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 Partner, |
Lauren Artese is a founding partner at Artese Zandri PLLC, and is the firm’s lead trial litigator. Lauren handles matrimonial, family and domestic violence matters. Lauren brings to the firm her experience as a former prosecutor at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, where she was assigned to the Gang Bureau and tried several serious felonies, including homicides. After her successful tenure as a prosecutor, Lauren shifted her focus to practice matrimonial and family law cases. She is now dedicated to working with clients facing divorce, child and spousal support issues, property distribution, paternity, custody and visitation petitions in Supreme Court and Family Court. Lauren is also experienced in negotiating all types of settlement agreements, pre-nuptial and post-nuptial agreements. Her litigation experience enables her to aggressively advocate for the firm’s clients in court when necessary. Lauren also understands that matrimonial and family court cases are an emotional time for our clients, and she approaches these matters with compassion and understanding. Read More about Lauren |
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Sheryl Axelrod is the founder of The Axelrod Firm, P.C., a woman-owned law firm with offices in Philadelphia and Washington, DC focused on business and the bottom line. She provides strategic, results-driven advice and representation to companies regarding their commercial, employment, and general and products liability litigation matters in Pennsylvania, and is a public speaker, author, expert, and award winning champion in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space. Read More about Sheryl |
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Jean L. Chou |
Jean has been practicing real estate law since 2010 and believes hands-on collaboration, innovative thinking, and open communication are keys to fostering successful client relationships and closing difficult deals. She is an expert negotiator and often advises clients on strategic approaches towards real estate investment and business growth. Since its inception, Jean has grown and evolved JLC & Associates throughout the years to be known as one of the pioneers and innovators in New York real estate law. She has been named as a Rising Star Super Lawyer each year since 2015 and her firm was recently named top 40 real estate firms in NYC by The Real Deal. Beyond servicing her private clientele, Jean devotes time to pro bono matters for GLAAD, City Bar Justice Center and New Women New Yorkers. She was awarded the 2021 Outstanding Pro Bono Service Award by the City Bar Justice Center. Today, JLC provides unparalleled expertise, efficiency, and service from its diverse and progressive team. Read More about Jean |
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Heather Clauson Haughian |
Ms. Haughian’s practice is focused on complex technology and outsourcing transactions, data privacy and security-related issues as well as counseling involving the exploitation, leveraging, and transfer of intellectual property rights. Her experience is in the areas of information technology/software, insurance risk management platforms, biotechnology, financial services, transportation and logistics, and healthcare systems.
Heather Clauson Haughian is a managing partner of the firm and co-manages the firm’s Texas and Chicago offices.
Read More about Heather |
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Gail J. Cummings, |
Gail J. Cummings, JD, MSS, LCSW, a business lawyer turned psychotherapist, is also a career and leadership coach. She helps professionals around the world to find their voice, strategize about career advancement, and take charge of personal and professional opportunities. Gail is known for coaching lawyers to build and maintain their business, obtain promotions and increased compensation packages, change jobs, negotiate effectively, navigate adversity, think critically on annual self-assessments to accurately reflect accomplishments and define career and salary expectations, pivot in their careers, establish and maintain their professional brand, and develop a healthy work-life integration. Read More about Gail |
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Melanie Cunningham |
Melanie is the founder of Melanie Cunningham Law Office P.C. (MC Law), a boutique online based business and intellectual property law firm. Melanie specializes in helping entrepreneurs remain creative and expansive by establishing the foundation of their business and protecting and maximizing their intellectual property. It’s her belief that entrepreneurs and micro and small business owners play a critical role in our communities, which propelled Melanie to return to private practice after more than a decade working for global financial institutions. Melanie’s practice is dedicated to delivering excellent legal support and protection to this vital, but an often underserved, community. Melanie credits her business training and the skills developed as a senior compliance officer with enabling her to help small business owners have a legally compliant business, while proactively advising clients during the growth process. She’s helped diverse entrepreneurs including, event planners, artists, coaches and consultants (industries include financial, health & wellness, business) travel agents, attorneys, naturopathic practitioners do business in a way that focuses more on collaboration than competition. Melanie has counseled small business owners in determining what is protection worthy (helping them obtain trademarks and copyrights) and making contact on their behalf in the case of infringement. Melanie received her bachelor’s degree from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland at College Park, and her J.D. from Emory University School of Law. Melanie is licensed to practice in New York.
Read More about Melanie |
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Debbie Epstein Henry |
Debbie is an expert, consultant, best-selling author and public speaker on careers, workplaces, women and law. She is the founder of DEH Consulting, Speaking, Writing and the co-founder of Bliss Lawyers, a company that employed high caliber attorneys to work on temporary engagements for in-house legal department and law firm clients. In 2020, Bliss Lawyers was acquired by Axiom, the global leader in high-caliber, on demand legal talent, and Debbie now serves as their executive consultant. Read More about Debbie |
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Virginia Essandoh |
Virginia G. Essandoh serves as Ballard Spahr’s Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer. She sits on the Management Committee and Expanded Board and is responsible for overseeing, implementing, and providing strategic leadership to the firm’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Working closely with the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council, Virginia advises and collaborates with firm management, including Department Chairs, Office Managing Partners, and administrative professionals to implement the firm's diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic goals and inspire the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion into firm culture. This ranges from high-level development of diversity-related recruitment, development and retention, and advancement for lawyers at all levels to client collaborations that advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the profession as a whole. Read More about Virginia |
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Jaclyn Foster |
Jaclyn Foster is the owner and founder of Del.Trust - Law Firm Solutions. Del.Trust gives law firms quality legal staff on a controlled budget so our clients don't have to work 90+ hours per week to keep their firm above water and growing at a steady pace. We do this by providing a path to promote sustainable growth by offering stepping stones based on the here and now at every growing moment through our subscription staffing model. Jaclyn has a collective eight years of paralegal experience, three years of freelance paralegal experience, and two years of successfully leading her legal staffing agency. She has personally worked in and managed law firms and can deeply acknowledge the staffing predicament all law firms go through at some point is very real. It is her passion to help her clients grow through her company, because they are able to do so at a pace that always remains profitable. Read More about Jaclyn
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DR MILANA HOGAN, Ed.D |
Dr. Milana L. Hogan is the Chief Legal Talent Officer at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, where she oversees the firm’s talent management initiatives, including assignment, mentoring, training and career development programs, performance evaluations, diversity and inclusion initiatives, human resources, paralegals and analysts, and the firm’s worldwide recruiting efforts. She joined Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in 2006. In addition to her work at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, Dr. Hogan is the Immediate Past Chair of the Professional Development Consortium. She also serves as a liaison to the American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession and is the Co‐Chair of the ABA’s Grit Project. She is currently the lead researcher on the ABA’s Gritty Teams initiative. Dr. Hogan published her first book, Grit, The Secret to Advancement, in 2016, and she is a contributing author to PLI’s book Stepping It Up: A Guide for Mid-Level Law Firm Associates, which was published in 2020. Dr. Hogan is a frequent speaker and presenter and has delivered high-impact trainings around the world for law firms, law schools, bar associations and public and private corporations, including Goldman Sachs, Harvard Law School, and the New York City Bar Association. She received her B.A. in Political Science from Brown University and she holds a Doctor of Education from the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in New Canaan, Connecticut with her husband and their four young children (ages 10 and under). Read More about Milana |
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Chelsea Hoover |
Chelsea Hoover, MS, RD, LDN, is a Registered Dietitian specializing in one-on-one customized nutrition counseling. With a Bachelor's Degree in Exercise Science, and a Master's Degree in Nutrition, Chelsea combines her knowledge of proper diet and exercise to help others achieve their individual health & wellness goals. At a young age, Chelsea developed an interest in health and wellness through training in the Martial Arts in which physical, mental, and spiritual wellness play an integral role in the system’s program and methodology. This passion led her to pursue a career that promotes the importance of food and exercise in one's overall health and wellness. Today, as the founder of Fuel for Thought Nutrition, Chelsea is a Registered Dietitian and Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist specializing in one-on-one customized nutrition counseling. Read More about Chelsea
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Monique DeLapenha, Esq, |
Monique DeLapenha concentrates her practice in municipal finance and real estate development finance. Ms. Delapenha also has substantial experience serving as transactional, underwriter’s, trustee’s and bond counsel in a wide range of bond transactions. She has negotiated and drafted preliminary and final official statements, trust indentures, bond purchase agreements, loan agreements and other bond related closing documents in connection with short and long-term tax-exempt and taxable debt obligations. Read More about Monique |
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Nancy J. Mertzel |
Read More about Nancy |
 Shira Katz Scanlon Member Martine, Katz, Scanlon & Schimmel, P.A |
Shira has been exclusively practicing all areas of Matrimonial Law since 2010; she founded Martine, Katz Scanlon & Schimmel, P.A. in December, 2012, serving South Jersey and the Greater Philadelphia area. Shira earned her Juris Doctor from the Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Drexel University in May, 2009, where she graduated magna cum laude as a member of the inaugural class.
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Aleezé Moss, PhD |
Aleezé Sattar Moss, PhD, is the Associate Director of the Myrna Brind Center for Mindfulness at Thomas Jefferson University. She is a certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher and has received extensive training in teaching mindfulness, including professional training with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, founder of the Stress Reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. In addition to teaching MBSR, Dr. Moss teaches mindfulness to healthcare professionals, medical students and employees in corporate settings. She also trains professionals to teach mindfulness. She conducts qualitative research on the effects of MBSR on physical and psychological health and has published in peer-reviewed journals. Read More about Aleeze |
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Ashley Robinson |
Ashley is the owner of Green Cardigan Marketing. Green Cardigan Marketing is a one-stop-shop for lawyers seeking results driven marketing. They work with attorneys from all markets and have expertise and insight from every practice area. Read More about Ashley |
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Judie Saunders |
Judie has more than twenty years of litigation experience with a unique focus on representing adult and child survivors of sexual, physical, emotional, and psychological abuse in both criminal and civil court. She also defends the constitutional rights of criminal defendants and incarcerated individuals. As a former prosecutor, Judie has extensive courtroom experience, including conducting dozens of administrative hearings and jury trials. She is adept at handling all phases of litigation, including pleadings, discovery, negotiations, settlements, jury selection, direct and cross-examination of civilians, expert witness interviews, and closing arguments. Judie has extensive experience arbitrating and mediating disputes and is included on the American Arbitration Association’s panel of arbitrators for employment matters. At her prior firm, which she founded, Judie represented and counseled numerous high-profile clients who were survivors of abuse and sexual harassment, including an Olympian, NCAA Division I student athletes, and elite level gymnasts. Read More about Judie |
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Ivy Slater is the CEO of Slater Success, a boutique training, consulting and coaching company focused on growth strategies and leadership development for high-level, service-based businesses. She has worked with over 1,700 individual clients, ranging from early entrepreneurs to attorneys growing multi-million dollar firms. Ivy is a professionally certified business coach, speaker, internationally bestselling author and podcast host. Prior to Slater Success, she spent 20 years as owner and operator of Slater Graphics, a printing company in New York City, scaling it to 7-figures. Read More about Ivy |
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Jessica Shpall Rosen helps companies untangle workplace legal issues. Working closely with business leaders, she helps companies avoid and resolve employment law disputes, allowing them to focus on what they do best: building business. Jessica delights in working with clients in a variety of industries, including tech, healthcare, hospitality, and nonprofit organizations. Jessica has successfully grown her innovative employment law practice in the pandemic through creating warmth and meaningful connections on social media. She writes about company culture and virtual business development. Jessica created and produces her own podcast, called "More than a Fallback," where business leaders share insights about their superpower and how they use it in business. Read More about Jessica |
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Paige Zandri |
Paige Zandri is a founding partner at Artese Zandri PLLC, and is the firm’s lead mediator. Paige brings to the firm her experience as a tax consultant for high net worth individuals before shifting her focus to representing clients in matrimonial and family law matters. She started her own solo practice in 2011 representing clients facing contested and carefully negotiated divorces, and found her analytical background to be well suited toward helping clients find creative out-of-court solutions to resolving their conflicts. Paige is trained and certified as a divorce mediator and helps clients untangle and reach agreements on complex issues involved in divorce, including equitable distribution of property, spousal support, child custody, child support and more. Paige also has extensive experience drafting and negotiating prenuptial, postnuptial and divorce settlement agreements. Paige’s tax background is particularly useful for clients who hold sophisticated assets with varying tax consequences that impact their value in a negotiated property settlement. Paige approaches every client and every issue with personalized attention, compassion and diligence. Read More about Paige |
Member Spotlight
APRIL 2024
Jennifer Gillman
President - Gillman Strategic Group