NiSource Inc
It bothered me that we didn’t have any kind of support for women, so we started in 2012 by holding a summit in Chicago for the top 125 women at the company – not just lawyers – and we brought in high-profile speakers like the attorney general of Illinois who, at the time, was a female. We had a great program, and it kicked off a three-pronged women’s leadership approach: annual summits – which also included regional summits where we got deeper into the organization with more junior women – a women’s mentoring program, and a women’s employee resource group.
As I started working with women on those programs, one of my close friends became the President of the American Bar Association, and she asked me to participate in the Commission on Women in the Profession. It was through my involvement in that that I actually started to really understand the various ways to manage outside counsel and inside counsel in a way that advances diversity.
