources to do.

Administered by twelve law students, the program has filled hundreds of placements with attorneys in non-profit organizations, private practice, and North Carolina’s legal services organizations since its inception in 1997.

It was during this period of organizational creativity that Novinsky was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a chronic disease that attacks the central nervous system.

“I developed a mobility issue on the right side of my body, legs, then arms,” she says. “I thought it was a

have donated their time to oversee students’ work.

Though the nature of her illness has subjected her to periodic relapses, they have not been long lasting, and she says she has been lucky to be able to maintain a regular fitness routine that others with MS often cannot. But the disease is unpredictable and it’s uncertain how long she can continue her current regimen.

“You have to watch about how you manage your energy,” she explains.

She’s very open with her colleagues about the illness and when it is complicating her ability to perform on the job. From this she has developed an insight that she communicates to young lawyers she counsels.

“Even though the lawyer is supposed to be the hero, he or she can also have personal problems,” she says. “That is why I find it beneficial to help students become personal problem solvers. Understanding and dealing with personal problems and emotions is a good first step in this process. Not only will it help them to better empathize with the client, but it can help them address their own issues that may become manifest in their work. You need to be empathetic. It makes you a better counselor as a lawyer.”

Novinsky, who once hosted a Spanish-language radio show in which she talked to listeners and guests about their legal rights, is close to the Latino community. She is on the Latino affairs committee of the North Carolina Bar Association and involved in the Latino-Hispanic Law Student committee that provides guidance to Latino students on navigating the thorny road to success.

“Take advantage of the gift that you have been provided with,” she tells them, “which is your unique education. Don’t be afraid to live up to your potential, to challenge yourself.” D&B Tom Calarco is a freelance writer based in Altamonte Springs, Fla.

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Lawyer’s Lantern

WHO IS JOE WEST?

BY LORI L. GARRETT

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After working with Joe West for a mere 35 days, one thing is clear to me: He is a very connected guy. He was stopped at every turn by old friends wishing to congratulate him at MCCA’s recent Creating Pathways to Diversity Conference— MCCA’s first event since Joe became the organization’s new president and CEO in September. On a recent call with him, he rattled off a list of contacts for me to follow up with for our next Pathways Conference in 2012—friends he called them. All of these friends happen to be prominent lawyers working across the globe. It is no surprise to me that he is so well connected, however, given he used to be responsible for managing over 600 external law firms and 25,000 legal timekeepers for one of the largest retailers in the world. But, as I get to know Joseph K. West, I am quickly learning that he is way more than a walking Rolodex.

J

oe comes to MCCA from Walmart Stores, Inc., where since 2007 he was Associate General Counsel and he most recently headed the company’s Outside Counsel Management program. He was also heavily involved in helping further Walmart’s diversity program. Prior to joining Walmart, Joe worked as senior counsel for litigation and as assistant general counsel at Entergy Corp., an energy company that delivers electricity to customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, Texas, and Vermont. He earned his J.D. from Tulane Law School and his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Southern University in Baton Rouge, La. He brings 25 years of legal experience to the position.

He’s connected, had a fine career as a practicing lawyer, and he is quite accomplished. I had the chance to sit down with Joe and chat with him about what else there is to know about him, his thoughts about MCCA’s potential, and how he plans to help MCCA achieve this potential.

Describe your most valuable mentoring experience as a mentee and/or mentor.

I have been very, very fortunate to have a number of people who have provided mentoring for me. But I think probably the most important mentoring that I have ever received was from my parents. They taught me the value DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

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of treating people with respect, the value of listening to people—both people who work for you and the people you work for—and also the value of leading by example. I think those are important lessons, whether you are the mentor or the mentee.

What was the best career advice you have ever gotten that you also were able to implement successfully?

When I first started trying cases in New Orleans, a judge who I appeared in front of on a fairly regular basis told me that, “You are auditioning for the next phase of your life and your career every single day, whether you realize it or not.” That actually is very good advice and in fact I ended up hired in-house by Entergy after I tried a very significant case against the company and I ended up getting a pretty good result. It wasn’t very long after the case concluded that I was offered a job in-house.

Who do you most admire either within or outside of the profession, and why?

My parents. They are both deceased now, but they both grew up in a thoroughly segregated deep South and experienced challenges and were subjected to discrimination that people would find hard to believe nowadays. Despite that, they were able to raise seven children, and saw each one of us through college, and that each one of us obtained at least one graduate/professional degree. I think that is an amazing accomplishment.

As extraordinary as my parents were, there happen to be quite a few people like that in many of our lives who are quiet heroes who others typically don’t know about and don’t hear about.

What is something people would be surprised to learn about you?

I am an excellent cook! I make a mean seafood gumbo and I am an expert at any duck-related dishes.

What is your favorite pastime?

Even though I don’t get to do it much, reading for pleasure. I would love the opportunity to play more golf, so I am looking forward to attending MCCA’s General Counsel Invitational Diversity Leadership Summit. When I play regularly, my game is halfway decent. And, of course, I cherish spending time with my family.

What attracted you to this job?

The first thing that attracted me to this job was my impression of MCCA based on my prior exposure to the organization, to its staff, to its mission, both when I was at Entergy, and to a much greater extent when I joined Walmart in 2007. Second, I was attracted simply to the opportunity to help make a difference in what I see as the most important challenge facing the legal profession. That is, making sure that the full range of talent in the profession is properly utilized and properly afforded opportunities to contribute.

What will be the biggest adjustment for you transitioning from Walmart to MCCA?

Even though I was in a leadership role at Walmart, it is always an adjustment when you become the leader of an organization, and that’s because the responsibility for everything rests with you. I actually enjoy that challenge because MCCA has a tremendous range of assets at its disposal: starting with the MCCA staff, with MCCA’s very strong brand and reputation, with its research portfolio, and its publications. Diversity & the Bar is obviously a strong publication and probably the most widely circulated of its kind. We have a lot of assets at our disposal, but there are a lot of challenges in the diversity and inclusion space right now. Our stakeholders are going to be looking for us to be good stewards of the resources they provide us and to make sure that we provide the kinds of services that will benefit them as organizations and as individuals.

If responsibility for everything now rests with you, what will you draw upon to overcome that new challenge? What do you look to internally that helps you respond to this adjustment?

Faith. Confidence. A strong work ethic. I think it will be important for me to be able to work well with other people and to leverage the strengths that the MCCA team will bring to bear to our work. And, I am very fortunate that I have been able to establish a pretty strong network of contacts that I hope will help us take MCCA to the next level.

Where do you see MCCA in 10 years?

We have to be able to see and appreciate trends, and to capitalize on them for the benefit of our stakeholders and for the benefit of the growth of the organization. For example, we can stand to gain a greater understanding and appreciation of the international implications of diversity and inclusiveness, and what diversity and inclusiveness means for various ethnicities and women in other countries. As the demographics change in the U.S., I would like MCCA to be on the leading edge of helping organizations develop cultural competencies, so that organizations become more inclusive. It is about diversity and inclusiveness. It is not just about recruiting diverse slates of candidates into organizations. It is also about making sure that they are incorporated into the culture of the place and that they are invested in as human capital, and that they are groomed and developed as leaders, not only for the benefit of the organization, but for the benefit of society. D&B

Lori L. Garrett is MCCA’s vice president and managing director for MCCA’s southeast region. She heads MCCA’s professional development services.

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Spotlighting

W 14

TECHNOLOGY INCLINED Wanji J. Walcott

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD

Ambitious and energetic, Wanji Walcott is making her mark as managing counsel in the general counsel’s office of the American Express Company. She particularly enjoys and excels at the increasingly technology-related aspects of the job. “It’s an exciting area where I have aptitude and proven ability to make an impact and contribution, and technology is everywhere. Today, it’s almost impossible to find an aspect of our business that doesn’t in some way involve technology.”

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alcott joined American Express in December 2002 as a staff lawyer in the technology law group at the company’s New York headquarters. Most of her time was spent negotiating technology transactions including outsourcing and managed services agreements. In less than four years, she became head of the technology law group. In addition to a full workload of her own, she was now managing an increasingly diverse group of lawyers. Soon after, the technology law group also included responsibility for providing legal support to American Express’ interactive group, an online utility tasked with managing the company’s interaction with current and future customers through online and mobile channels. Several years later Walcott was named managing counsel. The Global Business Services function, which handles real estate, procurement, financial and HR operations, as well as the Enterprise Growth Group, the company’s newest business unit consisting of ecommerce, digital, and other online and mobile services, was added to her sizable managing responsibilities.

Among her most interesting work involving technology, Walcott counts emerging payments. “It’s cutting edge and exciting, and essentially the intent of our current CEO Kenneth Chenault who is to lay the foundation for the future.” In March, the Enterprise Growth Group launched “Serve,” a digital payments platform similar to PayPal. Being part of the launch, says Walcott, has allowed her to help think through regulatory sand legal issues that are pertinent to American Express’ move into the digital payments landscape.

But with innovation comes challenges. “My practice has always been busy, but tackling uncharted areas increases the volume of work. We’re doing things at a very quick pace in order to remain competitive in relatively new territory. While our Enterprise Growth Group views itself as a nimble startup, I need to keep in mind that American Express is a heavily regulated bank holding company and that creates another layer of complexity. So, there’s always the tension of balancing cool new things with adhering to law and regulations that are very real but not half as much fun.”

Prior to American Express, Walcott was an associate at the international law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP (formerly Shaw Pittman LLP), where she MCCA.COM

specialized in negotiating a broad range of technology transactions. But unlike most of her colleagues and counterparts, she did not begin her career at a firm. She started off as staff counsel in New Jersey at Lockheed Martin IMS Corporation, a thensubsidiary of aerospace, security. and technology conglomerate Lockheed Martin Corporation. Unlike other Lockheed Martin companies that went after federal contracts, IMS, the information management services subsidiary focused on state and local contracts, managing child support and parking ticket collection for various municipalities, and implementing the E-ZPass on New Jersey and New York highways. It was there that Walcott discovered her interest in technology transactions.

Four years later, Walcott moved to DSET, a New Jersey-based software startup. “It was an entirely different atmosphere from what I’d known— everybody wore jeans to work and there was foosball in the office,” she says. “At

other ideas. “She advised a firm. She promised it would round me out, so I did as she suggested and joined what was then Shaw Pittman.

“For me it was like going back to school. I used it as an opportunity to sharpen my skills. During my four years with the firm, I improved my drafting and other core skills needed to be a high-impact adviser. Also, I learned to be a better advocate and better lawyer in general. By the time I arrived at American Express, I was able to marry and merge my early in-house experience with my newly acquired firm experience. Personally I felt like the total package: A solid lawyer who not only understood inhouse, but also could talk to clients in a way that didn’t make their eyes roll back into their head.”

Walcott is successful at a career that almost did not happen. As a philosophy major at Howard University, she thought about going for a Ph.D., but an aversion to teaching prompted her to reconsider. Instead, she attended

There’s always the tension of balancing cool new things with adhering to the law and regulations that are very real but not half as much fun. the time I fancied myself a two-parts technology attorney and one-part generalist. I was young and thought I knew a lot more that I did, but overall it was great opportunity and I learned a lot.”

Ready to move on again, Walcott set her sights on another in-house position but her trusted recruiter had MCCA.COM

Howard Law School. The idea of a legal career had always been in her head, but she had never been eager about pursuing it. Suddenly, it seemed the most attractive option. “Growing up, my parents had commented on my advocacy skills. That, and not knowing the myriad of options in the profes-

sion, I was first drawn to litigation. At Howard, there’s an emphasis on making a positive impact on the community. I thought about public interest and human rights law. And though I didn’t land there, I am the proud co-founder of American Express’ celebrated pro bono program which has allowed me to honor those values. [Walcott was honored by the Lawyer’s Alliance of New York with the 2003 Cornerstone Award and the City Bar Justice Center in 2006 for superior pro bono legal work for not-for-profit corporations.]

Walcott was born in Rochester, New York, raised in Massachusetts, an only child given a Swahili name (Wanji is short for Wanjiku) although her parents are both from Guyana on the northern coast of South America.

Walcott’s father came to the U.S. on a government-sponsored engineering scholarship, and her mother followed and later earned a Ph.D. “My father, who’s now deceased, always stressed how lucky I was to have been able to choose what I wanted to be. He had little choice in selecting his vocation. He was just sort of assigned a career path by Guyana’s government, presumably based on aptitude.”

When Walcott began her law career 17 years ago, she perceived the profession as more diverse than it actually was. “At my first job the business unit was diverse because the state and local government employees with whom we were contracting were diverse. Until I visited corporate headquarters and saw that things were very different, I had mistakenly thought all companies were diverse at the time.

When I joined the firm, I was the only black attorney in its New York office.

I’m sure that has changed. In the last nine years, I’ve seen American Express Company become more and more diverse. We’ve transformed over time and are definitely moving in the right direction.” D&B Patrick Folliard is a freelance writer based in Silver Spring, Md.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

15

VERNON JORDAN

his accomplishments, it’s clear that HE IS AN EXTRAORDINARY PERSON.

engaging, and filled with entertaining anecdotes—and when you consider the enormity of

has that “something” you don’t see every day. It’s evident in person—he’s personable,

He’s charismatic, dynamic, and nothing less than awe-inspiring. VERNON E. JORDAN JR.

16

Scan this QR Code with your mobile device to watch Hillary Clinton and others comment on Jordan’s legacy.

17

A LIFE TIME OF

ACHIEVEMENT

BY KARA MAYER ROBINSON

PHOTO PROVIDED COURTESY OF DEPAUW UNIVERSITY OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

18

IT’S FITTING THAT MCCA HAS CHOSEN JORDAN, 76, AS THE RECIPIENT OF ITS FIRST-EVER LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD, WHICH WAS PRESENTED LAST SEPTEMBER AT A GALA AT NEW YORK CITY’S LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS.

Vernon Jordan accepts MCCA’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the organization’s Diversity Honors Gala, held at the Lincoln Center in New York City.

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

J

ordan’s record of achievement in different areas from social justice to politics is remarkable. A strong leader in the Civil Rights Movement, he helped desegregate the University of Georgia, expanded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and led the Voter Education Project, United Negro College Fund, and National Urban League. In the political arena, Jordan developed a reputation as “the ultimate Washington Insider,” after advising President Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, leading his transition team, and forging advisory relationships with top political figures. In the private sector, Jordan, who lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Ann, has concurrently served as senior counsel at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLC, and senior managing director at Lazard Frères & Co. LLC for almost 12 years while also serving on the board of directors for numerous Fortune 500 corporations.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

SEEDS OF SUCCESS Jordan’s success seems to have begun at an early age, due to a combination of dynamic personal qualities, a unique childhood environment, and a strong relationship with his mother.

Jordon was born on August 15, 1935, to Vernon E. Jordan Sr., a postal worker, and Mary Belle Jordan, the owner of a catering company. He grew up with an older half-brother, Warren, and a younger brother, Windsor. Jordan spent most of his childhood years living in Atlanta at University Homes, the first public housing project for black people in the United States. The complex was located amidst a cluster of black colleges: Atlanta University, and Clark, Morehouse, Morris Brown, and Spelman colleges. It was an inspiring place, Jordan says, where famous people came to speak and eminent professors taught.

“When I went to music practice, to the theater, to the movies, I walked through these campuses,” Jordan explains. “I’d see Dr. James P. Brawley, the president of Clark College, all dressed up, walking with a briefcase. I’d see Rufus E. Clement, the president of Atlanta University, who always wore a vest with his Phi Beta Kappa key across it. I remember one Saturday coming MCCA.COM

A WORK ETHIC TAKES HOLD It’s clear that Jordan adopted his mother’s values.

As a teenager, he worked as a waiter for her catering business. In high school, he attended the National Conference on Citizenship in Washington, D.C., MCCA.COM

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Jordan with his father and brother. Jordan with his mother and brother. Jordan with his first wife Shirley during their courtship. Jordan as president of the National Urban League, a position he held from 1971-1981.

home and there was Benjamin Elijah Mays, walking across the Morehouse campus and I’m 20 yards behind him, and I’m trying to walk like he walks: tall, upright, straight.

“Being situated near those campuses, and seeing those professors, teachers, presidents, and students all dressed up, it made me want to be somebody,” he says. “I loved it.”

Jordan knew early on that he wanted to be a lawyer. And his mother expected no less of him despite the limitations and disadvantages African Americans faced through racial segregation due to Jim Crow laws in the South.

“My mother was an unlearned, unlettered woman with a Ph.D. in life,” Jordan says. “She was absolutely the most influential person in my life. She wrote me every day from college through law school. I never made a move without discussing it with her first.

“The only time I did not get to have a chance to do this was when President Clinton offered me the job of attorney general,” he says. Because she had suffered a stroke, she was unable to talk. Even so, says Jordan, who turned down the offer because he was not interested in serving in the public arena at that time, he felt her support when she gently squeezed his hand as if to say, “I’m with you, Vernon. You made the right choice.”

Jordan’s mother called him “Man,” even as a child. This continued when she wrote letters to him while he was an undergraduate at DePauw University (B.S., 1957) and at law school at Howard University (J.D., 1960). It was, in a sense, a self-fulfilling prophecy put into place to counteract the racism present in the world.

“Vernon was an adored child by his mother,” says Ann Jordan, his second wife. (Jordan’s first wife, Shirley, died from multiple sclerosis in 1985.) Not only did she have deep respect and ambitions for her son, Ann says, but she also imparted a strong work ethic.

Jordan agrees. “My mother was the president of the PTA from first grade until I finished high school.

When my younger brother and I were in different schools, she was the president of both PTAs. That was a lesson, right there at home, in leadership,” he says.

19

reported on it for the school newspaper, and won honors in the State Negro Voters League Oratorical Contest for speaking on “The Negro in America.”

During his undergraduate and law school years, he spent summers working as a chauffeur and butler for Robert F. Maddox, the president of the First National Bank of Atlanta. An incident from this job later became the inspiration for the title of Jordan’s first book, Vernon Can Read!, a memoir published in 2001.

One afternoon between finishing his driving duties and serving dinner to Maddox and his family, Jordan had some downtime. He settled in to read some books in Maddox’s library, which was stocked with works from Shakespeare to Browning. When Maddox stumbled upon the scene, he was shocked at what he saw. First off, a servant ought not to have been in his personal library. Even more disconcerting was that a black man was reading a book. Jordan explained that he was a college student with plans to become a lawyer.

Stunned by this declaration, Maddox later made an NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

FROM LEFT: Jordan with daughter Vickee, Jordan with Supreme Court Justice Thurogood Marshall. Jordan joking with former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

“When I went to music practice, to the theater, to the movies, I WALKED THROUGH COLLEGE CAMPUSES. Being situated near those campuses, seeing those professors, teachers, presidents, and students all dressed up, it MADE ME WANT TO BE SOMEBODY. I loved it.”—VERNON JORDAN

20

unforgettable statement to his family as they were seated at the dinner table, with Jordan standing in a pressed white jacket and black tie, a towel over his arm, serving vichyssoise. “I have an announcement to make,” Maddox said. “Vernon can read!”

This resonated with Jordan because it symbolized the expectations placed on him by society and how they differed from his plans for himself. “It defined where I was supposed to be, as opposed to where I wanted to be,” he explains.

Throughout his life, Jordan faced countless limitations. As a child, when he rode the bus, he had to sit at the back. He couldn’t attend the University of Georgia or Georgia Tech, which were reserved for white students.

It was a system that needed change. So after law school, he applied his ambitions directly to the Civil Rights Movement. His first job as a lawyer, in 1960, was for Donald Hollowell, a leading civil rights attorney in Atlanta. Jordan worked on Holmes v. Danner, a case that resulted in desegregation of the University of Georgia. After a decision in favor of the plaintiffs, it was Jordan who escorted black student Charlayne Hunter through a crowd of white protestors as she registered for classes.

In 1961, Jordan became Georgia field director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he made speeches, organized, and opened new NAACP branches, coordinated demonstrations, and called for economic boycotts of industries that did not employ black people.

Jordan then joined the Southern Regional Council (SRC), where he says he broadened his horizons, began publishing articles on current issues, and learned how to manage the finances of a large organization.

In 1964, Jordan became the director of the SRC’s Voter Education Project, where he coordinated voter registration drives and counseled the electorate. The impact of this work is still felt today in a higher number of state, local, and federal black elected officials.

Jordan’s reputation as a civil rights leader continued to grow, and in 1970 he accepted the position of executive director of the United Negro College

Fund. One year later, he was named president of the National Urban League. He led the organization for the next 10 years, during which time he became increasingly involved in national politics.

In 1980, Jordan was shot by a white supremacist who was acquitted but later confessed to the shooting.

Jordan survived the gunshot wound and spent 98 days in the hospital, where he received bedside visits from important political figures including Jimmy Carter and then-California governor Ronald Reagan. Many assume this experience led to a professional shifting of gears. But he denies this and explains that he had one mission: to get back to work.

Of his tenure leading the National Urban League, Jordan says he felt honored to serve. “ I loved it.

But I didn’t love it so much that I wanted to be embalmed in it,” he says with a grin. And so in 1982, he moved into the private sector, taking a job in the Washington, D.C., office of Akin Gump.

“At that particular time it was not clear that a black person could make that successful transition. So it was important to me to know whether I could make that transition. And it was important that others do the same thing. And many did,” he says.

In the private sector, in addition to his work at Akin Gump, Jordan has been senior managing director at Lazard, a preeminent financial advisory and asset management firm, since 2000. He has also served as a key strategist and adviser to many prominent leaders, including former presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton, with whom he remains a close friend.

He continues to serve on several boards, including the American Express Company, and as a trustee for Howard and DePauw universities.

ELEMENTS OF CHANGE Jordan recognizes that society, in many ways, has changed over the course of his life. “Stunned!” is how he felt when he watched President Barack Obama, a black community organizer, declared the winner of the 2008 presidential election. And Jordan has dozens of stories to share about changes he has personally experienced, like receiving an honorary degree from the University of Georgia, which in 1957 would not MCCA.COM

“My mother was an unlearned, unlettered woman with a PH.D. IN LIFE. She was absolutely the MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON IN MY LIFE.”—VERNON JORDAN

accept him as a law student because he was black.

But, he adds, a lot has not changed.

“Just look at the unemployment statistics right now.

It’s 16 percent for black people. We’re still the last ones hired and the first ones fired. We were disproportionately, negatively impacted by the subprime loan crisis.

A lot has changed, but a lot of change is yet to come.”

After tackling a packed agenda over many decades, one might wonder what lies ahead for Jordan. But when asked what unfinished business remains, he says, “I think I’m pretty much done.”

Of course, those who know him well aren’t quite so sure.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” says Ann. “He’s always taking on some new project. He has so many interests in life.”

He admits to having some notion of writing a third book. (His second book, Make it Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out, was published in 2008.) The topic, he says, might be mentoring. “I’m a huge beneficiary of extraordinary mentoring,” he says, naming dozens of people who have rallied behind him, from prominent figures including preacher Gardner Calvin Taylor to lesser-known individuals such as childhood YMCA counselors.

But even with the instrumental support of powerful mentors, one still wonders how a man who grew up surrounded by racism and societal limitations accomplished so much.

“I’ve always done pretty much what I wanted to do,” he says. If it meant rejecting “safe” government jobs for more interesting jobs, satisfying his initial need to serve and then moving to private work, or becoming a lawyer in the face of discrimination, Jordan pursued what he wanted.

And his mother always taught him to aim high.

A favorite memory of Jordan’s involves a week in the summer of 1978, during which he received three honorary degrees, from Princeton University, Harvard University, and Dartmouth College. His mother flew up to accompany Jordan and his then-wife Shirley as he accepted these degrees. He smiles as he recounts his mother’s comments at the end this eventful week.

“She says, ‘This has been a great week for me. I am really proud of you. But I’m not surprised.’” Jordon pauses, then finishes her statement. “‘It was what I expected.’” D&B Kara Mayer Robinson is a freelance writer based near New York City.

We treat everyone the same.

Uniquely.

At Vorys, diversity in people drives diversity in thinking and perspective, and helps us to provide the highest quality legal service to our clients.

Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP 52 East Gay Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215 614.464.6400 vorys.com

Columbus

Washington

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2011

BY PATRICK FOLLIARD

RAINMAKERS

LAW FIRM

22

IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES, THIS YEAR’S ESPECIALLY DIVERSE SWATH OF 16 PARTNERS AND PRINCIPALS FROM ACROSS THE COUNTRY SHARE THEIR TAKE ON WHAT MAKES A RAINMAKER. THERE IS NO FOOL-PROOF BLUEPRINT TO GENERATING BEAUCOUP BUSINESS, ONE ATTORNEY ATTESTS. IT DEPENDS ON PERSONALITY AND COMPETENCY. WHATEVER THE APPROACH, HE ADDS, PERSISTENCE IS ESSEN-

TIAL. SELECTED FROM A POOL OF NOMINEES SUGGESTED BY LEADING FIRMS NATIONWIDE, EACH ATTORNEY MAINTAINS A BOOK OF BUSINESS OF $2 MILLION OR MORE A YEAR. WHILE MOST INTERVIEWED HAVE NOTED THE CHANGING ECONOMY, ALL HAVE FOUND WAYS TO MAKE IT WORK. WHATEVER THE ATMOSPHERE, THEY AGREE: RAINMAKING REMAINS THE BEDROCK OF PRIVATE PRACTICE.

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TALAT ANSARI

Partner, Kelley Drye & Warren LLP New York, NY

Principal/Partner, Insley & Race LLC Atlanta, GA

Years Practicing:

Years Practicing:

36 Area of Practice:

India

Created and chaired by Talat Ansari in New York City, Kelley Drye’s busy India practice group advises U.S. clients who are investing in or expanding to India, and the increasingly large number of Indian businesses coming to the States and acquiring U.S. entities. “Ours is a very specialized group,” he says. “All of us are admitted in both jurisdictions, and have all practiced in India so we know the culture and how the legal system functions there. We have had a robust India practice for more than 40 years, and we continue to expand, having just recently hired a partner in our Stamford, Connecticut office.”

Ansari was a litigator in New Delhi when he joined the firm in the 1980s. The firm has become one of the most well-respected U.S. firms to have carved out a niche India practice. In recent years, the team has represented Tata Consultancy in its acquisition of Citibank BPO, and iDream Holdings in its acquisition of Strix Systems. The media has also recognized Ansari’s group for its representation of industry leaders such as Novartis Vaccines & Diagnosis and Novartis Pharma, Sprint Nextel, SBI Holdings, and Matheson Tri-Gas. As an associate in India, Ansari was never instructed in the finer points of business development. “Firms there are very small. Associates aren’t encouraged to bring in clients and add to the workload,” he says. When asked for a rainmaking tip, Ansari responds, “I was lucky. When I moved to New York, I was the only lawyer here who had practiced at a prestigious Indian firm, and my former colleagues referred a lot of work to me. I still go back to New Delhi twice a year to keep those contacts going.”

MCCA.COM

BRYNDA RODRIGUEZ INSLEY

26 Area of Practice:

Personal Injury Defense

A founding partner of Insley & Race (an Atlanta-based civil defense litigation firm with fifteen attorneys), Brynda Rodriguez Insley credits her success to hard work and opportunity: “When we opened the firm almost fifteen years ago, my name partner and I were both business administrators and attorneys for the entire first year.

There was no furniture and files were lining the walls, but we were not deterred. It was our time and eventually things came together.”

Prior to striking out on her own, Insley’s primary practice area was medical malpractice and catastrophic injury defense. For 12 years, she worked as an attorney at Sullivan Hall Booth & Smith. From the beginning, they allowed her independence and a presence in their files. By her second year, she had tried her first case. “A lot of claims professionals are women,” says Insley, a Mexican American doctor’s daughter who grew up in St. Louis, “And once they took notice of a young female lawyer trying her own cases they began to send me work.”

Insley was already a rainmaker at her former firm, but when its then-principal partner left she decided it was time to follow her dream and put out her shingle. “He promised that I’d realize success beyond my wildest expectations. I wasn’t so sure, but when we opened the firm, the work came. Being female and a minority with a dozen years of successful practice under my belt made me very attractive to clients.

“In the baseball movie Field of Dreams they say if you build a field they will come. Well, that’s how I feel about practicing law—don’t fret about a specific client or making a lot of money. Just do excellent work and the rest will follow.”

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CHARLES J. VIGIL

President and Managing Partner Rodey, Dickason, Sloan, Akin & Robb, P. Albuquerque and Sante Fe, NM Years Practicing:

24

New Mexico is a small state, says 22 Chuck Vigil. A lot here depends Area of Practice: on reputation and word of mouth Employment; Commercial referrals. As a rainmaking employLitigation & ment defense attorney at the same Professional business and litigation firm for the Liability entirety of his career and a past president of the State Bar of New Mexico (2005), he has proven himself to clients.

“I came to Rodey in 1989 and never left,” says Vigil.

“I have benefited from the help I have received from my partners. Also, the firm has a flat and broad management structure. It’s a team effort and most business development is done at the practice group and department level. And because we work as teams, everyone gets to know the clients.

“As president and managing director, my job is to look at the bigger picture, to work on the strategic level. As the face of the firm I engage in a lot of activities that help generate business for the firm as a whole, and, of course, I strive to generate business with regard to my own practice.”

Vigil’s New Mexico roots reach back over two hundred years. His father was the first in the family to attend college and made certain his children did the same. After earning a B.A. in business, Vigil (whose siblings include a neurosurgeon, neurologist and a Ph.D. professor in chemical engineering) went on to graduate from the University of Michigan Law School.

Sometime in the future, Vigil would like to serve as an appellate judge or teach at a law school, but he has no certain plans. Typically throughout his career, opportunities have presented themselves and Vigil has made sure to seize them. He expects he will know when the time is right.

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

President and Founding Partner, Murthy Law Firm Owings Mills, MD

SHEELA MURTHY

Years Practicing:

23 Area of Practice:

Immigration Twenty-five years ago in India, says Sheela Murthy, law was not the favored career track. “Growing up I was encouraged to be a doctor or an engineer, but I insisted on doing what I loved most—fighting for justice and rights for the downtrodden which meant being an attorney,” Murthy says. After graduating from college and law school in Bangalore, she headed to the U.S. for an LL.M from Harvard Law School. Happy with her new home and valuing the freedoms and opportunities here, Murthy decided to remain in the States where, despite the lawyer jokes, legal practitioners were generally appreciated.

Murthy’s practice area is exclusively U.S. immigration law.

Her very successful 20-attorney firm represents small- and mid-sized companies, Fortune 500 companies, as well as individuals going through the immigration process. She credits her success to a genuine passion for the work. “When I’m with a client it’s as if I’m focused on a family member who’s in trouble. It’s not about the business, and I think clients can sense that dedication.”

Prior to founding her eponymous firm, Murthy practiced corporate and real estate law at large firms in New York and Baltimore. During those years she was most happy when she was occasionally given an immigration case. “When I’m doing immigration, I feel that I’m making differences for people—opening doors for them and providing them with opportunities. This is why I went to law school in the first place.”

As a young associate, Murthy was mystified by all the schmoozing and backslapping. Intuitively she realized that for her success would come by finding meaning in her work: “I didn’t go into law for the money. Becoming a rainmaker has been one of the biggest surprises of my life.”

MCCA.COM

Partner, Barnes & Thornburg LLP Indianapolis, IN

ALAN K. MILLS

Years Practicing:

30 Area of Practice:

Bankruptcy

Alan Mills has been with one firm throughout his career. When he joined Barnes & Thornburg in 1982, he was their first African American attorney. “At the time, a partner who would become my longtime mentor matter-of-factly said, ‘I

can’t guarantee you a full and fair opportunity, but I guarantee that you’ll have an opportunity.’ Today it’s an outrage.

Back then, it sounded like a fair deal.

“Because I’m a minority, I knew traditional firm rules weren’t necessarily going to apply, so I began building something for me, a practice that I could lead.” He concentrates his national practice on complex commercial litigation and bankruptcy matters.

He also represents lending institutions in regulatory matters and secured or unsecured creditors in bankruptcy proceedings as well as numerous special servicers throughout the U.S. Over the years, Mills has witnessed a lot of changes in the profession. Not only has the firm grown in stature nationally to more than 550 legal professionals throughout 12 offices, but also the number of minority partners and associates has increased accordingly. “Things have improved dramatically,” he says. “That’s why I’m still here.”

Mills’ approach to rainmaking is multi-layered: “It’s a given that the firm is good, so I sell my own expertise and loyalty. I’m their link to the institution.” He continues, “The best way to meet a new client is to do a good job for an existing client and then ask for an introduction. The next best way is to be part of the organizations that cater to the client’s industry. Clients want to know that you understand both what they do and how they do it. Likewise, knowing as much as possible about your client is key when introducing them to companies that can give them business.”

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25

/////RAINMAK ERS 2011

Partner, Morgan Lewis & Bockius San Francisco, CA

DANIEL JOHNSON JR.

26

Years Practicing:

38 Area of Practice:

Litigation

Colleagues describe Daniel Johnson as a rainmaker but he balks at the expression. “I’m a lawyer who handles very big cases that generate a lot of fees. To me, rainmakers are relationship people. They bring in the business and let others do the work, whereas I’m selling a skill set that requires me to assemble a good team and be there.”

Johnson’s practice includes IP litigation (patents and license disputes) as well as general high-stakes litigation.

Throughout his career, Johnson says he has “consistently but randomly” attracted big cases mostly due to his willingness to take risks. And because he got good results, it became increasingly easier for him to get the next case.

Prior to joining Morgan Lewis in 2005, he was a rainmaking partner at Fenwick & West. He also served as a deputy attorney general to the State of California. Johnson graduated from Yale Law School.

He closes deals primarily by providing instant strategic analysis of the client’s problem to demonstrate that he and his team have that ability, and presents a list of past accomplishments. “When I go to pitch, I like to say the things I can do rather than run down the candidates I’m competing against.”

For a long and successful career, Johnson says “flexibility” and “adaptability” are the words to live by. “Attorneys must be able to adjust and handle current matters, and they need to be able to assess their skill set and figure out how to make it match what is going to sell. An attorney litigator is a rainmaker so long as he or she is trying a big case.

Nothing is guaranteed.”

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

Partner, Thompson & Knight LLP Houston, TX and New York, NY

DEMETRA LIGGINS

Years Practicing:

10 Area of Practice: Demetra Liggins’ bankruptcy Bankruptcy practice focuses on Chapter 11, liquidation, out of court restructuring, and litigating commercial disputes stemming from debtor/creditor relationships.

After ten years in the profession, she has been a rainmaker for awhile.

Was there ever an exact moment when Liggins suddenly realized that she had reached the envied strata of rainmaking? “It was more like I suddenly understood that I possessed a talent for maintaining multiple professional and personal relationships. It’s important and interesting for me to know my clients and their businesses, and once I obtain that knowledge I use it to help them move their businesses forward. In turn, I also get more business from existing clients and new client referrals.

“My grandfather always used to say ‘a bald man can’t sell me hair tonic.’ That means you don’t buy into the sales pitch of someone who doesn’t have the goods to back it up. So as a young associate I began looking to partners and other successful attorneys and realized they all had a big book of business. I very much wanted that to be a part of my career too, so I began doing what they do.”

For Liggins that translates to a lot of business development including being active in national bar associations, bankruptcy Inns of Court, presenting, and writing. “Because I’m practicing in an era of large and complex bankruptcy cases and the marketplace is filled with skilled and competent practitioners, it’s imperative that I keep my skills up and achieve greater client outcome.”

Do rainmakers flat-out work harder? She replies, “I’m not sure about that, but we do have to keep on top of things.”

MCCA.COM

Partner, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY

DINO BARAJAS

Years Practicing:

18 Area of Practice: Dino Barajas splits his time Corporate between Los Angeles, New York, and Latin America, focusing his practice on domestic and international project development and finance, with particular emphasis on Latin American infrastructure projects, debt financings, and mergers and acquisitions. His clients include commercial lenders, institutional investors, investment funds, project sponsors, and public and private companies.

Compared to his early days in the profession, Bajaras notes that generating business has become an increasingly bigger challenge. “Where there were once regional powerhouses, today’s multi-national firms have grown so large that they’re often in four or five markets around the world. Branding simultaneously in different regions is not easy. Also the pool of competitors has gotten larger—that raised the bar. No one can rest on his or her laurels. You have to be there pressing the flesh, meeting new people. Marketing is a 24/7 thing—it’s really just nonstop.

“But pitches are like planting seeds. Reaching out to clients rarely produces fruit immediately. You may have to wait four or five years before an opportunity develops and then client service is everything,” he says. “An attorney becomes known over time. It’s not about immediate gratification.”

Does he ever weary from the grind? Never! Not for an instant. For an inner city kid whose mother labored in the canneries and agricultural fields of California, says Barajas, his career is like a Cinderella story. And as a Mexican American he is delighted that his language and cultural skills are assets—something he only fully understood after practicing for several years. And despite his continued success, Barajas adds, “I’m hungry for more. I’m always asking myself: Who is my next client? Where can I improve? What is waiting for me tomorrow?”

MCCA.COM

Director, Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein, & Fox PLLC Washington, D.C.

ELDORA L. ELLISON, PH.D.

Years Practicing:

12 Area of Practice:

IP

As a rainmaking attorney at a D.C.-based boutique IP firm, Eldora Ellison spends a lot of time on business development. “I do the usual: make presentations, write papers, and meet people. Also I work hard at keeping existing clients happy and that requires addressing their uncertainties.

Lately, I’ve been helping them to understand the sweeping patent reforms contained in the America Invents Act enacted in September.”

Prior to becoming a lawyer, Ellison earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry, molecular, and cell biology. She then joined a law firm, became a patent agent, and attended law school at night before moving to Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein, & Fox. Today, she is a director in the biotechnology/chemical and litigation groups focusing on patent litigation, particularly in the life sciences. Her clients have included large multinational corporations, small start-up companies, universities, and other not-for-profit organizations.

Ellison first considered a career in law while working on her Ph.D. in biochemistry at Cornell University. “My adviser was trying to patent a protein that we were studying. It was a frustrating, drawn-out process. We could have used someone with more knowledge of both science and law to bridge the communication gap. Around this time I also began thinking that a law career seemed less narrow than being a professor, which is the route I would have most likely followed otherwise.

“I’d say playing well in the sandbox is one of the hallmarks of my success,” she says. “I’m a good team leader who has been privileged to work with some first-rate teams. I enjoy fostering an atmosphere in which people work hard to generate great results, and I think clients take notice and appreciate what we do for them.”

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HABIB NASRULLAH

28

Partner, Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell LLP Denver, CO

Managing Partner, Gordon & Rees LLP New York, NY

Years Practicing:

Years Practicing:

23 Area of Practice:

Product Liability, Mass Tort, & Commercial Litigation

A third-generation lawyer born in India, Habib Nasrullah grew up in Mumbai before moving to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California where he graduated with a B.A. in international relations. After considering a career in business, he succumbed to the call of the family business and earned a J.D. from Georgetown Law Center.

“My father was a very successful trial lawyer in Mumbai,” says Nasrullah. “He had doubts that I was suited to practice.”

The younger Nasrullah proved otherwise.

Since his earliest associate days at a full service firm, Nasrullah has determinedly strived to bring in work. As a licensed pilot, he used his interest in aviation to meet clients. “In the beginning, I began representing airmen and flight schools and later went on to representing aircraft manufacturers and airlines in big product liability and personal injury cases.”

Today, his practice focuses on product liability, mass tort, and complex commercial litigation. He mostly represents pharmaceutical and health care companies, aerospace product manufacturers, and financial institutions. And while product liability comprises the larger piece of his practice, commercial litigation remains a significant part of what he does. Because he competes with firms on both coasts for clients, Nasrullah is often traveling, sometimes on his own nickel if necessary.

In an interesting, latish career move, Nasrullah served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney (District of Colorado) from 2004 to 2008. “My motivation was to both serve my country and to gain frontline experience in the courtroom. When I returned to private practice, I noticed that I’d acquired a certain cachet. Though not my intention, it’s helped in generating new business.”

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

MERCEDES COLWIN

21 Area of Practice:

Commercial Litigation “These lean years require ingenuity to get work because of the fierceness of the competition,” says Mercedes Colwin, rainmaking managing partner in Gordon & Rees’ New York office and national legal analyst on the Fox News Network. “It’s important to maintain a constant presence in the marketplace and perform highquality work at all times.”

Prior to joining Gordon & Rees as a defense attorney, in 2006, Colwin headed the litigation team for a regional New York firm. Before that she had been a municipal lawyer, an in-house litigator for an insurance company, and a full-time administrative law judge for the New York State Division of Human Rights.

All books of business present challenges regardless of size, says Colwin. Colwin emails, texts, and calls clients around the clock to keep them in the loop on all their litigation matters. “Without a doubt, lawyers with the most accessibility and responsiveness have the advantage.”

Growing up in Rego Park, New York, Colwin was inspired to achieve. “My mother was the first woman in her college to graduate with an engineering degree and was adamant that education was critical to anyone’s success.”

Today, Colwin continues to be motivated by her mother’s example. “As a litigator, I measure my success by whether I’m doing the best for my clients in every case. I follow my mother’s golden rule: When you’re lucky enough to have people put their trust in you, you must move heaven and earth to fulfill their expectations and work tirelessly in perfecting your craft.”

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Partner, O’Melveny & Myers LLP Los Angeles, CA

APALLA CHOPRA

Years Practicing:

20 Area of Practice:

Employment and Labor “Often lawyers either practice employment or labor law. I do both,” says Apalla Chopra. “I regularly counsel clients in both subject matters and litigate in both areas as well.” On the employment side, Chopra specializes in litigat-

ing complex multi-plaintiff and class action discrimination and wage and hour cases. She also represents clients in traditional labor matters under the National Labor Relations Act. Chopra has spent the entirety of her career at O’Melveny & Myers’ Los Angeles office. Even as a still fairly junior attorney, returning clients specifically requested that Chopra work their cases. “Working hard and turning out great work product is a prerequisite to getting a seat at the table,” she adds, “But I was extremely fortunate to have had mentors and people in the firm who were willing to platform me. Without them I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Growing up in Los Angeles, Chopra dreamed of one day becoming a professional dancer. “My parents put the kibosh on that straightaway. That path wasn’t consistent with their expectations. Still, as an attorney my interest in performing has served me well. A litigator must be comfortable in the spotlight, whether you’re litigating in the courtroom or working with clients in the boardroom.

“For me, the key has been to be unrelentingly client focused. Their problems are my problems. I think about my clients’ problems last thing before I go to sleep at night and first thing when I wake up in the morning. There really is no secret about how to keep existing clients or attract new ones.

It requires good old-fashioned hard work, expertise developed over many years, and a complete dedication to your clients’ needs. A sense of perspective and humor can be helpful too.”

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M. DAVID GALAINENA

30

Partner, Winston & Strawn LLP Chicago, IL

Principal , The Alexander Firm Oklahoma City, OK

Years Practicing:

Years Practicing:

26 Area of Practice:

Finance

“The idea that you rise to rainmaker status by yourself is incorrect,” says David Galainena. “You’ve got to know what you can and cannot do, and you’ve got to build a good team. It’s wise to surround yourself with smart lawyers.”

Traditionally, bringing in new clients and generating business has often been a measured and thoughtful process, says Galainena, but since the 2007 market meltdown, the legal business has changed. There is now greater pressure to produce revenue immediately. Over the past four years, Galainena’s practice has changed as well. “Some clients from before have disappeared while others are moving in new directions. It’s no longer a pure-finance practice. There’s definitely a private equity component involved now. And this is driven by the fact that we’re working with active clients and that’s where the market lies today—it’s not in traditional structured market finance.

“Building and retaining a large book of portfolio clients requires connecting the dots between clients and clients’ needs. If somebody wants to buy a business and you know somebody who’s selling and you put them together, you gain a lot of credibility. And while the last several years have been very different, they’ve also been my most successful to date.”

Prior to joining Winston & Strawn (where he chairs the firm’s finance practice), Galainena was a finance partner at Chapman & Cutler in Chicago. He also worked as an investment banker for CS First Boston. “Today things are volatile.

There are no guarantees. I miss the stability of when you didn’t have to search out clients so aggressively, but I don’t know if those days will ever return.”

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

ROBERT H. ALEXANDER, JR.

35 Area of Practice:

Product Liability

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1976 and clerking for the 10th Circuit, Robert H. Alexander Jr. returned to his native Oklahoma City and made partner in a big local law firm to show that an African American attorney could do it. (“Prior to me, firms weren’t hiring blacks,” he says.) And again in 1988, Alexander opened his own firm expressly to demonstrate that he could successfully compete with the city’s most elite trial lawyers, as well as to create a template for other minorities to follow.

His five-attorney firm’s national practice focuses on defending clients against complex product liability claims, generally representing pharmaceutical and many other product manufacturers often when an entire product line is under attack. The firm’s first big client was Ford Motor. “The A.B.A. was pairing big companies with minority firms. After winning some small cases, I eventually won a million-dollar case and they took notice. It was then that I learned most referrals are lateral.”

As a child and young man, Alexander experienced segregation first hand. “I was part of a loving family and my parents surrounded me with a positive protective hedge.”

Alexander’s father taught his children against rationalizing failure with “excellent excuses.” They were expected to succeed despite any injustices they might encounter.

“I’m a rainmaker as a by-product of being known as a great lawyer who both understands and always places his clients’ interests above all else. I protect my clients and over the years word has gotten around. Perceived negatives such as my being from a small city or small firm have become positives.

Now clients will say ‘Get me that guy in Oklahoma.’”

MCCA.COM

Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP New York, NY

EUNU CHUN

Years Practicing:

20 Area of Practice:

Private Equity

“We’re not a lockstep compensation firm,” says Eunu Chun.

“You can make a good living without bringing in a lot of business, but if you want to achieve an off-market level of personal income you can make more if you bring in more.

I’ve lost more pitches than you can imagine, but if you get a five to ten percent yield rate you’re doing great.”

When Chun joined Kirkland as the global firm’s first-ever direct-from-law-school associate, he was very conscious that he was a guy from a non-establishment background going into an establishment place, so he spent a lot of time watching and learning. “Looking back, those years are a blur. I was working way too hard. Eventually, I figured out how to get ahead and found my voice.

“Private equity is run by young people, and early on I had the opportunity to play the principal role in transaction and was working directly with clients. Soon I had my first client. Once tagged as a billing partner I could go out and get more work. Within a few years I was doing all my own work.” Today he represents a handful of private equity funds in leverage buyout transactions.

The son of Korean immigrants, Chun grew up in Chicago’s predominantly white northern suburbs where he excelled academically, but always felt a little out of place.

During his undergraduate experience at Harvard, and even more so at Columbia Law School, he says, the world really opened up. “In diverse New York City, my confidence soared. People’s first impression of me was no longer driven by my ethnicity which had been the case in high school. The shackles were off, and I realized that I could achieve bigger success than I’d previously imagined.”

MCCA.COM

Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig, LLP Atlanta, GA

DAVID LONG-DANIELS

Years Practicing:

20 Area of Practice:

Labor and Employment

As labor and employment department head for Greenberg Traurig’s Atlanta office, David Long-Daniels, who has taught labor and employment as an adjunct law professor at both the University of Alabama School of Law and the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University, is responsible for keeping lawyers busy. “It’s easy to get overwhelmed with a nationwide practice, but you can’t allow it to keep you from devoting some time to business development every single day.”

Long-Daniels’ first brush with rainmaking took place when he was just a three-month lawyer at his first firm.

While attending a routine seminar he connected with a contact from a large pharmaceutical company that became his first client and resulted in several hundred thousands dollars of business. “Granted, I wasn’t your typical 24-yearold fresh out of law school. I’d been a military officer and went to law school a little late, so at 30 I appeared more seasoned than I was. Still, I got the case and we won it.”

As a student athlete in a small Alabama town, Long-Daniels was affected after a teammate was wrongly arrested and jailed for a hit-and-run. Eventually his friend’s name was cleared, but the experience stayed with him. From that moment forward, Long-Daniels’ goal was to one day become a trial lawyer.

Before graduating cum laude from Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law, he attended college on an ROTC scholarship and served in the U.S. Air Force as a logistics officer. He also obtained an M.P.A. from Valdosta State University prior to going to law school.

“There is no full proof formula for rainmaking. One thing for sure—you have got to be willing to knock on doors. A lot of the time you’ll meet rejection, but if you don’t knock you’ll never get inside.”

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S E MP LO YE R

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SAGER AWARD | IN

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IN DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

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NO V AT O

MCCA distinguished diversity powerhouses from fi ve regions of the United States in 2011. Five companies received the prestigious Employer of Choice recognition. These premier companies for diversity share best practices and thoughts on increasing inclusion in the legal profession. The fi ve law firms that earned the

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BY ANGELA DODSON | D PR AR W ES A EN R O TI T A N V G O

Y AWARD WINNER

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esteemed Thomas L. Sager award are also profiled.

The Innovator Award, MCCA’s newest honor, is given to companies and firms that tried something new and succeeded, whether in recruitment and retention, mentoring, pipeline initiatives, LGBT initiatives, or client inclusion feedback.

MCCA.COM

EMPLOYER OF CHOICE

ALTRIA GROUP LAW DEPARTMENT

3M LEGAL AFFAIRS

> Mid-Atlantic Region

> Midwest Region

C

onsistent effort and reevaluation are the keys to achieving and maintaining diversity in the workforce, DENISE KEANE according to Denise Keane, executive vice president and general counsel of the Altria Group Inc. “Diversity is not achieved with just one initiative,” Keane says. “It is not about percentages or numbers. It is a long-standing commitment to developing future leaders, creating opportunities, and driving the best possible business outcomes for Altria and its companies. It is about being consistent, being disciplined, and continuously reassessing where we are and where we need to re-calibrate in order to achieve our goals.”

Altria Group is the parent company of Philip Morris USA, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company, and John Middleton. Altria also owns Ste. Michelle Wine Estates and Philip Morris Capital Corporation. It has a continuing economic and voting interest in SABMiller.

Keane says diversity “is clearly the right thing to do, but our real passion behind it is the fact that it makes important business sense for our companies.

“Having diverse perspectives, having different voices that help us counsel a series of clients across a challenging product line delivers the best service to the organization and ensures we both have the excellence that we think is critical in the Altria law department,” Keane adds.

She explains that “as our companies have grown, it’s been important to clearly define these diversity expectations. Today, I lead an internal legal team of nearly 150 people and work with more than 20 outside law firms.

Our guidelines, our processes, our training and development, and our diversity committee keep us all moving toward the same diversity goals.

“We make this all a part of our business strategy,” Keane says. “It’s not an add-on or an extra. It’s part of everyday operations.”

Altria formed a diversity committee to carry out diversity goals and to assess results in the diversity arena.

“They help us do benchmarking,” Keane explains. “They help us look at new opportunities and strategies to make sure we’re constantly fresh in how we pursue diversity.

“The entire department is really proud to receive this because it really has been a team effort,” Keane says. “I think the value of such an award is to keep interest and passion high around the goals of diversity.”

MCCA.COM

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ith the thousands of products and global sales of $27 billion last year, 3M has invented and manufacMARSCHALL SMITH tured products that are in nearly every home, business, and institution in the industrialized world. Its trademark brands include Scotch, Post-it, Filtrete, Nexcare, Scotchgard, Thinsulate, Vikuiti, and Command. To produce these goods requires a workforce of 75,000-plus people in 30 states and 65 countries. It also requires a global outlook, says Marschall Smith, senior vice president and general counsel at 3M Legal Affairs.

“We are a company that has survived and prospered on being able to constantly produce new, innovative products into new markets,” Smith says. “We see the diversity of our employee base as the key to driving that innovation. We need different ideas, different approaches, different views all coming together, and out of that, we drive the innovation that is vital to 3M’s survival. We see diversity as the direct link to innovation.

It is the right thing that we have people at the table, that we have people in the huddle, and, frankly, that we have people with chairs in the boardroom of all races and colors and creeds.”

Forty-six of the 92 lawyers working for 3M Legal Affairs in the United States are women or lawyers of color.

To find and retain a diverse workforce, Smith says, “You need to cast a very broad net to send a message of inclusion to the potential employees, and you need to make them feel welcomed and included when they get here.”

He says 3M Legal Affairs has a mentoring program in which most of the senior officers, including him, participate. All new legal employees are assigned a mentor to provide specific advice on work and networking, as well as encouragement to help ensure retention.

“The only way you can measure it is to measure it,” he says. “We have just put in place a fairly sophisticated system of metrics to evaluate the employment pools in the areas where we do hiring and to measure our performance in terms of the tracking, hiring, and keeping— because keeping is a big part of it.

“We don’t see this as a process that will ever end, and it’s a continuing event. This is a nice reassurance along the way that we are doing the right thing.”

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EMPLOYER OF CHOICE

MASSMUTUAL LAW DIVISION

PG&E LAW DEPARTMENT

> Northeast Region

> Western Region

W

38

hen attorneys for the Law Division of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company MARK ROELLIG (MassMutual) attend diversity events, they know their mandate is to mingle, not to stand around talking to each other. Every attorney in the division must attend at least one event a year, and the mission is to fan out to meet attorneys with diverse backgrounds, according to Mark Roellig, executive vice president and general counsel for MassMutual.

“Now they know we are all dispersing throughout the crowd to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet, and you walk away with a stack of business cards,” Roellig says.

More importantly, he follows up afterward with an email acknowledging the encounter.

“I like to reach out before they reach out,” he says.

MassMutual maintains a database of the attorneys its staff meets at the various diversity events, and sends them notices and requests for candidates when it has openings for attorneys or paralegals.

A leading mutual-life insurance company headquartered in Springfield, Mass., MassMutual offers financial products, including life, disability, and long-term care insurances, as well as annuities and retirement/401(k) plan services.

Roellig says MassMutual views diversity as “critical to the success of the firm and critical to the success of the law department.

“It’s all about talent,” he explains. “The talent base in the country is changing. Fifty-eight percent of undergrads are women, and by the year 2042 whites will be a minority in the country, [a trend] never to be reversed. If we want talent, we have to look at a diverse group. Just as our pool of talent is changing, our customers and suppliers are becoming more diverse and are more diverse.”

To understand their needs, he says, MassMutual has to reflect the same kind of diversity.

Beyond the demographic reasons, however, are business imperatives, the general counsel adds.

“Diversity and inclusion make for better results and reduce risks,” he explains. “The more different ideas, approaches, and strategies you have, the better the decision at the end. Diversity is necessary to get you your results.”

He noted that 47 percent of the division’s attorneys are women, 14 percent are people of color, and 10 percent are openly gay or lesbian, and that of the last 10 hires, 7 were female, and 4 were people of color.

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ith 15 million customers in one of the most diverse population areas in the nation, Pacific Gas & HYUN PARK Electric Company (PG&E) faces challenges daily that drive home the need for a workforce that understands its clientele.

“When we make decisions, we need to be conscious of the fact that our customers in Bakersfield or in Fresno might react very differently than our customers in San Francisco or Marin County,” says Hyun Park, PG&E’s senior vice president and general counsel. “We cannot assume that one size fits all in how we work with our customers.”

Based in San Francisco, PG&E, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation, has 20,000 employees and is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. The company serves consumers in Northern and Central California.

“We recognize that driving high performance requires a skilled and qualified workforce that is fully engaged and dedicated to serving our customers,” says Park. “Our goal is to have the right people with the right skills in the right places at the right time, supported by operational processes, human resources practices, and a set of values that together enable employees to do their jobs effectively.”

More than one-quarter of PG&E’s lawyers are members of a minority group, and more than half are women. PG&E has a 12-member law department diversity committee to promote diversity among the company’s legal suppliers.

For 16 years, the company also has held a Diversity Celebration at its general office in San Francisco for employees. One of the highlights is the announcement of the president’s Diversity Champion award, which recognizes individuals who demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion.

“Celebrating and respecting our diversity is one of PG&E’s five core values, and it is expected that all PG&E employees behave in a way that support our values,” Park says.

Park says that the company has more than 380 active mentoring relationships in place—a 45 percent increase from 2009—and that more than 2,000 employees have participated in the program.

Vendor diversity has also been a priority. PG&E’s Supplier Diversity Program is now in its 30th year. By the end of last year, the company reported that it had spent more than $1 billion, or 32.7 percent of its procurement funds, on products and services provided by businesses owned by minorities, women, and service-disabled veterans.

MCCA.COM

EMPLOYER OF CHOICE

UPS LEGAL DEPARTMENT

COVINGTON & BURLING LLP

> South/Southwest Region

> Mid-Atlantic Region

W

ith more than 400,000 UPS employees spread over more than 220 countries, the global shipper TERI MCCLURE and freight transporter’s workforce is diverse by definition.

“UPS is in the business of linking people, cultures, and commerce, with diversity as an integral part of its global strategy,” says Teri Plummer McClure, senior vice president, legal and compliance, general counsel, and corporate secretary for the company.

“In today’s world, we understand that diversity encompasses more than race and gender. It extends to the full myriad of issues ranging from ethnicity to sexual orientation to physical ability.”

The legal department established a diversity committee that is made up of lawyers, paralegals, and legal assistants, she explains. It has developed initiatives to build “a stronger diversity pipeline in the legal profession and has provided regular updates on progress,” she says.

UPS participates in the “Street Law” education program through the Corporate Legal Diversity Pipeline Program, which yearly gives more than 50 Atlanta high school students the opportunity to explore legal careers, interact with professional role models, and learn about the law.

“We teach students about employment law, contracts, and intellectual property, and provide a window into the lives of corporate lawyers,” she said. “Through interactions with our staff, the students are able to consider career options, envision a pathway to legal careers, and lay the groundwork for the pursuit of that pathway.”

In addition, McClure says UPS expects law firms with which it does business to be committed to diversity.

“I, as general counsel, and the senior leadership within the department, also communicate to the firms representing UPS our expectation that these firms distinguish themselves in the area of diversity,” she says. “As part of our commitment to diversity, we intend to limit our relationship with any firm whose performance consistently lacks meaningful interest in diversity.

“To highlight this commitment, we report monthly on diverse timekeepers’ hours billed from our top twentytwo firms,” she continues. “This is used as a department metric to review the allocation of work to diverse attorneys. It ensures there is fair representation of diversity on our legal matters. Firms are required to categorize the gender, ethnicity profile, and timekeeper classification.”

MCCA.COM

SAGER AWARDS

C

ovington & Burling LLP., a leading international law firm, views diversity “not as an endpoint or a statistic ANDREA REISTER to report but more of a way of thinking and doing business,” says Andrea G. Reister, a partner and co-chair of the firm-wide diversity committee.

In the firm’s diversity initiatives, Reister says, “The focus for us is not on a particular objective or a particular number but on achieving real inclusion and integration so that we are in the best position to provide the best services to our clients.”

The winner of the Thomas L. Sager Award for the midAtlantic region is a firm that represents clients in matters related to technology, white-collar allegations, litigation, transactional, government affairs, international, and life sciences. It has offices in Washington, D.C., New York, San Diego, San Francisco, and the Silicon Valley in the United States, as well as in Beijing, Brussels, and London.

Covington is consistently in the top 20 on The American Lawyer’s prestigious A-list, based on financial performance, pro bono activity, associate satisfaction, and diversity.

One the firm’s more unusual diversity initiatives is part of an effort to identify attorney prospects early in their careers through participation in Sponsors for Educational Opportunity Corporate Law Program in Washington, D.C. Reister, who is based in Washington, says the program “focuses on college graduates who haven’t started law school yet and enables them to have an opportunity to work in a law firm and experience the law firm practice from the very beginning before they actually go to law school.”

While major law firms have been shrinking staffs and deferring hiring during the recession, often resulting in less diversity, Reister has pointed out that Covington has maintained its summer associate program, honored offers to incoming first-year associates, and continued to promote associates into the partnership.

In 2010, more than half of the 85 associates who joined the firm were women and 18 associates were ethnically diverse or lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. In the D.C. offices, 55 percent of the 60 new associates were women and 27 percent were ethnically diverse or LGBT. Half the 72 summer associates were women and more than 41 percent were ethnically diverse or LGBT. More than 10 percent of the summer associates were African American.

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SAGER AWARDS

DEWEY & LEBOEUF

FORD & HARRISON

> Northeast Region

> Southwest Region

F

40

or the third time in four years, Dewey & LeBoeuf, a global law firm headquartered in New York, has won the Thomas CHRISTIANI FRANCK L. Sager Award for the Northeast Region for its outstanding dedication to hire, promote, and retain diverse and women lawyers. Christiani Franck, director of diversity, says that is a reflection of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s belief that “diversity is an essential element of our firm’s business and culture.

“We hold the belief that a diverse workforce will position our firm to better understand its clients, and provide our clients with better service, and create an inclusive firm culture” she says. Dewey & LeBoeuf has more than 1,100 lawyers working in 26 offices in 15 countries around the world and has become known primarily for its practices in corporate, energy, insurance, litigation, tax, and restructuring.

“Dewey & LeBoeuf prides itself for being at the center of such an important movement as the diversification of the legal profession,” she says. “Winning the Sager Award for the third time really validates to the many people who work on diversity initiatives at the firm that their determination is recognized. ” Franck says the firm’s diversity initiatives are focused in five key areas: recruitment, retention, workplace culture, promotion, and partnerships with organizations that promote diversity.

“We take a top-down, bottom-up, and inside-out approach to promote diversity and inclusion,” she says.

“We also understand that the involvement of firm management in diversity initiatives is essential. Therefore our senior leadership and members of our diversity committee make certain that diversity and inclusion is discussed during major firm meetings and functions.”

In the past few years, she says, the firm has “augmented its efforts in the area of retention and promotion.” For example, the firm created Connections Across Differences, a tailored mentorship program that pairs junior to midlevel diverse associates with partners. The program requires that the mentor and mentee create and sign a contract that outlines the professional goals for the mentoring relationship. According to Franck, the firm also has a partner succession planning program. The program pairs senior partners who are nearing retirement to transition their key clients to younger diverse and women partners. To assist in the transition, the partner pairs are encouraged to create a business plan to demonstrate how the junior partner will achieve greater client responsibility and ultimately “inherit” the client base.

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n one of its more unusual diversity efforts, Ford & Harrison LLP gives its attorneys financial incentives to help it find and keep DAWN SILER-NIXON new talent.

Under the Diversity Pipeline Initiative, any Ford & Harrison attorney who identifies a minority attorney candidate, facilitates his or her successful hire, and makes a three-year commitment to be on the recruit’s mentoring team is eligible for a bonus, according to Dawn Siler-Nixon, diversity and inclusion partner at Ford & Harrison.

In 2009, Siler-Nixon, who was a labor and employment litigator for more than 16 years, became the firm’s first diversity and inclusion partner with primary responsibility for its diversity initiatives. These functions were previously carried out by individuals and a diversity committee within the firm.

Siler-Nixon is based in the firm’s Tampa, Florida, office.

The Diversity Pipeline Initiative focuses on law school and lateral attorney recruiting and the long-term retention and professional development of minority attorneys.

“To promote retention, the incentive is paid over three years and conditioned on the minority candidate’s continued successful employment with the firm,” Siler-Nixon explains. “The candidate must increase the ethnic and cultural diversity of the specific office he or she joins. For example, in an office where six of ten lawyers are currently Hispanic, adding a Hispanic lawyer would not increase the diversity of that particular office.”

Siler-Nixon says the candidates referred by the Ford & Harrison employee are subject to the same hiring standards and process as others.

“The Diversity Pipeline Initiative’s success depends on both the hiring and the long-term retention of outstanding minority lawyers,” Siler-Nixon says.

She says all new associates are assigned a different partner mentor each year for the first three years of employment and all lateral associates are assigned a partner mentor for the first year of employment.

However, under the Diversity Pipeline Mentoring program, minority associates are provided a consistent mentoring network of at least four lawyers for the first three years of the minority associate’s employment. The network might include a partner in the minority associate’s practice group or office, a partner outside of his or her office or practice group, at least one senior associate, and the minority associate’s practice group leader, in addition to the recruiting attorney.

MCCA.COM

SAGER AWARDS

LITTLER MENDELSON

ORRICK, HERRINGTON & SUTCLIFFE LLP

> Midwest Region

> Western Region

T

he need for diversity is a “no-brainer” in the increasingly global marketplace in which Littler Mendelson P.C. JAFFE DICKERSON functions, says Jaffe Dickerson, a senior shareholder for the firm and co-chair of its diversity and inclusion council.

“Law is now a global business, and we are marketing in a global economy,” he says.

Dickerson noted that the firm had opened a Venezuela office and will be opening additional offices on different continents. Littler is a San Francisco-based law firm with 51 offices and more than 800 lawyers representing employers in labor and employment law. It has the largest practice in this field in the United States and Venezuela.

In September 2011, Littler released data showing that 24 percent of its associates, 17 percent of its attorneys, 11 percent of its shareholders, and 26 percent of its entire workforce were people of color. At the same time, women made up 61 percent of its associates, 47 percent of its attorneys, 32 percent of shareholders, and 60 percent of its workforce.

Dickerson, a specialist in labor and employment law for more than 30 years, has been with Littler since 1988 and is based in the Los Angeles office. He says that the firm is very proud of its statistics but that numbers do not tell the whole story. “Statistics and benchmarks are important, but the true measure is the demonstrated success of our diverse attorneys and staff, especially their steady and consistent progression into leadership positions,” Dickerson says. “Having a bunch of numbers doesn’t matter if you have a high attrition rate.

When you see people come in as entry-level attorneys and work their way up, that is the type of demonstration of success in terms of our diversity and inclusion goals.”

The council that Dickerson co-chairs bears much of the responsibility for setting the direction and carrying out diversity initiatives within the firm, but the burden of meeting diversity goals rests on everyone in the firm, Dickerson says.

“It’s not just the board of directors or the diversity and inclusion council,” he says. “It’s everyone, whether it’s our staff aggressively seeking women and diverse candidates, office administrators giving opportunities to diverse vendors, or current employees getting the word out that this is a great place to work.”

Dickerson says that the firm takes steps to do business with vendors who represent a diverse pool of people.

“We have a very successful, very robust diversitysupplier program where we look for diversity vendors and encourage diversity vendors.”

MCCA.COM

D

iversity does not end with recruiting and hiring people from varied backgrounds and cultures, it requires effort to LORRAINE MCGOWEN retain and promote them, says Lorraine McGowen, who heads the firm-wide Diversity and Inclusion Initiative for Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. McGowen, who is a partner in the firm’s New York office, a corporate restructuring partner, and member of the executive committee, describes retention and promotion as among the challenges for Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

Orrick, an international law firm, has more than 1,100 lawyers in 23 offices spread out through 8 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia.

“Our goal is that every practice group will be diverse,” she says. “I think that one thing we do that not everyone does is not just to report on their progress and challenges to your senior leadership, but to engage in candid conversation with your practice group leaders.”

As chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Initiative and the Women’s Initiative, McGowen said she meets at least twice a year with the firm’s 20 practice group leaders “to talk about how they are doing demographically and the challenges that they face.

“For our junior partners we talk about what can we do to assist in their further development, so that we are promoting internally,” she adds. “We engage in very candid conversations with the practice group leaders regarding each of their attorneys.

“We want to be able to provide our clients with a diverse team, and we want all of our diverse staff and attorneys to feel they have not only the opportunity to work here but also the opportunity to thrive and develop professionally.”

One of the initiatives of which the firm is most proud, she says, is its founding and sponsorship of the Bay Area Diversity Career Fair for second-year law students. She says it is the largest event of its kind on the West Coast, attracting more than 300 law students and more than 100 employers. Orrick conducts the fair in collaboration with the Bar Association of San Francisco. The event brings together a diverse pool of students with Bay Area employers, who traveled great distances to recruit minority candidates before the fair was founded seven years ago. Orrick says it plans to replicate the career fair in other locations where it has offices.

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DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

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INNOVATORS

RECRUITMENT & RETENTION

MCGUIREWOODS, LLP

42

McGuireWoods LLP has invested significantly in several diversity initiatives in the past few years to improve retention and help in recruiting. Highlights including the firm holding a Lawyers of Color Retreat in Chicago, filled with interactive sessions to get feedback from its lawyers of color to help in the areas of recruitment and retention. The firm also held a LGBT Lawyers Retreat in Washington D.C. to learn how the firm could become more inclusive. Feedback from both of these retreats led to new programs being introduced in 2011, including a travel stipend for each diverse lawyer to use to attend a minority bar conference.

One of the most innovative tools that McGuireWoods has developed is its Diversity Directory. This innovative on-line tool, found on McGuireWoods’ portal, can help diverse and women lawyers locate lawyers in other offices with whom they want to develop mentoring or cross-selling relationships, help client-responsible attorneys find diverse and women attorneys in the firm’s 19 offices to add to client teams and provide a means for LGBT lawyers to self-identify. Technology for this tool was developed by the firm’s IT department. These are just a few examples of the investments made by McGuireWoods to improve recruitment and retention of diverse lawyers. Quantitative measurements that show these investments are paying off include a year-over-year increase in the number of diverse and women associates and diverse partners recruited to the firm, an increase in the retention of diverse and women associates and diverse partners, and increases in the number of female and diverse associates promoted to partner.

MENTORING

FRIED FRANK The Fried Frank Partner Advisor Program is an innovative mentoring program that exemplifies the firm’s traditional commitment to the success of each of its attorneys. Key objectives of the firm’s diversity strategic plan are to ensure Fried Frank is a place of inclusion, where all attorneys can thrive and reach their full potential, and recommend strategies to prevent barriers to meaningful integration of all attorneys within the firm work environment. The firm’s Professional Development and Mentoring Committee, DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

a subcommittee of the firm-wide Diversity Committee, carefully designed and implemented the Partner Advisor Program to provide a formal mentoring structure where partners can further provide the support and guidance associates need to maximize their individual potential while also meeting the aim of maintaining an inclusive work environment. Fried Frank has developed an enduring, industry best-practice model with a program that has clear objectives, consistent programming, meaningful assignments involving diligent awareness and addressing of issues of concern to diverse attorneys, and effective participation tracking, while allowing for structural flexibility at the practice group level. The program focuses on specific areas where associates should directly benefit from their participation, including reinforcing the constructive impact of evaluations; management and delegation; business development skills; client service; and work/life balance issues. The program features monthly newsletters with professional development topics for discussion by mentoring pairs, as well as a monthly lunch where partners can meet with their assigned associates in a relaxed atmosphere. Program participants also have a budget for meals and coffee breaks outside the office. In the first year of the program, over 85% of firm attorneys in the U.S. offices participated, with the majority of associates reporting a high level of satisfaction.

PIPELINE INITIATIVES

ACC AMERICA The goals of ACC’s Delaware Valley Chapter (DELVACCA) Diversity Corporate Internship Program are to provide local law students from racial and ethnic backgrounds, which are traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession, with a perspective as to the role and activities of in-house counsel and an understanding of the usual career path that leads to an in-house legal role.

DELVACCA subsidizes the cost of an 8-week summer internship program for local area law students hired by member companies through a competitive selection process. DELVACCA also hosts an annual reception following the end of the summer internships, which includes a formal recognition ceremony for the student and company participants. In partnership with the Philadelphia Bar Foundation, DELVACCA launched a new endowment fund to benefit the internship program this past year. In addition to providing a fundraising vehicle, the goal of MCCA.COM

ADVERTORIAL

the endowment is to create a self-funded internship program over a fixed period of time to ensure its longevity. Beginning in the summer of 2012, the internship will also include a new pro bono requirement for law student participants. Launched in 2008 with an MCCA Diversity Dollars Grant, the program has been successful and grown significantly each year since its inception in the number of applications received, interest and participation from member companies; and interns selected.

During the summer of 2011, the internship program included seven interns and six hosting companies.

LGBT Initiatives

WINSTON & STRAWN Winston & Strawn shows its commitment to LGBT issues both internally and externally. Within the firm, we have worked to “level the playing field” through a clearly defined non-discrimination/EEO policy, same-sex partner benefits, an expanded domestic partner benefit policy that provides a gross tax up-payment for employees in same-sex partnerships, and a childcare/family leave policy that applies to LGBT parents. Our LGBT Affinity Group provides networking, outreach, and leadership opportunities to firm attorneys and staff. Outside of the firm, we provide pro bono legal services to LGBT-related organizations, support LGBT legislation, offer scholarships to diverse law school students, and provide financial support and leadership to LGBT organizations.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION CLIENT REVIEW PROJECT

STEPTOE & JOHNSON In 2010, Steptoe’s Chief Diversity Partner (CDP) initiated a Diversity and Inclusion Client Interview Project, under which she and a diverse associate interview general counsels and diversity officers of major corporations, often firm clients, who are recognized as leaders of D/I best practices.

The goal is to learn how the D/I initiatives of these companies developed and succeeded, what strategies are in place to maintain the momentum, and to establish collaborations with successful D/I companies for mutual support and assistance. These discussions will help Steptoe benchmark its efforts against the effective programs and practices of top organizations. Steptoe has already infused its diversity/ inclusion program with innovative ideas resulting from this project. The D/I Client Interview Project has also strengthened existing and potential client relationships by providing opportunities for both parties to mutually advance creative and successful diversity/inclusion initiatives.

MCCA.COM

BENJAMIN F. WILSON Beveridge & Diamond, P.C. Mr. Wilson is the Managing Principal of Beveridge & Diamond, P.C. His present litigation practice encompasses a wide range of activities in both state and federal courts, including commercial litigation matters and environmental litigation. He has been lead counsel in several complex litigation matters for major corporations and developers, and has represented numerous cities and local government agencies on Clean Water Act enforcement and wetlands development matters.

Mr. Wilson graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1973 with an A.B. in history. He received his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1976. He serves as an Adjunct Professor in Environmental Law at the Howard University Law School where he teaches courses on Environmental Law and Environmental Justice.

Mr. Wilson serves on the Board of Directors of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, as well as the Board of Directors of the Environmental Law Institute.

In 2010, he was recognized by the National Bar Association Commercial Law Section, receiving its coveted Outside Counsel Award for his excellent work and service on behalf of his clients, and his work promoting diversity in the profession. In 2010, Mr. Wilson was feted for his work organizing the Diverse Partners Network in Washington, D.C., in a Diversity & The Bar article entitled “Powering Up: A Look at the First Generation of Minority Managing Partners.” He was also named to the Board of Trustees of the Maryland/DC Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

In 2009, Mr. Wilson received the Wiley Branton Award for outstanding achievement in civil rights law by the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Development. The Environmental Leadership Program also honored Mr. Wilson with “A Celebration of Leadership: Remembering Dr. King’s Environmental Legacy with Benjamin Wilson.”

ASSOCIATION FOCUS

BY KARA MAYER ROBINSON

ASSOCIATION OF LAW FIRM DIVERSITY PROFESSIONALS (ALFDP)

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IT’S NOT EASY BEING A DIVERSITY OFFICER. In addition to typical pressures inherent in law firm work, being a change agent presents its own unique set of challenges. What’s more, there’s a constant reminder that despite positive gains there is still so much more that needs to be accomplished.

Having access to a network of professionals involved in similar situations is critical. Enter the Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals (ALFDP), an organization comprised of 100 individual diversity officers representing about 85 law firms. ALFDP, which is based in New York, serves as a resource to support individuals in charge of implementing a law firm’s diversity program and acts as a catalyst for the advancement of diversity in the legal profession through the collective knowledge, vision, expertise, and advocacy of its members.

“The nature of these jobs are so demanding,” explains Theresa Cropper, chief diversity officer at Perkins Coie LLP, and the founder of ALFDP. “In our work, the measurements are profound but the movement is long term. You constantly look at how much you have to do. It’s helpful to talk to others who are at further stages.”

Cropper says that members turn to one another for collective commiseration, optimism, support, cheerleading, and advice. The group meets twice a year, and there is ongoing discussion throughout the year through the organization’s vibrant listserv, where individuals share and discuss common issues such as best practices, structuring of diversity committees, program ideas, new laws and policies, and upcoming events via email.

of companies and the reality of the world getting smaller and firms getting larger.” The role of the diversity officer— to support and lead an organization in all matters relating to diversity—became more important and the number of roles increased.1 Cropper refers to the organization’s beginnings, as well as its ongoing growth, as a “movement” rather than a single event. “Back then we had no idea who we were. Things were happening at a really quick pace,” she says. It became clear that combining their collective insights and experiences would be beneficial, and creating a professional association would be a smart long-term investment. “We realized that we could not—and should not—do this on our own. Our goals were to come together and educate and encourage each other, and to study ourselves to make sure we had all the information we needed.

— THERESA CROPPER “Now that it’s here,” Cropper adds, “it has comfortably found its spot, and it’s filling a void and supporting efforts that so many organizations care about.”

“IN OUR WORK, THE MEASUREMENTS ARE PROFOUND BUT THE MOVEMENT IS LONG TERM.”

THEN AND NOW

ALFDP fills a niche that was barely on the radar when it was founded in 2006. At the time, Cropper says, there were only about a dozen diversity officers in the country.

“Then it started exploding. It was an amazing convergence DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

PRIMARY INITIATIVES

One of the organization’s primary initiatives is to educate its members. This begins with new diversity officers: ALFDP exposes them to best practices and facilitates access to experts in the field. A key element is keeping senior members engaged in this informational and educational process.

A second initiative focuses on disseminating information to the legal community. “We partner with organizations like MCCA to survey the legal profession and see who we are and what we’re doing,” Cropper explains, noting that such information helps ALFDP advise law firms about the creation and direction of professional diversity positions.

A new item on the agenda is the development of a diversity professional certification. The goal of this initiative is to MCCA.COM

ensure a base level of knowledge among diversity officers.

STRENGTH IN MEMBERS

A critical component of ALFDP’s success is the recognition that voices of individual members are its strongest asset. When its initial members met, they knew instantly that sharing knowledge and using individual experiences to shed light on what was effective and what was not was fundamental to being successful change agents. And that contin- THERESA CROPPER ues to this day. When a key member rotates out, she isn’t completely removed from the mix.

“We’ve structured the board so there’s continuity. The past president is always on the board. In fact, our second president, Anna L. Brown, is often pulled into conference calls because we respect her wisdom. We’ve never let her go too far from the board,” says Cropper, referring to the longtime diversity officer at Shearman & Sterling LLP. Although Cropper will rotate off the board this year, she plans to remain an active member and voice on the listserv.

“It’s this large collective that has a big influence,” she says.

STRATEGIZING FOR THE FUTURE

ALFDP is always evolving, and it continues to prepare for future developments in the profession. Its current strategic plan involves creating a certification for diversity professionals, enhancing its membership, education, and professional development initiatives, developing strategic alliances with other mission-aligned organizations, and developing and heightening the profile of the ALFDP brand.

A strong advocate of anticipating and preparing for the future is current president Maja D. Hazell, the director of diversity and inclusion at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP. “It’s been my honor to lead our strong board in effectuating a five-year strategic vision for the organizaMCCA.COM

tion,” she says. “ALFDP is a critical resource to legal professionals engaged in challenging work to move diversity forward on the ground at law firms.

Overseeing the formalization and expansion of our efforts to provide sophisticated methods of content and service delivery has been very exciting,” she says.

Alignment with organizations like MCCA, The Association for Legal Career Professionals (NALP), the MAJA D. HAZELL Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD), and Corporate Counsel Women of Color (CCWC) has been effective in strengthening its impact. The challenge, Cropper says, is anticipating change and determining what it will take to bring things to the next level. Most likely, as it evolves, the organization will continue to reach toward its members for their individual voices and collective experience.

“The beauty of our organization is that people are really committed to their jobs. They really care. There’s a greater good to be served to make sure everyone does their best in these jobs,” says Cropper. “Our success is so dependent on each other. We’re not competitive at all. We want to collectively move this needle.” D&B Kara Mayer Robinson is a freelance writer based near New York City. For information, visit alfdp.com 1

According to Theresa Cropper, the role of a diversity officer includes but is not limited to: support and accountability of and to the diversity committee, supporting the development of a diversity strategic plan, organizing or supporting affinity groups, and identifying strategies for recruitment, retention and promotion of diverse attorneys. Diversity officers also manage metrics, deciding what should be measured and defining why those metrics matter.

They also serve as a resource to clients and attorneys for client partnering and professional development, being leaders of strategy while developing tactics to make the strategy work.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

45

DIVERSITY NEWS

BY JOSHUA H. SHIELDS

GALA AND PATHWAYS CONFERENCE AWE ATTENDEES

Scan this QR Code with your mobile device to see more images from the Gala and Pathways Conference.

YT BELL WAS AN MCCA INTERN LAST YEAR. SHE GREW UP IN RURAL GEORGIA AND WAS THE FIRST IN HER FAMILY TO ATTEND COL LEGE. Her first airline flight was last year, when she came

46

ing the Employer of Choice companies (profiled on pages 36-39), the program turned to the man of the evening, Vernon Jordan (profile begins on page 16).

Ursula Burns, the CEO of Xerox Corporation, and a to New York City to see the Pathways conference in action. longtime mentee of Jordan’s, provided a magnificent introducI found myself wishing she could have attended the 2011 tion. “Vernon’s life story is the embodiment of the American Diversity Honors Gala in place of that trip. Then I reconsidered. dream—from the public housing projects of Atlanta to the If YT had attended the Diversity Honors Gala at the very pinnacle of corporate and political power, he has seen Lincoln Center her head might have exploded. I’m sure she and done it all—Civil Rights lawyer, head of the United would have described it as a fairy tale. A gregarious, smiling Negro College Fund, President of the National Urban League, 21-year-old, YT would have had a ball, which is the idea. partner in a prestigious Washington law firm, power broker The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is the ultimate and kingmaker, board member of some of America’s leading venue. The red carpet was off Broadway, with flashing global corporations, senior managing director of Lazard Freres, cameras recording every face and elegant gown. author, lecturer, champion of diversity and social justice, but When attendees moved into the sold-out 1,095-seat that is only part of Vernon’s enormous legacy.

Alice Tully Hall the conversation was about how great the “Our country owes him an enormous debt for his conevent was—and it was just getting started. After honortributions on the national scale. But so, too, do the legions of people like me who owe their success in no XEROX CEO URSULA BURNS small measure to this ON THE RED CARPET, LEFT giant of a man.”

As I listened to the CEO of Xerox toast Jordan’s accomplishments, my thoughts returned to our young former intern. She would have loved to have been in the audience, taking it all in, but she was across the country, in New Mexico, pursuing her dream of becoming a ACC PRESIDENT Secret Service agent. & CEO VETA As Jordan climbed RICHARDSON AND MCCA PRESIDENT & the stage to begin his CEO JOE WEST remarks, I thought DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

MCCA.COM

ATTENDEES APPLAUD AFTER THE MUSICAL PERFORMANCE.

about his legacy. During his acceptance speech he alluded to a quote by Herman Melville, saying, “We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads. And along these sympathetic fibers our actions run as causes and return to us as results. Or, as my mother used to say, what goes around, comes around.”

That’s when I realized that YT is connected to Jordan, and everyone else in the room. She wasn’t there in person but the accomplishments of Jordan, of the companies and law firms that support diversity, are all part of a movement

to make America better.

The tirelessness of Jordan was evident in his speech. He concluded, saying, “My only twinge of regret in accepting your award is its title—the Lifetime Achievement Award. I don’t like the finality of that one bit. So let the record show, that my work is not done. And let me remind you that your work is not done. As far as we have traveled together, our journey continues. I accept MCCA’s Lifetime Achievement Award not as recognition of deeds done, but as a reminder of promises to keep.” D&B

creating a diverse

THAT’S WHAT WE DO, EVERY DAY.® At Special Counsel, diversity is an ongoing commitment.

That’s one of the reasons why our clients rely upon our full range of legal staffing solutions. They know that we actively recruit the best and most diverse talent in the market. From contract staffing to direct hire, we’re connected to the people who can positively impact your bottom line. Call us today and find out how we can help you.

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©2011 Special Counsel, Inc. All rights reserved.

47

MOVERS & SHAKERS

ROBERT MARCHMAN

SHARON BRIDGES

Executive Vice President & Head of Market Regulation Department’s Legal Group Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)

48

Litigation Partner Adams and Reese

Robert Marchman is Executive Vice President & Head of Market Regulation Department’s Legal Group of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Marchman was honored at The Community Coalition on Race 15th Anniversary Dinner Celebrating Integration Diversity & Inclusion. At FINRA Marchman serves as liaison to the CEO for the diversity and inclusion management initiative. Before joining FINRA he managed the New York Stock Exchange Regulation’s Enforcement Division and Regulatory Risk Group.

Marchman was Chairman of NYSE Diversity Council.

He earned his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, is a magna cum laude graduate of Allegheny College, and attended Harvard Business School’s Program for Management Development.

Sharon Bridges, current general counsel and immediate past vice president of the National Bar Association, the nation’s oldest and largest national association of predominantly African American lawyers and judges, has joined the law firm of Adams and Reese as a litigation partner in the firm’s Jackson, Mississippi office. Bridges is an attorney practicing in a complex litigation with significant experience in mass tort, product liability, medical malpractice, long-term care, and commercial litigation.

She formerly served as associate general counsel for Tulane University Medical Center and received her J.D. from Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans. She earned a B.S. in Nursing from Morris Brown College in Atlanta.

COMPILED BY JOSHUA H. SHIELDS

MICHELLE LIPKOWITZ

RON MCCRAY

Michelle N. Lipkowitz has joined Saul Ewing LLP’s Baltimore office as a partner in the litigation department.

She will represent clients in the financial, retail, and telecommunications industries in litigation involving contractual disputes, shareholder disputes, consumer class actions, mortgage fraud, lender liability, and construction and products liability.

In addition, she is adept at handling bankruptcy issues, check fraud, and claims arising under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Equal Credit Opportunity Act, as well as state and federal corporate, securities, commercial, and consumer laws. Lipkowitz received her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, and her bachelor’s degree, cum laude, from Harvard University.

President Obama appointed Ron McCray to serve as a member of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. A private investor and corporate director, McCray also serves on the board of directors of A. H. Belo, the board of trustees for Cornell University, and is a member of the visiting committee of the Harvard Law School as well as the executive board of SMU Dedman School of Law. Previously, he served as a director of Knight Ridder, Inc., from 20032006. He worked for Nike, Inc., as chief administrative officer from 2007-2009.

He graduated from Cornell University in 1979, and earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1983, where he served as the editor and business manager of the Harvard Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Law Review.

Partner Saul Ewing LLP

Member Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board

Please send your submissions to our Movers & Shakers feature to joshshields@mcca.com Please include a high-resolution photo (300 dpi or greater), along with an electronic version of the applicable announcement.

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

MCCA.COM

12th

Thank you to our generous sponsors

Annual

for their support of MCCA’s mission and the 12th Annual Creating Pathways to Diversity® Conference.

PPREMIER SPONSOR :

PATHWAY SPONSORS :

®

MCCA STRATEGIC SPONSORS

+62

he Scale MCCA WEIGHS IN ON THE NEWS

NPR Programming Is Overwhelmingly Aimed at Whites Joel Dreyfuss, The Root’s managing editor and founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, wrote an open letter to Gary Knell, the new chief of National Public Radio, expressing his frustration at the lack of diversity at NPR. The departure of Juan Williams, NPR’s sole black news analyst, provided “a sad commentary on the monochromatic vision of many liberal institutions.” Dreyfuss’s critique is emblematic of the diversity v. inclusion debate. It is one thing to have a minority commentator and another to have minorities making programming decisions. If NPR really wants Congress to continue its funding, the best solution is to target minorities and build support across all voting blocs. -1

NFL Now Protects Sexual Orientation 50

The NFL quietly banned discrimination based on “sexual orientation” in its 2011 collective bargaining agreement that was ratified earlier this summer, making the 2011 NFL season a reality. “Sexual orientation” was not in the 2006 collective bargaining agreement, which read there would be no discrimination based on “race, religion, national origin, or activity or lack of activity on behalf of the National Football League Players Association.” There are no openly gay professional sports players in football, basketball, baseball, or hockey, but three NFL players have came out since leaving the sport. It is unclear who pushed for the inclusion of the language but it is noteworthy that Ted Olson represented the players in the discussions, and David Boies the NFL. Both attorneys worked to overturn California’s ban on marriage equality. +2

Arts Funding Needs to Be More Diverse Billions of dollars in arts funding is serving a mostly wealthy, white audience that is decreasing in size while only a small percentage goes to poorer communities that are more diverse. The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, shows foundation giving has fallen out of balance with the nation’s increasingly diverse demographics. Recent survey data show more people are interested in community-based arts groups than expensive, more traditional institutions like major museums, operas, and symphonies. Current arts funding patterns have roots that date back to the 19th century, when cultural philanthropists focused on building institutions to preserve Western European high arts to validate America’s position as a world power and serve an elite audience. As the United States grows more diverse, and artists create new aesthetics outside the European tradition, philanthropy should reflect those changes. -1 THIS ISSUE’S READING: +3

DIVERSITY & THE BAR®

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011

Occupy Protests Seek Diversity As Movement Expands As the Occupy movement spreads across national boundaries, uniting people from all different classes, ages, and genders, one stubborn hurdle remains: the lack of racial inclusion. The comparisons to the Tea Party are evident when presented side-by-side pictures. Organizers of the Occupy movement contend that they building bridges to minority communities. The absence of diversity is notable because the economy, foreclosures, and unemployment are disproportionately affecting people of color. -1

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repealed For the first time in the United States, troops can publicly reveal they’re gay without fear of official retribution.

Troops who were discharged under the controversial ban are being encouraged by the Defense Department to reenlist.

The Defense Department also stated it will have no tolerance for anti-gay behavior. The Army’s statement is typical in its brevity and directness: “The law is repealed.” Others had a more jovial tone to their announcements.

A new publication called OutServe Magazine focuses on the stories of gay and lesbian service members. It will be available for free at about a dozen Army and Air Force bases. +4

Help MCCA weigh the news!

Send diversity related news articles to joshshields@mcca.com.

LAST ISSUE: 59

MCCA.COM

Congratulates its

2011 Legal SuperConference Award Recipients Marci Rose Levine, SNR Denton Excellent Performance and Commitment to Work-Life Balance Jesse H. Ruiz, Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP Outstanding Client and Community Service and Dedication to Diversity in the Legal Profession Gaffney Lewis & Edwards, LLC Dedication and Commitment to Diversity in the Legal Profession Littler Mendelson, P.C. Innovation in Promoting Work-Life Balance Quintairos, Prieto, Wood & Boyer, P.A. Dedication and Commitment to Diversity in the Legal Profession

September 2011 Bentonville, Arkansas

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