Inaugural Address
Thank you, Judge Richardson, for your inspiring keynote address. It’s an honor to have you here this evening. My sincere thanks to Judge Fiore for administering the oath to our new slate of leaders. And many thanks to Dolores Gebhardt for introducing me as only you can. Thank you to everyone for being here and I hope you are all having an enjoyable evening.
I want to start by recognizing my family who are here tonight. My son Andrew and daughter-in-law Jen are here with my grandson Gavin (Gavin, I am so proud of you and thank you) and my granddaughter Dylan. My daughter Emily is also here with my son-in-law Jared. And my youngest daughter Jessica is here with my son-in-law Jake. My younger grandchildren (Henry, Lily and Hannah) are hopefully asleep. All of you are so important to me. I do not take any of you for granted and I deeply appreciate the fact that you took time out from your busy lives to be here with me. Blending our family was not always an easy journey, but as I look out at your faces tonight, it fills me with tremendous pride.??
It also gives me great joy to introduce everyone to my wife Lesly, who is my partner, my best friend and bedrock of support. Our lives have never been easy, but you’ve stuck by my side. You make me always want to be the best man and husband I can be. I would not be here tonight without you.
I want to also give thanks to my new partners, David Lachtman, Brian Cohen, Brian Belowich, Greg Blue and colleagues Joanna Sandolo and Kerry Cunningham.? I consider you friends as well as colleagues and am very excited and hopeful for the beginning of the rest of my career. I feel privileged to be working with people that share my beliefs and work ethic. (Brian Cohen—I recently walked by your office and saw a motto I have lived my life by—Work Hard & Be Nice to People.) I believe strongly that we will have continued great success with the culture of collegiality and collaboration that each of you has created. I am extremely grateful to our nominating committee and membership for choosing me to lead this extraordinary Bar for this upcoming year. I have learned a great deal from all of the people I have worked with for years in Bar Leadership —Dawn Kirby, Dan Hollis, Kelly Welch, Stephanie Burns, Richard Vecchio, Justice Jamieson, Wendy Weathers, Justice Hyer, Dolores Gebhardt and this past year, Andrew Schriever. I’ve greatly benefited from working with all of you and I am blessed by your friendships.
Thank you also to our great group of officers and directors. I am so excited to continue to work with you in service to this bar association and the profession.
And of course, thanks to our immediate Past President Andrew Schriever for such a great year. You have given me great access to your day-to-day role as President and I have been learning from you for years as I have followed you through bar leadership. Thank you also for the attorney wellness program that you created and have developed with the help of so many people, including our current co-chairs, president-elect Brian Cohen and Livia Rodriguez. I hope to continue this great work going forward.?
We’ll also be continuing the Stronger Together initiative introduced by past-President Dolores Gebhardt, in which we heightened our outreach to affinity bar associations and the Public Service initiative which was launched by past-President Judge Hyer, and which earned the WCBA the high distinction of being the only mid-sized Bar Association to receive the New York State Bar Association’s Innovation Award for this work.
So, how do we build on all of this great work? For me, it starts with looking at what we as lawyers can do to improve things globally and locally, and what we as a bar association can do to support and encourage those efforts. We have a lot of serious challenges in front of us this year that we must acknowledge, discuss, listen to and hopefully play an important role in making necessary changes.
In September of 2023, the New York State Bar Association Task Force on Advancing Diversity issued a report and recommendations. There were many conclusions drawn regarding the benefits of diversity to lawyers, law firms and clients alike. I would like to share with you some of those conclusions. The report states that “[w]ithin the legal profession, research shows that having cultural and cognitive diversity leads to more “just, productive and intelligent” lawyers because it results in “better questions, analyses, solutions, and process.” The NYSBA report further concludes that:
When clients can draw upon advice from an outside counsel talent base that includes all aspects of diversity, clients receive superior legal services. Therefore, both the law firm and its clients benefit financially and culturally from hiring teams that reflect the diversity of the marketplace.
The benefits are obvious.
So how can we as a bar association become more diverse both in leadership and membership? How can we support our members in promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in their own firms and organizations?
It is 2024, but sadly, we still live in a segregated society in many respects – where we live, where we worship, and with whom we socialize. And although much progress has been made, we still live in a society dominated by white people, and white men in particular.
African Americans have lived through two and a half centuries of slavery, Jim Crow laws that lasted nearly 100 years, and additional mass incarceration (due to the so-called war on drugs). Much of this country was built on the backs of people of color who were forced to work for free, either as slaves or prisoners. Yet there are some in this Country that are insisting that we pretend that this never happened, only increasing the pain and suffering of our fellow citizens.
With the current state of the world, where people are bullied and threatened, and hate crimes are at an all-time high—women’s and LGBTQ+ rights are being taken away, and history books are being re-written, we are falling backwards quickly. It is overwhelming.?
In looking at the most recent census data available, we can see that just over 50 percent of the population of Westchester County identifies as belonging to a minority group or is a person of color. Another part of the population of Westchester County that is increasing are people who identify as one or more of LGBTQ+, with at least one report in 2018 estimating that approximately 40,000 people living in Westchester County fit into one or more of these categories. According to a recent study 7.1% of the US population self-identifies as LGBTQ+. And people with disabilities represent more than 27% of the United States adult population, making them the single largest minority group in the country. The best way to make our leadership and membership more reflective of these demographics is to throw open our doors even further to those who are willing to trust enough to share their ideas, perspectives and leadership.
How can we as a bar association bring about positive change?
The first thing that we, and me in particular, need to do is to look inward. I stand here as a white man who is cisgender (heterosexual for those of us who are older) and mostly able bodied. I’m even right-handed. I went to good schools (and so have my children), obtained jobs and climbed the ladder to leadership positions in several law firms, bar and trade associations. I have benefitted significantly from this imbalanced society and unless I do something to make positive change, I am complicit.
As a bar association, we need to continue to become more diverse, both in membership and leadership. Our first president was installed in 1896. Since that time, we have had one black president (Justice Walker) and although we have, since 1989, had ten women presidents, none of them have been women of color. We have had one openly gay president, who was also our only president of Hispanic heritage. During that time, we have had approximately 65 presidents that are/were white men.
Becoming more diverse will lead to a more robust discussion on all issues affecting the legal profession. In order to attract diverse members, we cannot just sit back and hope they join us. We need to reach out. To that end, I joined both the Westchester Black Bar Association and Hudson Valley Hispanic Bar Association last year, have recently renewed my membership to both, and I invite all of you to do the same. I also encourage everyone to join the Westchester Women’s Bar Association if they can, and I am also going to give a shout out to the Asian American Bar Association of New York and the LGBT Bar of New York as other affinity bars with whom we hope to collaborate. We also need to support people with disabilities, who are in great need of representation. I am open to and welcome dialogue regarding these issues. It is often difficult to examine ourselves, recognize our biases and play a part in change.
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It is imperative to continue the conversation about how to increase diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging that our diversity committee, led for years by Judges Fiore and Beltran have begun. Our diversity committee, led by our current co-chairs, Angela DiBiasi and Karine Pati?o have been busy planning a number of great events and programs throughout the upcoming bar year. They include:
Join us as the WCBA Diversity Committee again co-hosts this event with Hudson Valley Hispanic Bar Association and which has been co-hosted in past years by the Westchester Black Bar Association, and Westchester Women’s Bar Association.
Sign up your law firm to participate in this six week paid summer internship program designed to provide high school seniors from underserved and underrepresented communities with opportunities to get inspired by practicing lawyers.
Volunteer your time to help promote diversity, equity, and inclusion by supporting aspiring lawyers. We offer undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds with support from our volunteer attorneys who help students navigate the law school application process and gain insight into future career options. This program also connects students with law school admissions counselors to answer questions and set students up for a successful law school experience.
I urge you all who can to attend the multi-bar event and support the other two programs. We will be presenting other diversity-based CLE programs throughout the year as well.
For my part, I intend to use my platform to recruit, promote, actively support and encourage talented lawyers from diverse backgrounds to become involved in the bar association in any way that makes sense for them, with the hope that some number of them become an important part of our future leadership.
Our bar association is making significant progress in this area. We have two fantastic women of color, Judges Lissette Fernandez and Karen Beltran on our Executive Committee. Tejash Sanchala, the executive director of the Westchester County Human Rights Commission is a continuing member of our board of directors. And we are lucky to welcome to our board of directors Sharon Matthie, the ADR Coordinator for the 9th Judicial District, and Rabbi David Markus, a 9th Judicial Referee. I have encouraged all chairs of our sections and committees to add, where appropriate, a section/committee secretary to existing leadership with an emphasis on promoting qualified candidates that come from diverse backgrounds.
As Dolores Gebhardt said in her inaugural speech, we are truly stronger together. But we can’t be truly together unless all of us are provided with the opportunity to take a seat at the table.? I hope to work with all of you in continuing our journey in becoming a truly diverse, equitable and inclusive place, where everyone feels welcome, their perspectives are heard and valued, and everyone benefits.
I will leave you with a quote from the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
We will all profit from a more diverse, inclusive society, understanding, accommodating, even celebrating our differences, while pulling together for the common good.
I look forward to working with all of you to make positive change in our bar association and the World around us.
Have a good night and get home safely.
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Endnotes
?1 U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Westchester County, New York
?2 Advisory Committee to the Director Working Group on Diversity Subgroup on Individuals with Disabilities Report, December 1, 2022 (nih.gov)
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