Founding Partner Stephanie Scharf was a panelist at the Women, Influence and Power in the Law conference October 10-12, 2017 in Washington, D.C. The conference, sponsored by InsideCounsel and Corporate Counsel magazines is a global forum facilitating women-to-women exchange on leadership and legal issues. Ms. Scharf’s co-panelists included Tracy O’Flaherty, Vice President & Associate General Counsel for Litigation at Baxter International, Jennifer Awrey, Senior Counsel for Employment Law at Amgen and Christina Halliday, Senior Counsel at Blue Apron.
The panel discussion focused on creating a culture of inclusion at organizations and the critical need to build a workforce that embraces differences as something to be valued and desired. Ideas for changing an organization’s culture so that it embraces diversity were discussed including identifying recruitment and retention strategies, shifting an organization’s internal culture, best practices for socializing the importance of tracking diversity metrics and measuring inclusion.
Ms. Scharf, a national authority on issues related to women’s advancement in the law, speaks and writes frequently on the issues of diversity and inclusion. She is the Chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession where she oversees national programs for the advancement of women lawyers, including the new Presidential Initiative, Achieving Long-Term Careers for Women in the Law. She is the co-author of First Chairs at Trial: More Women Need Seats at the Table. She is the former President of the National Association of Women Lawyers and is a member of the Board of Direct Women whose mission is to place women lawyers on public boards.
