Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Legal World: Key Strategies to Address Equity Challenges

Nathan Lindsey works as an insurance defense attorney, focusing on products liability law and asbestos defense litigation in Missouri and Illinois. He has extensive experience advocating for a broad range of national businesses including manufacturers, premises owners, and contractors during all phases of litigation. He has also represented a variety of local professionals and entities including retail owners, medical professionals, design professionals, financial planners, and construction contractors. He regularly appears for contested motions and trial settings in the circuit courts of Missouri and Illinois including St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Madison County, and McLean County.

As Faegre Drinker’s chief diversity officer, Maria Lewis provides vision and leadership for promoting and instilling a firm culture that builds, values and supports diversity and inclusion. In partnership with firm leadership, Maria serves as the champion for the firm’s overall diversity and inclusion initiatives by developing and facilitating strategies, decision making, priority setting and actions necessary to advance diversity and inclusion at all levels. She also serves the firm’s clients by providing litigation counsel on challenging employment issues in the workplace and conducting corporate training programs to improve workplace culture and reduce legal risks.

Rosa Nunez is Foley Hoag’s Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. She is responsible for developing, implementing, leading and championing proactive diversity and inclusion initiatives and programs, in alignment with Foley Hoag’s overall strategic plans. Rosa is also co-chair the firm’s Diversity Committee.
Rosa’s initiatives are centered on recruitment, learning and development, engagement, retention and external positioning. Rosa’s work has been recognized nationally, including being named as one of the 2022 50 most notable CDOs by COLOR Magazine, a 2021 Diversity Mentor of The Year by NY Moves Magazine and 2021 Leading Latina by Hispanic Magazine. Rosa is also a National Board Member of INROADS, where she served in 2021 as Chair of the Fund Development Committee.
Rosa has over 15 years of experience specializing in workplace diversity, equity, inclusion, employee engagement, workplace culture and community outreach programs. Most recently, she worked at BCW Global – Burson Cohn & Wolfe in New York as the SVP, Senior Director, North America – Diversity & Belonging. In that capacity, she was responsible for creating and implementing a comprehensive U.S. inclusion, diversity, equity and belonging strategy to identify talent and help them flourish at BCW. Before that, Rosa was the U.S. Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Omnicom Media Group and started her career as a member of the Global Inclusion and Diversity Team at information technology firm Accenture.

Kenneth Williams is a shareholder in the Segal McCambridge Detroit office. He focuses his practice on representing corporations and insurance carriers in the areas of coverage and personal injury litigation. He has a wide array of jury trial experience in Michigan, Florida, and Illinois. He has also litigated matters including but not limited to general liability, premises liability, coverage and indemnification, employment discrimination, along with agency claims. He is also co-chair of the firm’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee.