Cracking the Code: Innovative Approaches to Hiring and Retaining Top Talent

Meghan Towers is the Senior Associate General Counsel at Compass.

Marisa Sternstein serves as the Associate General Counsel of Dentsu International, a modern marketing solutions company that operates in over 145 markets worldwide with more than 45,000 employees globally.

In her current role, she focuses on employment law and creating the strategies, policies, and practices that foster Dentsu's diverse and inclusive culture. She also serves as a global strategic advisor to the company on other key issues including the future of work, executive compensation, and pay equity. She is an integral part of the team that drives meaningful progress in Dentsu’s DE&I and social impact agenda, where Dentsu recently received a score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2022 Corporate Equality Index, the nation’s foremost benchmarking survey and report measuring corporate policies and practices related to LGBTQ workplace equality, and was one of the first companies in the world to have its net-zero target validated by the globally recognized Science Based Targets initiative.

Throughout her career, Marisa has worked at the intersection of human capital, employment law, and corporate culture. Prior to joining Dentsu, she was a partner at a law firm, where she advised both employees and high-growth companies on various employment-related issues including representing them in litigation in federal and state court. After her time at the firm, she moved in-house with the goal of impacting the behaviors of private-sector employers to, in turn, impact the lives of the many employees who choose to grow and build their careers there. She is a frequent speaker on various topics related to employment law, the future of work, and workplace culture.

She earned her J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Art History, and a Master’s degree in Museum Studies from Syracuse University. Marisa lives in New Jersey with her husband and three young daughters.

Isha Marathe is a multimedia journalist who cut her teeth as an investigative intern at news stations in Massachusetts. She started her reporting career covering women's incarceration in Boston for print and broadcast. Currently, she covers all things data privacy, e-discovery and artificial intelligence as the tech reporter for ALM.

Cristy Irvin Phillips is the General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Check Technologies, a provider of API-driven payroll software and related services.

Prior to joining Check, Cristy was the Deputy General Counsel and Head of Litigation at 1/0 Capital, a venture capital fund and start-up incubator, where she acted as in-house counsel to the fund and its portfolio of early and late-stage fintech start-ups. Cristy also spent 9 years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where she served as Deputy Chief of the Civil Frauds Unit, investigating and prosecuting fraud in industries including financial services and health care. Prior to that, Cristy practiced commercial litigation and served as law clerk to the Honorable Richard M. Berman, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York.

Cristy holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law and a B.A. with Highest Honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.