Welcome to the LCLD Insider, our monthly newsletter. This publication is for you, and we welcome your feedback and ideas, as well as any news you might be interested in passing along. Please share the Insider with your support staff, diversity directors, and marketing departments to keep them better informed about what LCLD is doing.
-Robert Grey, President
In This Issue:
- Gatling and Khan Share the Second Rick Palmore Award
- Mentor Registration Continues
- Fellows Explore the Future of Banking at PNC
- Nearly 200 LCLD Fellows Alumni Embrace Courageous Leadership in Chicago
- Welcome, New Members!
- In the News
Did You Know?
You can visit the LCLD home page every month to see a new Fellow Spotlight feature.
Gatling and Khan Share the Second Rick Palmore Award
By Jessica Smith, Communications & Marketing Manager, LCLD
LCLD Founding Chair Emeritus Rick Palmore (c) presents 2012 Fellow Yvette Gatling and 2011 Fellow Kamran Khan with the 2016 Rick Palmore LCLD Fellows Alumni Award. (Photo by Jay Haas)
The second annual Rick Palmore LCLD Fellows Alumni Award was presented to 2012 Fellow Yvette V. Gatling, Shareholder at Littler Mendelson, P.C., and 2011 Fellow Kamran Q. Khan, Assistant General Counsel at Altria Client Services, Inc., by the LCLD Fellows Alumni Executive Council at the Fifth Annual LCLD Fellows Alumni Conference on June 24, 2016.
The Palmore award recognizes the outstanding achievements, commitment, and leadership of LCLD Fellows Alumni who have paved the way for and assisted with the advancement of LCLD Fellows, Fellows Alumni, and other LCLD program participants.
Rick Palmore is the Founding Chair Emeritus of LCLD and it was his combination of vision and hard work that was responsible for the founding of the organization. He continues to inspire LCLD Members and other leaders within the legal profession to push the frontiers of diversity and inclusion.
Please read below to learn more about how Gatling and Khan each earned this prestigious award.
Yvette V. Gatling
As the first LCLD Fellow at Littler Mendelson, P.C., Yvette Gatling (bio here) has acted as a leader in the recruiting and retention of diverse attorneys at the firm. She has also been a key contributor to the development of the LCLD Fellows Alumni Outreach Committee, and she has supported her Fellows Alumni colleagues as well as other diverse attorneys in the Houston community. Gatling has also helped to recruit a Littler client, Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Inc., to join LCLD. Read more and view photos.
Kamran Q. Khan
Kamran Khan (bio here) has proven himself to be a champion of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and in his community. Khan has helped mentor and advance the careers of several LCLD Fellows Alumni. Additionally, he has enriched the LCLD Fellows and Fellows Alumni programs by helping to persuade law firms to participate in the Fellows Program early on, becoming involved in the strategy and planning of LCLD initiatives, and speaking at Fellows events. Read more and view photos.
Mentor Registration Continues
As a reminder, all attorneys at LCLD Member organizations are eligible to become LCLD Mentors as part of the Success in Law School Mentoring Program. In the fall, registered Mentors will be matched with diverse, first-year law students in major cities across the country.
Click here to register to become a Mentor today. We also encourage you to pass this opportunity along to your attorney colleagues. August 31 is the deadline to register; Mentors will be matched on a first-come, first-served basis.
For more information about becoming an LCLD Mentor, please review this brief FAQ page. For any other questions, please contact Nancy Richardson, LCLD Program Manager.
Fellows Explore the Future of Banking at PNC
By Caitlin Puffenberger, Communications Coordinator, LCLD
Fellows listen to William Demchak, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of PNC. (Photo by Caitlin Puffenberger)
With the strategic vision that characterizes PNC and its leadership, LCLD Member Greg Jordan and LCLD Fellows Reena Ganju and Alicia Powell spent more than 12 months developing the PNC Learning Experience. Finally, on June 7, 2016, PNC welcomed 35 Fellows to its Pittsburgh headquarters for a look at how PNC defines itself in a new era of banking.
“PNC is about banking embedded in communities – that’s a distinction from the big Wall Street banks,” said William Demchak, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, in his welcome to the Fellows. PNC’s community focus is apparent in everything from its accessible banking apps to the PNC Foundation’s $350 million early child development program. Even the PNC headquarters itself was built with the needs of the community in mind: Opened in the fall of 2015, it is designed to be the greenest office tower in the world.
“At a time when it has become clear that our people and the experience they deliver for our customers are the two greatest opportunities we have to stand out from the competition, we have to be all-in on our commitment to field the most diverse and high-performing teams,” Demchak said. “We have to be forward-thinking about our understanding of what diversity and inclusion really mean, and we have to recognize and harness the value of all of our diverse talent in order to deliver a superior banking experience to all of our diverse customers.” Read more and view photos.
The next Learning Experience will be hosted at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. by LCLD Board Member Karen Roberts, Executive Vice President and General Counsel. The event will take place today, July 14, 2016, in Bentonville, Arkansas. For more information on how you can host a Learning Experience, please contact Nichole Velasquez, LCLD Program Manager.
Nearly 200 LCLD Fellows Alumni Embrace Courageous Leadership in Chicago
By Lori Lorenzo, Program Director, LCLD
(L to R): 2012 Fellow Corey Lee and 2013 Fellows Daron Watts, Reena Bajowala, and Bonnie Lau at the Fifth Annual LCLD Fellows Alumni Conference in Chicago, June 2016. (Photo by 2012 Fellow Nabil Foster)
When Alumni Conference planning chairs Chris Mugica and Christine Marlewski settled on “Courageous Leadership” as this year's theme, they could not have known the impact those words would have on attendees.
Held in Chicago, the conference kicked off with a community service project benefitting the non-profit Albany Park Theatre Project, a multiethnic youth theater ensemble that inspires audiences to envision a more just and beautiful world. Led by Yvette Gatling, Reena Bajowala, and Jason DeJonker, the Alumni began by teaching the inner-city students, many from immigrant backgrounds, the fundamentals of networking.
In return, the students taught the Fellows about the devastation that criminalizing immigration has on families, during a brief but powerful live performance about deportation. Not a Fellow left the performance with a dry eye. Read more and view photos.
Welcome, New Members!
Dwight Bostwick, Chairman and Partner, Zuckerman Spaeder LLP. Zuckerman Spaeder is routinely recognized as one of the nation’s leading litigation boutiques—and for good reason. For 40 years, the firm has attracted extraordinarily talented and experienced attorneys who are committed to the firm’s clients and to each other. With offices in Washington, New York, Tampa, and Baltimore, our firm is involved in many of the most significant white collar and commercial litigation matters in the country.
Since the firm’s founding in 1975, we have distinguished ourselves by the quality of our work and the recognition it has received. We have thrived because of our firm’s shared values: a commitment to excellence in the service of our clients; a commitment to decency and fairness in our relationships with our adversaries; and an unqualified and overarching commitment to the full and fair administration of justice.
Marci Eisenstein, Managing Partner, Schiff Hardin LLP. Schiff Hardin’s more than 300 lawyers, working from eight offices nationwide, are passionately committed to our clients’ interests and goals. We count the firm’s diversity among its greatest assets, because we know that diverse teams deliver better results for our clients and strengthen our firm. Committed to an inclusive culture and to recruiting, hiring, developing, retaining, and promoting a diverse professional workforce, Schiff Hardin is proud to join LCLD in its mission to build a more open and diverse legal profession.
In the News
Cynthia Gibson, LCLD Member and Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Scripps Networks Interactive, discussed her nonprofit work with Modern Counsel.
Paulette Brown, President of the American Bar Association and Co-Chair of Diversity & Inclusion at Locke Lord LLP, gave the keynote address at the Big Law Business Diversity & Inclusion Conference.
Elizabeth Campbell, Chief Diversity Officer at Andrews Kurth LLP, and Christopher Pickett, 2013 Fellow and Officer & Chief Diversity Officer at Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale, P.C., were interviewed on the role of diversity and social justice in the law.
Travis Torrence, 2015 Fellow and Vice President of Legal for Jiffy Lube International, was profiled in Modern Counsel.
Various LCLD Member organizations and members of the LCLD community were also featured in the news.
Read the latest issue of the LCLD Weekly News Digest on major issues in diversity and the legal profession. If you would like to receive the news digest via email each Wednesday, please contact Caitlin Puffenberger, LCLD Communications Coordinator.
Jessica Smith, Communications & Marketing Manager, Editor
If you have any news or honors that are relevant to LCLD Members, please email Jessica Smith at jsmith@lcldnet.com.
