Keynote Speaker: Hon. Janet Bond Arterton
Keynote Speaker: Hon. Janet Bond Arterton
United States District Judge
District of Connecticut
Judge Arterton was nominated by President Bill Clinton on January 23, 1995, confirmed by the United States Senate on March 24, 1995 and entered duty on May 15, 1995.
In 1996, she received the Connecticut Women's Education and Legal Fund's Maria Miller Stewart Recognition Award. In 2000 she received Community Mediation Inc.'s Robert C. Zampano Award for Excellence in Mediation. In 2005 she received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Northeastern University School of Law.
Judge Arterton has been a member since October 2002 of the International Judicial Relations Committee of the U.S. Judicial Conference. She regularly travels internationally to speak on judicial independence, court administration and case management, trial practice and procedures, and court-annexed ADR. She has developed judicial observation or training programs for judges in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe.
She was previously a principal in the New Haven, Connecticut law firm formerly known as Garrison & Arterton where she practiced from 1978 until her appointment. There, her legal career focused on labor, employment discrimination and employee rights litigation in federal and state courts. She was chairperson of the Connecticut Bar Association's Federal Practice Section, President of the New Haven Inn of Court, and a member of the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association Board of Governors, and served on the Federal Civil Justice Reform Act Advisory Committee, United States Magistrate Judge Selection Committee, State Court Rules Advisory Committee, and United States District Court Local Rules Advisory Committee. She was a Connecticut Superior Court Attorney Trial Referee and Special Master in Federal District Court. She was selected by peer review for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America.
Judge Arterton has authored or contributed to books, articles and periodicals, including Mazadoorian, H. Mediation Practice Book: Critical Tools, Techniques and Forms, Law First Publ. 2002; Spriggs, K., Representing Plaintiffs in Title VII Actions, John Wiley & Sons, 1994, Phelan and Arterton, Disability Discrimination in the Workplace, (Clark Boardman Callaghan 1992), "Employment Discrimination Claims in State Court: A Laboratory For Experimentation", New York Law Review, 1984/85; and ALI-ABA, ATLA and other bar publications. She also taught trial practice at the Yale Law School.
She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College (Political Science 1966) and Northeastern University School of Law (1977). She clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Herbert J. Stern (Newark, NJ) 1977-1978. She is married to F. Christopher Arterton, Dean of the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University. The Artertons have two daughters, one of whom is a tax attorney and the other is in law school.
Asli Bali is currently serving as the Irving S. Ribicoff Fellow at the Yale Law School while on leave from her legal practice at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. Ms. Bali has worked in the New York and Paris offices of Cleary, where her practice in the Latin America practice group has encompassed the representation of sovereigns in debt restructuring and project financing as well as other cross-border transactions. During her tenure at Cleary, she also served as co-director of the firm's Immigration and Political Asylum pro bono practice and as a member of the firm's Diversity Committee. Prior to joining Cleary, Ms. Bali acted as a Researcher at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva and as a Consultant in the legal department of the Middle East and North Africa Division of the World Bank. Ms. Bali is currently a national board member of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and the president of ADC's New York Chapter. She is spending her year at Yale to complete research and writing on the politics of enforcement in international law towards completion of her PhD in the Department of Politics at Princeton. Ms. Bali graduated, summa cum laude, from Williams College and received her J.D. from the Yale Law School concurrently with an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School. She held the Herschel Smith Scholarship at Cambridge University where she earned an M.Phil in Social and Political Thought. Ms. Bali is admitted to practice in New York.
Ann Bartow is an associate professor of law at the University of
South Carolina School of Law. She is a graduate of Cornell
University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She began her
teaching career as an Honorable Abraham L. Freedman Teaching Fellow at
Temple University School of Law, where she also received an LL.M. in
Legal Education. Prior to joining the University of South Carolina School
of Law in the Fall of 2000, she held visiting appointments at the
University of Dayton School of Law and the University of Idaho College of
Law.
Professor Bartow currently teaches Intellectual Property Survey Law,
Copyright Law, Trademarks and Unfair Competition Law, Cyberspace Law, and
Constitutional Law. She has also taught Patent Law and Property, and in
practice specialized in patent litigation. Her scholarship primarily
focuses on the intersection between intellectual property laws and public
policy concerns, and she has published articles such as Our Data,
Ourselves: Privacy, Propertization, and Gender; Some Dumb Girl
Syndrome: Challenging and Subverting Destructive Stereotypes of Female
Attorneys; Women in the Web of Secondary Copyright Liability and Internet
Filtering; and The Feminist Pervasion: How Gender-Based
Scholarship Informs Law and Law Teaching. She also administers
the Feminist Law Professors blog .
Ms. Brown
is a member of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP's Labor & Employment
Group. Throughout her career of nearly 30 years, she has held a number of
positions, including in-house counsel to a number of Fortune 500 companies and
as a Municipal Court Judge. For the past 20 years, Ms. Brown has engaged in the
private practice of law, focusing on all facets of labor and employment and
commercial litigation. She has successfully defended employers in cases
involving discrimination on the basis of age, sex, marital status, sexual
harassment, disability, race and national origin. Ms. Brown has received
successful results in class action employment discrimination cases based upon
race. She is also experienced in all aspects of workplace training and
collective bargaining.
Ms. Brown litigates in both federal and state courts, as well as arbitration forums for both unionized and non-union employees. She is a certified mediator for the United States District Court, District of New Jersey. Ms. Brown is a frequent lecturer on labor and employment issues and issues related to electronic discovery and serves on the Executive Committee of the Labor and Employment Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association. She is also a former Master of the C. Willard Heckel Inn of Court. Additionally, Ms. Brown has been recognized by the New Jersey Law Journal as one of the prominent women and minority attorneys in the State of New Jersey.
Ms. Brown is President of the YWCA of Central New Jersey, which in the Fall of 2005, will open a twenty-four hour-a-day, seven day-a-week day care center. The YWCA will also complete the restoration of its historical theater in the Spring of 2006. One of Paulette's proudest moments was when she led a delegation to monitor the first free and democratic elections in South Africa.
As a result of her charitable efforts and work with various bar associations, Ms. Brown has received numerous awards, including the Medal of Honor Award from the New Jersey Bar Foundation and the Equal Justice Award from the National Bar Association. She has also received the Professional Lawyer of the Year Award from the New Jersey Commission on Professionalism.
Ms. Brown is a current member of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. She was a member of the American Bar Association Governance Commission, 2003-2005; Member and Division Director, Section of Litigation, 1993-2000; Member, House of Delegates, 1997-2000; Chair, Council on Racial and Ethnic Justice, 1993-1999; Committee Member, Unmet Legal Needs of Children,1993-1995. She is past president of the National Bar Association and the Association of Black Women Lawyers of New Jersey.
Luisa Cabal is the Director of the International Legal Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Since joining the Center in 1998, Ms. Cabal has pioneered the Center's
first international litigation efforts, positioning reproductive rights
issues on the agenda of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights.
She also designed and co-coordinated the first comparative regional
study in Latin America on the jurisprudence of the region's highest
level courts. She developed lawyer training projects, whose graduates
continue to work on reproductive rights in countries such as México,
Perú and Colombia. And she has worked on the creation of a network of
Latin American law professors who are integrating reproductive rights
into law school curricula in the region. Prior to joining the Center,
Ms. Cabal was a foreign associate in the Latin American Practice Group
at Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher, LLP. In addition, she served as a
Consultant to the United Nations Development Program in Colombia, and
as an Executive Assistant to the Director of the National
Rehabilitation Plan, an initiative of the Presidency of Colombia. Ms.
Cabal graduated with honors from the Universidad de los Andes; she
received her Master of Laws from the Columbia University School of Law.
Deborah J. Cantrell is a lecturer in law and the Director of the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School. She teaches in the areas of legal ethics, comparative ethics, and public interest law. In addition to her doctrinal work, Deborah co-supervises the Lawyering Ethics Clinic, in which students assist in the prosecution of ethical grievances filed against attorneys. She joined Yale Law School from the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Los Angeles, where she was its executive director. Prior to working at the Western Center, she ran a statewide legal services program for the elderly in New Mexico. Ms. Cantrell is a graduate of the University of Southern California Law School (Order of the Coif) and holds a masters degree in developmental psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She clerked for the Honorable Ferdinand F. Fernandez on the Ninth Circuit and was in private practice in Los Angeles. She serves on the executive committee of the New Haven Bar Association and on the board of directors of the ACLU of Connecticut.
Holly English is of
counsel to Post, Polak, Goodsell, MacNeill & Strauchler, P.A., in Roseland, New Jersey, with a
concentration in labor and employment law. She
advises management on issues such as hiring, wage and hour, leave of absence,
severance and employment contracts, termination, and provides training on
issues such as harassment. Additionally
she advises management on all phases of labor law, including collective
bargaining negotiations, union avoidance, representation before the NLRB,
election campaigns and decertification proceedings. She is the author of Gender on Trial:
Sexual Stereotypes and Work/Life Balance in the Legal Workplace, published
in 2003 by Law Journal Press, a division of American Lawyer Media.
As a consultant, Ms. English worked in the U.S. and internationally with a wide variety of organizations, helping to align core values for maximum performance. She presents frequently for law firms and for bar associations on topics such as today’s subtle gender issues and the subtle solutions necessary to solve them; getting comfortable with exercising authority; work/life balance; diversity; effective supervision; and other presentations related to gender issues and management.
Ms. English is admitted to the Massachusetts and New Jersey state and federal bars. She is President-Elect of the Board of the National Association of Women Lawyers, the oldest organization dedicated to women lawyers in the country, and the editor of the National Association of Women Lawyers Journal.
Andrea Friedman is a human rights lawyer with a focus on international law and women's rights. As Counsel at the Global Justice Center, Ms. Friedman works with women leaders in transitional democracies to enforce the international legal guarantees for women's political and legal rights. Her current work at the GJC is focused primarily on advocating for women's inclusion in the political process and constitution drafting within the exiled community of Burma, as well as advancing women's rights through the judiciary and legal reform in Iraq. Her article, "Using the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women to Advocate for the Political Rights of Women in a Democratic Burma", was published in the Summer 2005 issue in the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender. She has also been invited to speak as an expert on legal and judicial reform.
Previously, Ms. Friedman was the Program Manager of the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP) at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where she worked on domestic and international women's rights, including coordinating research and events on women in international development, women's health, combating sex trafficking and women's political participation. While at WAPPP, she helped to coordinate the first Women Waging Peace Colloquium, which brought together over 100 women from areas of conflict, and provided them with skills and advocacy training as well a forum for the exchange of ideas and strategies.
Ms. Friedman holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. summa cum laude in Political Science from Tufts University. She was the founder and first president of Harvard Law Students for Choice at Harvard, served as President of the Tufts Community Union Senate, and was chosen to give the Wendell Phillips Commencement Address at Tufts. She currently resides in New York City.
Nancy Gertner is a judge for the U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts. She was nominated by President Clinton in 1993. Judge Gertner is currently a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and an instructor at Boston University and Boston College Law School. Her areas of expertise include constitutional law, criminal law, and women’s rights. Judge Gertner received her B.A. from Barnard College and her J.D. and M.A. from Yale.
Jeneba
Jalloh Ghatt has nearly 15 years of experience working in the communications
and mass media law fields, including years working as a journalist for national
and local publications. Currently, she is the principal of the Ghatt Law Group
LLC, the nation’s first communications law practice owned by women and
minorities.
Immediately before opening her own practice, Ms. Ghatt was the Assistant General Counsel to the District of Columbia Office of Cable Television and Telecommunications. Before working for the District, Ms. Ghatt was an associate in the communications practice at Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Ms. Ghatt’s pro bono work won for the firm an Outstanding Achievement award from the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law.
Ms. Ghatt is an active member of the Board of Directors for the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council; and is a founding board member of Tamika & Friends Inc, a cervical cancer awareness group; the Sierra Leone Fund Inc, and the Multicultural Broadband Trade Association. She recently served as co-chair of and is an active member of the Diversity Committee of the Federal Communications Bar Association and mentors at least a dozen new attorneys and law students.
Ms.
Ghatt is a regular Hearst Visiting Professional lecturer at Penn State
University, an adjunct media law professor at the University of Maryland, and
has taught legal research and writing to Georgetown University Law Center
clinical students. She regularly participates in strategy meetings, think tank consortiums
and best minds groups.
Alais L. M. Griffin is an associate at Goldberg Kohn in Chicago, Illinois. Her experience in commercial litigation includes representing a variety of clients in securities fraud, bankruptcy, property tax appeals, antitrust, product liability, and white collar criminal matters. Ms. Griffin has also been actively involved in pro bono work. She assisted with a state habeas corpus evidentiary hearing in a Georgia death penalty case and interviewed detainees in New Jersey state jails for a study on the post‐September 11 federal detention policy. Ms. Griffin currently serves on the Steering Committee of the ACLU Young Advocates, on the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Illinois, and on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Training Center, an organization working to involve disadvantaged Chicago youth in the sport of rowing.
Ms. Griffin served as executive editor of the Northwestern University Law Review and was a member of the Order of the Coif. At Harvard University, she was awarded the John Harvard Scholarship for academic achievement of highest distinction. Ms. Griffin is a former law clerk to the Honorable Harry D. Leinenweber, United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. She received her J.D., cum laude, from Northwestern University in 2001 and her B.A., cum laude, from Harvard University in 1994. Ms. Griffin is admitted to practice in Illinois and New York.
Deborah Epstein Henry is the Founder and President of Flex-Time Lawyers LLC, a consulting firm advising legal employers on work/life issues and the retention and promotion of women attorneys. Flex-Time Lawyers LLC is also a networking and support organization with a mailing list of over 2,000 lawyers and chapters in New York and Philadelphia. In a partnership with the NYC Bar, Flex-Time Lawyers LLC released in September 2006 "The Cheat Sheet," the ultimate guide to selecting, creating and ensuring a woman-friendly employer. Flex-Time Lawyers LLC has also teamed up with Working Mother magazine and is surveying the 2007 Best Law Firms for Women. Debbie has experience counseling law firms, corporations and thousands of individual lawyers; speaking nationally in public forums; and, running over 100 Flex-Time Lawyers LLC meetings on work/life and women's issues. She has garnered extensive press coverage for her work from The New York Times, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, National Public Radio, The National Law Journal, New York Law Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among numerous other publications. Debbie is a work/life columnist for Diversity & the Bar magazine of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. She is an Advisor to the "Hidden Brain Drain" Task Force for the Center for Work-Life Policy which focuses on the retention and promotion of women and people of color. Debbie is a consultant to the New York State Bar Association's Special Committees on Balanced Lives in the Law and Lawyers in Transition. She was named a 2004 Pennsylvania Lawyer on the Fast Track by American Lawyer Media. Debbie received her B.A. in Psychology from Yale University and her J.D. Cum Laude from Brooklyn Law School. Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable Jacob Mishler in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Debbie is trained as a commercial litigator and Of Counsel to the Philadelphia-based law firm of Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP. She is married and the mother of three boys, ages 11, 9 and 5. For more information, please visit www.flextimelawyers.com.
Tracy Richelle High joined the litigation department at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in 1999 after graduating from Yale University (B.A. 1996) and Harvard Law School (J.D. 1999). She is a member of the Criminal Defense and Investigations Group. Ms. High specializes in representing financial institutions and other corporations in regulatory enforcement proceedings, grand jury investigations and corporate internal investigations. Ms. High also represents those institutions in civil litigation emanating from those matters, including shareholder derivative and class action suits. Ms. High has represented clients responding to regulatory requests and inquiries initiated by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission, National Association of Securities Dealers, Internal Revenue Service, New York State Attorney General’s Office, New York Stock Exchange and independent examiners appointed by court order. Ms. High recently represented the Audit Committee of one of the world’s largest software makers during its independent investigation into the company’s past accounting practices in connection with joint investigations into those matters by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the SEC. At the conclusion of the investigation, the company was able to avoid criminal prosecution, and instead reached agreements with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the SEC by entering into a deferred prosecution agreement and consenting to the filing by the SEC of a final consent judgment in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of
New York. Ms. High currently represents the company in its ongoing cooperation with
these agencies. Ms. High serves on the Firm’s Diversity and Diversity Recruiting Committees. She is a co-chair of the Federal Bar Council’s Membership Committee. Ms. High is admitted to the bar of New York, the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Catherine Kirkman
Catherine Kirkman is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California. Her practice focuses on intellectual property, licensing, and commercial transactions, with specialized expertise in media and technology law, including content rights and open source software. Prior to joining the firm, she practiced at the entertainment law firm Loeb & Loeb in Los Angeles, California, where she specialized in motion picture, television, and music deals.
She publishes the Silicon Valley Media Law blog, and for many years she published one of the first listservs on the interactive media industry, the "Interactive Media Weekly Recap." She also has been a contributing editor to Miller Freeman's Web Techniques magazine and to the Computer Game Developers Association's CGDA Report. She has taught at Stanford Law School's Law, Science & Technology Program and has spoken at forums such as Digital Hollywood and MacWorld. She is also one of the hosts of This Week in Law, a podcast where a panel of hosts discuss breaking issues in technology law including patents, copyrights, and more.
Douglas Kysar is Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School. Professor Kysar graduated magna cum laude in 1998 from Harvard Law School, where he received the Sears Prize and was a member of the Board of Student Advisors. Following law school, Professor Kysar clerked for the Hon. William G. Young, Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, and practiced with Foley, Hoag, & Eliot in Boston before joining the faculty at Cornell in 2001. Professor Kysar's works have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Cornell Law Review, the Texas Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, Ecology Law Quarterly, and the Boston College Law Review. Two of Professor Kysar's articles have been selected for presentation in the environmental law category at the Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum. He has been a visiting associate professor at Harvard Law School, a visiting professor at Yale Law School, and a visiting scholar at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain.
Katherine McDaniel graduated
from the Yale Law School in May 2006. She also holds degrees from the
University of Washington in Philosophy and Comparative Intellectual
History and has a minor in Mathematics. While at Yale she served as
an Executive Editor on the Yale Journal of Law and Technology,
and contributed to Lawmeme, Yale’s student blog. Currently,
McDaniel is a Knight Fellow with the Information Society Project at
the Yale Law School where she studies intellectual property in international
law; the tensions between liberalizing IP law and protecting tradition
knowledge; and the digital production, transformation, and distribution
of cultural information goods such as music, film, and digital art.
She recently presented her research in the area of distance education
and international copyright at two international conferences in Spain
and Malaysia. McDaniel is also the author of KatSCAN: Yet Another
IP and Tech Blog and the developer and administrator of The Clerkship
Notification Blog.
Louise Melling is the Director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. In that capacity, she oversees nationwide litigation and communications programs, as well as legislative advocacy efforts in Congress and the state legislatures. Ms. Melling has appeared in federal and state courts around the country to challenge laws that restrict reproductive rights. She received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1987 and her B.A. from Oberlin College in 1982. Following law school, Ms. Melling served as a law clerk for Judge Morris E. Lasker of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Prior to joining the ACLU in 1992, she worked as an associate at the law firm of Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman. She is the co-author, together with Catherine Weiss, of “The Legal Education of Twenty Women,” 40 Stan. L. Rev. 1299 (1988).
Linda Meyer is a professor of law at Quinnipiac University School of Law. She received her B.A. from the University of Kansas, her J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law and a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from UC Berkeley. Before teaching at Quinnipiac, Professor Meyer taught at Vanderbilt law school for two years. She also clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge William A. Norris at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Bernadette Meyler is Assistant Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School. Following her graduation from Stanford Law School, Professor Meyler clerked for the Hon. Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and was admitted to the New York Bar. She also received a Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies and a Chancellor's Fellowship to study literature at the University of California , Irvine. Professor Meyler's research focuses primarily on the intersections between both domestic and comparative constitutional law and the common law, as well as law and literature, and the philosophy of law. Her publications include pieces derived from her dissertation on "Theaters of Pardoning: Sovereignty and Judgment from Shakespeare to Kant", and work on territoriality and citizenship. Professor Meyler also reads Latin and Greek, speaks French, and continues to play the violin.
A member of the UNM law school faculty since 1992, Professor Montoya teaches torts and employment law courses and in her seminars, she examines issues of race, ethnicity, gender and language. She is licensed to practice law in Massachusetts, New York, and New Mexico. Her legal specialty is affirmative action, having been in charge of the programs to increase racial, ethnic and gender inclusion at Potsdam College of the State University of New York and the University of New Mexico. She has worked extensively with affirmative action plans in business and academic settings and has written and implemented student admissions policies at the undergraduate and professional school level. She has been a member of the UNM School of Medicine’s admission committee for its Combined BA/MD Degree program. From 2003-2005, she served as interim director of UNM’s Southwest Hispanic Research Institute where.
Her article Mascaras, Trenzas y Greñas: Un/Masking the Self While Un/Braiding Latina Stories and Legal Discourse uses personal stories to critique coercive forms of cultural assimilation and is used in many courses throughout the U.S. Her articles appear in a number of law reviews, anthologies and casebooks. Professor Montoya is also a regular commentator on The Line, a weekly PBS show that analyzes current events in New Mexico.
She has been
recognized by her peers and by the Hispano community for her work.
She is the recipient of the prestigious Clyde Ferguson Award, given
annually by law professors of color for accomplishments in scholarship,
teaching and service. In 2004 she was given the Walk the Talk
award by the NM Hispano RoundTable, a coalition of some 60 Hispano/Latino
organizations. In 2005 she was named by Hispanic Business Magazine
to its list of Elite Latinas. She recently received the Kate Stoneman
Award from Albany Law School for expanding opportunities for women.
Professor Montoya received her A.B. at San Diego State University and her J.D. from Harvard Law school.
Lynn
K. Neuner is a member of Simpson Thacher’s Litigation Department.
Her trial and litigation experience covers several areas such as insurance
coverage, securities, Lanham Act and general corporate matters.
She has presented numerous oral arguments in federal, state and bankruptcy
court, as well as participating in two cases argued before the United
States Supreme Court. She tried a centi-million dollar insurance
coverage action on behalf of Travelers Casualty and Surety Company in
August 2005 and a multi-million dollar personal injury case on behalf
of New York City in January 2003.
Ms. Neuner is a regular speaker on insurance coverage issues and is on the Board of Editors of and a contributing author to the Insurance Coverage News Bulletin. Ms. Neuner is Co-Chair of the firm’s Recruiting Committee and is a member of the Litigation Training Committee and Diversity Committee.
Ms. Neuner received her J.D. in 1992 from Yale Law School, where she is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Yale Law School Alumni Fund. She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Williams College in 1989. Ms. Neuner is a member of the Departmental Disciplinary Committee for the First Judicial Department.
Dr. Barbara A. Perry is the Carter Glass Professor of Government and founding executive director of the Center for Civic Renewal and the Virginia Law-Related Education Center at Sweet Briar College. In 1994-95 she served as the judicial fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where she received the Tom C. Clark Award for the outstanding fellow. For 2006-07 she is serving as a senior fellow at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center.
In addition to publishing nearly thirty articles, she has authored eight books, including A “Representative” Supreme Court? The Impact of Race, Religion, and Gender on Appointments (Greenwood 1991). Her most recent book, The Michigan Affirmative Action Cases: Gratz, Grutter, and the Triumph of Sandra Day O’Connor, will be published by the University Press of Kansas in 2007. Professor Perry is a frequent media commentator for C-SPAN, National Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio, the New York Times, scores of radio stations, and the print media. She earned a B.A. in political science, with highest honors, from the University of Louisville; an M.A. in politics, philosophy, and economics from the University of Oxford; and a Ph.D. in government from the University of Virginia.
Judith Resnik is Arthur Liman Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she teaches courses on and writes about Federal Courts, Procedure, and equality, citizenship, gender and sovereignty. She is the founding director of Yale's Arthur Liman Public Interest Program and Fund, which provides public interest fellowships for Yale Law School graduates and summer fellowships for students at Barnard, Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Spelman, and Yale. Professor Resnik is currently a Managerial Trustee of the International Association of Women Judges. She has chaired the Sections on Procedure, on Federal Courts, and on Women in Legal Education of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS), and has served as the liaison from the AALS to the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. Her recent articles include Law's Migration: American Exceptionalism, Silent Dialogues, and Federalism's Multiple Ports of Entry, Yale Law Journal (2006), Whither and Whether Adjudication?, Boston University Law Rev. (2006), and A Continuous Body: Ongoing Conversations About Women and Legal Education, J. Legal Education (2003). She was also a co-author of the Ninth Circuit Gender Bias Task Force (see The Effects of Gender, 67 So. Calif. L. Rev. (1993)), which was the first to address the question of gender bias in the federal court system. Professor Resnik was a recipient of the Margaret Brent Award from the ABA Commission on Women, argued the case on behalf of women’s admission to the Rotary Club in the U.S. Supreme Court, and currently serves as a Co-chair of the Women's Faculty Forum of Yale University.
Deborah Rhode is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford University and one of the nation’s leading scholars in the fields of
legal ethics and professional responsibility. A prolific author of
articles and books on the regulation and reform of the legal
profession, she has headed Stanford Law School’s Keck Center on Legal
Ethics and the Legal Profession, and is the founding director of
Stanford University’s Center on Ethics. Professor Rhode is also a
renowned scholar on the legal status of women and feminist approaches
to jurisprudence, and has served as chair of the American Bar
Association Commission on Women and the Profession, and director of
Stanford University’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. A
former president of the Association of American Law Schools, Professor
Rhode is also a regular columnist for the National Law Journal. Before
joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1979, she was a law clerk to
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and Judge Murray Gurfein
of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Lauren Stiller Rikleen is a senior partner in the Real Estate and
Environmental Law Group of Bowditch & Dewey. She is the author of
Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law, a book about the institutional impediments to the retention and advancement of women in the legal profession.
Attorney Rikleen is listed in The Best Lawyers in America and Chambers USA America’s Leading Business Lawyers – two publications which recognize attorneys who are chosen for excellence in their field. She was also recognized by the Massachusetts Super Lawyers publication. Lauren received the Boston College Law School Alumni Award for Excellence in Law in 2004. In the fall of 2005, the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts awarded Lauren the Lelia J. Robinson Award, so named in honor of the first practicing woman attorney in the Commonwealth.
In August 2005, Lauren was appointed by the President of the American Bar Association to the twelve-member ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. As the former President of the Boston Bar Association (1998-1999), Lauren created the Task-Force on Professional Challenges and Family Needs, which produced a report entitled: “Facing the Grail – Confronting the Costs of Work/Family Imbalance” (July, 1999). She continues her advocacy of these issues through her involvement with the Massachusetts Equality Commission and the related work of the MIT Workplace Center.
Pamela J.
Roberts, Chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession and a partner
of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP, practices in
In 1997, Ms. Roberts became a certified mediator, a distinction awarded by
the Supreme Court of South Carolina. She completed the Program of Instruction
for Lawyers at
Ms. Roberts has long held prominent leadership positions within the American Bar Association where she currently is the chair of the Commission on Women in the Profession. Ms. Roberts served on the Board of Govenors and is a former member of the Commission on Opportunities for Minorities in the Profession (now the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession). She also served as Chair of the Young Lawyers Division and has served on the association's Nominating Committee and the Special Committee on Governance.
Ms. Roberts is a delegate to the South Carolina Bar's House of Delegates and served on its Board of Governors from 2000-04. She is a member of the South Carolina Women Lawyers Association, having served as president from 1999-2001, and on its board of directors from 1993-2002. She is a permanent member of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the South Carolina Bar Foundation.
Ms. Roberts' recent presentations include the 3rd World Women Lawyers Conference, International Bar Association, 2006; "Leveling the Playing Field - What Women in Finance Can Learn from Doctors and Lawyers," Chartered Financial Associates Society of Chicago, 2006; diversity issues unique to women, Hinds County (Mississippi) Bar Association, 2006; mediation instruction to the U.S. Department of Justice Advocacy Center; "The Future of Leadership in a Competitive Environment," American Bar Association Antitrust Section Meeting, 2002; "Public Speaking: The Basics and Beyond," Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, 2001; and "Discovery Disputes," South Carolina Bankruptcy Law Association Convention, 2001. Ms. Roberts is the author of "The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Reform or Fiction," South Carolina Lawyer, January/February 1998, and "The Court's Inherent Power to Dismiss a Case An Emerging Gatekeeper to the Federal Courts?" The Defense Line, October 1992.
Vicki Schultz is the Ford Foundation Professor of Law at Yale Law
School. Her subject areas are employment discrimination law, civil
procedure, feminism and law, and gender and work. Her publications
include The Need for a Reduced Workweek in the United States and The Sanitized Workplace. Professor Schultz has a B.A. from the University of Texas and a J.D. from Harvard.
Victoria Shin graduated magna cum laude from Smith College
in 1995 with Highest Honors in Philosophy. After a brief foray into graduate studies in analytical philosophy at New York University,
she succumbed to the allure of law at Columbia Law School, from which she
graduated in 2003 as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Following law school, Victoria clerked for the Honorable Mark R.
Kravitz in the District of Connecticut. In 2005, she joined the United States Attorney’s Office in the District
of Connecticut as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Civil
Division. As an AUSA, her main focus at
present is on cases brought under the Administrative Procedures Act, as well as
immigration matters both before the district court and the Second Circuit Court
of Appeals.
Beyond the legal arena, Victoria devotes much of her time to running (to date, she is a veteran of five marathons), and volunteering at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
As a Senior Director in Catalyst's Advisory Services group, Brande Stellings leads Catalyst's practice to advance women and promote inclusion within the legal profession. Ms. Stellings practiced law for more than 12 years both within a large corporate law firm and as in-house corporate legal counsel. At NBC Universal Inc., where she served as Vice President, Litigation, Ms. Stellings was co-leader of the award-winning New York/New Jersey chapter of the GE Women's Network and a member of NBC Universal's Affinity Council. Prior to NBC, she worked at Cravath, Swaine & Moore as a litigation associate. Ms. Stellings is currently a member of the New York City Bar Association's Women in the Profession Committee and the Committee to Enhance Diversity in the Profession. She previously served on the Civil Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association. Ms. Stellings is an expert on Catalyst research relating to the legal profession, issues facing law firms, and innovative, cutting-edge solutions to retaining and advancing women within the legal profession. She also specializes in the formation and operation of employee networks. Ms. Stellings received her J.D. cum laude from Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude from Yale College.
Robert R.M. Verchick holds the Gauthier-St. Martin Chair
in Environmental Law at Loyola University New Orleans. In the past,
he's served as a professor of law at the University of Missouri at
Kansas City, and has visited at Lewis & Clark, Seattle University,
Aarhus University in Denmark, and Beijing University. He is a graduate
of Stanford University and of Harvard Law School. Professor Verchick
is also a Research Scholar with the Center for Progressive Reform in
Washington, D.C. (www.progressivereform.org),
and serves on that organization's board. Professor Verchick's research
involves environmental law and environmental justice, particularly as
it applies to women. His article, "In a Greener Voice: Feminist
Theory and Environmental Justice," 19 Harvard Women's Law Journal 23 (1996), is regarded as one of most influential contributions to that field. His
other work has appeared in the California Law Review, the Southern
California Law Review, and the Harvard Environmental Law Review, among
other places. His new book, Feminist Legal Theory--A Primer (NYU Press
2006) (with Nancy Levit), has just been released.
Stuart
Warner is a graduate of Amherst College and Boston
University School of Law. Following
graduation she clerked for the Honorable Boyce F. Martin, Jr. of the Sixth
Circuit Court of Appeals. She spent 1987
to 1991 in private practice, primarily in the area of health law. Since 1991 she has worked as Assistant
Counsel at Yale-New Haven Hospital, where she practices in a variety of areas
including regulatory/compliance, medical staff credentialing, graduate medical
education, mental health and probate law, as well as educating hospital staff
on general health law matters such as informed consent, advance directives and
ethical concerns.
Ms. Weaver is Chair of Wiggin and Dana's Executive Committee. She has served as a member of the firm's Executive Committee since 2002 and is a former Chair of the Health Care Department. Ms. Weaver concentrates her practice in health law, representing hospitals, provider networks, long-term care providers, nursing homes, continuing care retirement communities, assisted living facilities, home health care agencies and other health care providers on regulatory, patient care, reimbursement, compliance, HIPAA and corporate matters.
In addition to chairing the firm's Long-Term Care Practice Group, Ms. Weaver is counsel to the Connecticut Association of Not-for-profit Providers for the Aging (CANPFA) and Chair of the Legal Committee of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA).. Ms. Weaver is listed in The Best Lawyers in America in the category of best health care lawyers and is a fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation. Ms. Weaver graduated with an A.B. magna cum laude from Duke University in 1977, and received her law degree in 1986 from UCLA School of Law.
Marissa
C. Wesely is a partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP where she
has practiced law since 1980. Ms. Wesely, a member of
Simpson’s Corporate Department, specializes in domestic and international
bank finance transactions, with an emphasis on leveraged acquisition
finance. Recent transactions include: representation of CB Richard
Ellis in the financing of its acquisition of Trammell Crow; representation
of Vestar Capital Partners in the financing of its acquisition of National
Mentor; and representation of Hellman & Friedman and Texas Pacific
Group in the financing of their acquisition of LPL Financial. Ms. Wesely
currently chairs the firm’s Women’s Committee and serves on the
firm’s Personnel Committee.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Wesely designed and taught courses on international trade and financing for the former Harvard Institute of International Development in China and Indonesia. She is a regular speaker at the Practicing Law Institute, most recently at its Private Equity Acquisition Finance Summit in November 2006.
Ms. Wesely is recognized as a leading lawyer in banking and finance by Chambers & Partners and is included in the banking law section of The Best Lawyers in America. She is a member of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Women in the Profession, a participant in the DirectWomen Initiative, a project of the American Bar Association and Catalyst to improve corporate board diversity, and a member of Legal Momentum’s Board of Legal Advisors.
Ms. Wesely graduated from Williams College in 1976, magna cum laude, and received her J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1980. She is married, with a daughter at Yale College, and is an avid traveller, equestrian and gardener.
Distinguished Professor at University of California - Hastings College of Law, Joan C. Williams, expert on work/family issues, is the author of
Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It
(Oxford University Press, 2000), which won the 2000 Gustavus Myers
Outstanding Book Award. She has authored or co-authored four books and
over fifty law review articles; her work is reprinted in casebooks on
six different subjects; she has given over two hundred speeches and
presentations in North and Latin America to groups as diverse as the
National Employment Lawyers' Association, the Denver Rotary Club, the
American Philosophical Society, and the Modern Language Association,
and has lectured at virtually every leading U.S. university. Founding
Director of WorkLife Law (WLL), she is also Co-Director of the Project
on Attorney Retention. She has played a leading role in documenting
workplace bias against mothers.
Professor Williams earned her B.A. in history from Yale University, her Master's Degree in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Sarah Wilson is a Special Counsel at the law firm Covington & Burling LLP and a former judge on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Her practice focuses on complex civil litigation in federal courts. From 1998 to 2001, Ms. Wilson served in the Clinton Administration as Associate Counsel to the President and Senior Counsel for Nominations in the Office of the White House Counsel, where she worked on federal judicial selection and presidential transition issues. Ms. Wilson also served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Policy Development at the United States Department of Justice (1997-1998). Ms. Wilson first joined the Justice Department in 1991 through the Attorney General's Honors Program, following a federal judicial clerkship. As a Trial Attorney in the Civil Division, she defended the constitutionality of acts of Congress and federal programs. From 1994-1995, Ms. Wilson served as a Supreme Court Fellow at the Federal Judicial Center, where she conducted an oral history of women federal judges. Ms. Wilson received her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a Stone Scholar and a Columbia Human Rights Law Review member.
Prior to law school, Ms. Wilson was a doctoral candidate in American Studies at Yale University, where she earned her M.Phil and M.A. on a University Fellowship. She earned her B.A. with honors from Williams College, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and active in the campus women’s organization. Her publications include “Appellate Judicial Appointments During the Clinton Presidency: An Insider’s Perspective,” Journal of Appellate Practice and Process (Spring 2004).
