Diversity Speaker Series

As part of Kramer Levin’s ongoing Diversity Speaker Series, the firm hosted a number of events in conjunction with cultural heritage months.

Asian-American Pacific Heritage Month. Lucia Liu, founder and CEO of leadership podcast “Rock the Boat,” and Abigail Hing Wen, author and host of the podcast “Intel on AI,” led a virtual discussion on May 28. The two talked about the challenges Asian-American women face in the business world and the obstacles they have navigated in their own careers.

Lucia’s “Rock the Boat” podcast showcases stories of Asians who challenge the status quo, and she has interviewed prominent guests including entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and founder of Rotten Tomatoes Patrick Lee. In her podcast, “Intel on AI,” Abigail has interviewed an array of tech notables including Pieter Abbeel, a leading AI roboticist, and Sandra Rivera, executive vice president and chief people officer at Intel. Abigail is also recently published her debut novel, Loveboat, Taipei, a Barnes & Noble YA Book Club Pick.

^{Lucia Liu}

^{Abigail Hing Wen}

LGBTQ Insights. Executives from Lambda Legal shared their insights in a discussion in honor of LGBTQ+ Pride Month on June 25. Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings and Sharon M. McGowan, chief strategy officer and legal director, Eden/Rushing Chair, led the event, titled “Unfinished Business — The Ongoing and Interwoven Struggles for LGBTQ Equality and Racial Justice.”

Lambda Legal is a nonprofit and the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving and protecting civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and individuals living with HIV. Among other things, Kevin helped students create the first school-based Gay-Straight Alliance club in 1988. He also led the Arcus Foundation, the world’s largest foundation for LGBT rights organizations, for five years. Sharon served as a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project.

 
^{Kevin Jennings}

^{Sharon M. McGowan}

Hispanic Latino Heritage Month Celebration. In honor of Hispanic Latino Heritage Month, on Oct. 1, UCLA Professor of Law Laura E. Gomez shared insights from her research on the intersection of law, politics and inequality, including the implications for Latinos in the 2020 census results.

Laura has authored several books, including the recently published Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism and Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race, which is widely taught in ethnic studies and history courses. She teaches Civil Procedure and Criminal Law in the first-year UCLA School of Law curriculum, and co-founded and served as the first co-director of UCLA School of Law’s Critical Race Studies Program.

^{Laura E. Gomez}

Native American Indian Heritage Month. On Nov. 18, UCLA School of Law Professor Angela R. Riley gave a talk titled “Indigenous Peoples and Cultural Appropriation: The Rise of Black Lives Matter and the Fall of Racist Brands.” Among other issues, Riley addressed the McGirt case and the current state of indigenous communities in America.

Angela, an internationally known indigenous rights scholar, became the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma in 2003 and was elected as chief justice in 2010. She also serves as co-chair for the United Nations – Indigenous Peoples’ Partnership Policy Board, which is committed to implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

^{Angela R. Riley}

As part of our commitment to educate our lawyers and staff on the importance of the unique differences in each of us, the firm hosted the following event. 

A Conversation on Race and the American Criminal Legal System. Vincent Southerland, a board member of The Bail Project Inc., led a discussion on July 21. Southerland, who is also the inaugural executive director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at the New York University School of Law and worked for seven years at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, shared research developments and his own experiences.

The Bail Project is a nonprofit organization formed in 2018 that provides bail assistance for low-income Americans around the country and advocates to reform the cash bail system.

^{Vincent Southerland}