Personal Development

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Cathy Duke is the Chief Talent Officer at Robinson+Cole (she is the first person to have this role at her firm). She spent 20+ years at Proskauer where she was the Legal Director for its top-ranked Labor and Employment Department. Prior to that, Cathy was a white-collar criminal defense and commercial litigation lawyer in private practice. I met Cathy when we both worked at Proskauer, and I always found her to be a great colleague and incredibly smart.

She was recently interviewed about her new role in Hartford Business. Learn more about Cathy in this Women Who Wow profile.

Join me for a virtual program this Friday 5/15 at 1pm on how to take your social media graphics (and bring video, podcasts and thought leadership) to the next level…

In this installment of Women Who Wow, meet Sheryl Odentz. Sheryl is the founder of Progress in Work, an award-winning, career management firm that provides attorneys and other professionals within the legal industry with tools and resources to “progress in work” and maximize career success through business development training and coaching, executive/leadership coaching and outplacement/career transition consulting. Learn more about her.

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My mentor has always reminded me that happiness is a choice available to each of us and is crucial for our well being. She also told me that it’s okay to not be okay all of the time.

After the recent ending of a relationship, she again said to me, “I know you’re sad now, but you can to choose to be happy.”

You can be stuck feeling bad during bad times or you can choose to make hardships and the worst times of your life teaching moments and turn them into something positive. You’d be surprised just how resilient each of us are if we just believe it.

Also, happiness comes easier to some people and others must choose to be happy at certain points in our lives in order to turn the tide around or just to carry on and not to fall into a dark hole of despair.

I’m about to share a personal story in the hopes that it helps others. Not everyone shares what’s going on with them personally with professional colleagues, but I want others to know that life is messy and no one is perfect – especially me, and so many of us are struggling with personal crises and it’s a miracle we are so high functioning. It’s about time we got real and stop making it seem like everything is fine when it’s not.

The next Woman Who Wows is Emily Witt, a managing director at boutique legal search and matchmaking firm Whistler Partners in NYC. Emily spent almost 15 years in the recruiting department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

Emily is also a fully certified comprehensive Pilates instructor. She combines her love of recruiting with helping people physically. One of her first placements in legal recruiting was one of her Pilates clients.  Learn more about her classes – she’s currently teaching online too. And read her Q&A below.