Lathrop Gage Hires New Chief Diversity Executive
Before arriving at Lathrop, Vaughn spent more than four years as a community relations manager for the city of Olathe, Kansas, where she acted as the city's liaison to underrepresented communities.
August 20, 2019 at 04:32 PM
2 minute read
Vanessa Vaughn, Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Lathrop Gage/courtesy photo.
Vanessa Vaughn has joined Lathrop Gage as the firm’s director of diversity and inclusion. She replaces her predecessor, Michelle Martin Bonner, who left for a position at the national nonprofit FUSE Corps in April.
“We’ve found a great addition to our team in Vanessa,” Cameron Garrison, Lathrop Gage’s managing partner, said in a statement. “Her background and experience will benefit our firm as we continue in our commitment of being a diverse, inclusive employer and outstanding corporate citizen.”
Before arriving at Lathrop, Vaughn spent more than four years as a community relations manager for the city of Olathe, Kansas, where she acted as the city’s liaison to underrepresented communities. Before that, she worked as a community relations officer for UMB bank, where Vaughn said she got her start in earnest as a diversity and inclusion professional.
“My career has been focused on engaging people who are different from each other,” Vaughn said. “When I saw this opportunity at Lathrop I was happy to take it. It’s a firm that has such a rich history with the community.”
Vaughn added that Lathrop, which is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, is a signatory to the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion, a coalition of businesses whose signatories pledge to develop diversity and inclusion plans and put their attorneys through implicit bias training, which Lathrop has already done, she said.
Lathrop scored low on The American Lawyer’s 2019 Diversity Scorecard, coming in at No. 209 out of 225 firms. Of the firm’s 205 attorneys, 7% are minorities, according to ALM data, and 3.7% of the firm’s partnership identifies as a minority.
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