From #MeToo to #NowWhat: Navigating Sexual Harassment in the Legal Profession

The #MeToo movement has revealed the pervasive problem of sexual harassment in the workplace, and the legal profession has not been spared. But what will we do about it? Join HLSA-DC and a panel of experts for a discussion of the origins and causes of the #MeToo movement, the broad impact of the #MeToo movement, and the consequences the #MeToo movement for the legal profession.  Our panelists will examine the #MeToo movement from the various perspectives of women’s studies, African-American studies, LGBTQ studies, and the law, and explore various solutions to end the pervasive behaviors commonly known sexual harassment and sexual assault. 

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

6:00pm to 8:00pm

Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP

2099 Pennsylvania Ave NW #100

Washington DC, 20006

A reception will immediately follow the panel.  Please stay, mingle, and continue this important conversation.

Our panelists are:

Ally Coll-Steele.  Ally Coll Steele is the President and Cofounder of the Purple Campaign, a non-profit organization to address workplace sexual harassment. Before launching the Purple Campaign earlier this year, Steele was litigator in private practice in Washington D.C., where she also worked for several years in electoral politics and on Capitol Hill as a staffer in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Most recently, she joined Hillary Clinton's legal department in headquarters as the Deputy National Voter Protection Director, overseeing Election Day operations in the battleground states and the campaign's volunteer lawyer program. Steele received her law degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she served on the Board of the Harvard Women's Law Association and the American Constitution Society, and as the Executive Policy Editor of the Harvard Law and Policy Review. You can learn more about Ally and the Purple Campaign here. 

Emily Martin.  Emily Martin is General Counsel and Vice President for Education & Workplace Justice at the National Women’s Law Center. She oversees the Center’s advocacy, policy, and education efforts to ensure fair treatment and equal opportunity for women and girls at work and at school and to forward policy frameworks that allow then to achieve and succeed, with a particular focus on the obstacles that confront women and girls of color and women in low-wage jobs. She also provides in-house legal advice and representation to the Center. Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Martin served as Deputy Director of the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she spearheaded litigation, policy, and public education initiatives to advance the rights of women and girls to fair treatment at work, at school, and in housing. She was a law clerk for Senior Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Judge T.S. Ellis, III, of the Eastern District of Virginia and previously worked for the Center as a recipient of the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship. She has served as Vice President and President of the Fair Housing Justice Center, a non-profit organization in New York City. Ms. Martin is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law School.

Ryan Park.  Ryan Park is Deputy Solicitor General of the State of North Carolina.  Previously, he was an attorney at Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, where he focused on appellate and complex commercial litigation.  At Boies Schiller, Ryan also represented a male employee who successfully challenged his employer's discriminatory parental leave policy--work that was recognized with an outstanding achievement award by the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.  Previously, he was an attorney-adviser at the U.S. Department of State, and served as a law clerk for Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter (ret.) of the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Judge Robert A. Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.  
      Ryan graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was co-editor-in-chief of the Harvard International Law Journal and Political and Outreach Chair for the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association.  Before law school, Ryan graduated from Amherst College, taught in South Korea on a Fulbright fellowship, and served as a domestic violence intake counselor at D.C. Superior Court for Women Empowered Against Violence.  His writing has appeared in several scholarly journals, as well as in the Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the Hill. 

Aishah Shahidah Simmons.  Aishah Shahidah Simmons is an award-winning Black feminist lesbian documentary filmmaker, activist, cultural worker, writer, and international lecturer. An incest and adult rape survivor, she is the creator of the 2006 released JustFilms® Ford Foundation-funded film NO! The Rape Documentary. Twelve years in the making, the award-winning film, was internationally acclaimed as it broke taboos that hid heterosexual rape and sexual assault in African-American communities. The film brought together leading African American scholars, theologians, artists, activists, men, women, and survivors to break silences and commit themselves to reshape patriarchal cultures of violence against women and queer communities. The film's supplemental materials – Breaking Silences, a two-hour video, and Unveiling the Silence, an interactive study guide – are also used in educational institutions, rape crisis centers, battered women’s shelters, community centers, and correctional facilities and at conferences and government-sponsored events in the U.S., Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

    Ms. Simmons is one of the 2016-2019 inaugural cohorts of the Just Beginnings Collaborative (JBC), a group of eight fellows and ten grantee organizations that are addressing child sexual abuse in their work.. Her JBC-funded project,#LoveWITHAccountability examines how accountability is a powerful and necessary form of love needed to address child sexual abuse (CSA). #LoveWITHAccountability also examines how the silence around child sexual abuse in the familial institution plays a direct role in creating a culture of sexual violence in all other institutions—religious, academic, activist, political and professional.

     Ms. Simmons is also a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice where she is affiliated with the Evelyne Jacobs Ortner Center on Violence and Abuse in Relationships. An Associate Editor of the online publication The Feminist Wire, Ms. Simmons has screened her work, taught undergraduate and graduate courses, guest lectured, and facilitated workshops across the North American continent, and in numerous countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Her essays and articles have been published in numerous publications in the United States, and also in France and Italy. Her most recent publications include NBCNews.com, Colorlines, The New York Times, Tikkun, and the anthologies Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Sexual Violence Movement  edited by Jennifer Patterson, and Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence  edited by Lisa Factora-Borchers. Ms. Simmons’ cultural work and activism have been documented extensively in a wide range of media outlets including Cassius Life, The Root, Crisis, Forbes, Left of Black, In These Times, Ms. Magazine, Alternet, The Philadelphia Inquirer, National Public Radio (NPR), Pacifica Radio Network and Black Entertainment Television (BET). She is on twitter @AfroLez and @LoveAccountably.  You can read more about her work here.