Diversity: Diverse Leadership

As with any successful business initiative, the diversity mandate begins and ends with management. Our management’s commitment to recruiting, training and retaining diverse lawyers is not limited to a single committee. It is a core component of the firm’s strategic plan. Perhaps the best evidence of the plan’s implementation lies in the number of leadership positions held by minority partners within the firm and in our local communities.

  • Jacquelyn Stone, an African-American partner in Richmond, is the firm’s hiring partner, chair of the Recruitment Committee, and a member of the firm’s governing board of partners. She received the 2005 DuPont Women Lawyers Network Themis Award, which annually recognizes a woman who has positively impacted the business of DuPont by promoting legal excellence through the success, development and professional advancement of the women lawyers representing DuPont.

  • Alan Cason, an African-American partner, is the managing partner of our Baltimore office and serves on the Recruiting Committee.

  • Ava Lias-Booker, an African-American partner in Baltimore, heads the Baltimore Commercial Litigation Department.

  • Brian Parker, an African-American partner in Pittsburgh, served on the board of directors for the Lemington Residential Corporation in Pittsburgh, which ran America’s oldest continuously operated African-American nursing home facility.

  • Curtis Mack, an African-American partner in Atlanta, heads the Atlanta Labor and Employment Department.

  • Jonathan Harmon, an African-American partner in Richmond, holds a leadership role in the firm’s Trial Training Program.

  • James Dyke, Jr., an African-American partner in Tysons Corner, Va., was formerly the Secretary of Education for Virginia; is chairman of the University of the District of Columbia's Board of Trustees; and has served as chairman of the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce. He has also served as chairman of the Northern Virginia Business Roundtable; the Northern Virginia Community College Educational Foundation; and the Emerging Business Forum, an organization focused on enhancing minority entrepreneurs’ access to capital.