Personal Development

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I am so excited to have Deborah Farone in the Women Who Wow series as she is truly someone I admire and someone who is the epitome of a woman who wows (also our last names rhyme). She is brilliant, generous with her time and advice, and she is a woman who supports other women.

In case you don’t know who Deborah is, she created and managed the marketing departments for two of the world’s most highly respected law firms, Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Debevoise & Plimpton. She now runs a consulting firm Farone Advisors, where she works with company leaders and C-suite professionals to produce innovative programs in the areas of strategic planning, business development, marketing communications and key client management.

Somehow she found time to write a book in 2019! It’s one of my favorite industry “encyclopedias” and not just because I’m quoted in it. The book “Best Practices in Law Firm Business Development and Marketing,” published by PLI, was based on more than 60 interviews of law firm leaders, innovators, technologists, academics and marketers.

Learn more about Deborah.

Alice Simons is a marketing, communications and business development professional with more than 20 years of experience in the for- and non- profit sectors.

In her current role as Marketing Communications Manager at national boutique consumer and commercial financial services compliance law firm Hudson Cook, she plans and executes strategic marketing campaigns, including digital content marketing, brand management, PR and client outreach.

She began her career in non-profit annual fund development roles at the New York Philharmonic and Mann Center for the Performing Arts before transitioning to a marketing role at a consulting/law firm. In 2018, she became the first in-house marketer at Hudson Cook.

Alice is a lifelong volunteer for various community organizations, including Special Olympics, the Annapolis Opera and Annapolis Film Festival. She currently serves as member-at-large on LMA’s Baltimore Local Steering Committee and on the Marketing and Business Partner Committees for the American Financial Services Association.

Learn more about her in this Women Who Wow profile.

In this Women Who Wow profile, get to know Alexis Robertson, the Director of Diversity & Inclusion at Foley & Lardner LLP.

A former lawyer and legal recruiter, Alexis became a D&I professional after realizing that practicing law and serving as a legal recruiter wasn’t her true passion. She was able to take valuable skills from those positions and pivot to a diversity and inclusion career first at Baker & McKenzie and now at Foley & Lardner.

As Alexis noted in one of her terrific LinkedIn posts (you should follow her on LinkedIn!), if not for the pandemic, she would not have launched what she often refers to as her “pandemic podcast.” She says it was the need to introduce herself and check-in on attorneys that led to her personally calling 100 attorneys within her first few months at Foley.

She says that need created the space for the most amazing one-on-one conversations, which inspired a podcast unique to Big Law focused on showcasing human stories, highlighting the unique professional paths of Foley attorneys. The podcast is called The Path and the Practice and you should check it out.

Learn more about Alexis and her career path in this Women Who Wow profile.

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I can’t tell you how many times I have encountered mean girls in my personal and professional life.

If you follow my blog you know this because I write about it quite often.

You you also know that I have been quite shocked to find out people who were my friends betrayed me. And people with whom I worked were actually plotting against me. Now did I deserve any of this? Absolutely not. Am I perfect? Absolutely not. Am I an expert in mean girls? Well sort of. I didn’t set out to be one. And I certainly wish I could erase all the terrible things that have happened to me over the years by them.

Molly Pease is the Managing Director and Chief Compliance Officer at Curiam Capital LLC where she leads the day-to-day operations of this private investment firm that provides financing for high-value commercial litigation.

Molly is responsible for sourcing, underwriting and monitoring the firm’s single-case and portfolio litigation funding investments and oversees Curiam’s compliance program.

Molly started her career as a litigator with a focus on large-scale reinsurance, insurance, antitrust and securities disputes on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants. Molly later worked as Executive Director and General Counsel at two boutique litigation firms, where she developed and implemented long-term business strategies in all aspects of firm management, including financial analysis and reporting, business development and marketing, human resource recruitment and management, legal project management, information technology systems, and office operations.

Molly received her law degree from New York University School of Law and her undergraduate degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. She is a member of the faculty of the High Performance Counsel #thinktank sessions, is on Law360’s Legal Industry Editorial Advisory Board, and has been named one of Lawdragon’s Global Leaders in Legal Finance. Molly has also spoken and written extensively about legal finance.

Learn more about Molly in this Women Who Wow profile. (Note, I even used the Oxford comma for her!)

Erinn Larson is the Director of Marketing & Business Development at Hirsch Roberts Weinstein LLP, a Boston-based boutique law firm specializing in employment law, labor law and litigation.

I met Virginia native Erinn through the Legal Marketing Association several years ago and invited her to be part of conference committee I was co-chairing. I was so impressed with Erinn’s work ethic, her poise, her creativity and her enthusiasm.

We stayed in touch long after that conference, and today, despite our age difference (yes, I’m much older), we learn from each other. We often partner together hosting Clubhouse rooms and other social media programs. She is not a big self promoter, so I am going to do that for her (and others) through this series.

Get to know more about Erinn in this Women Who Wow profile.