Pay Transparency & Breaking Down the Barriers of Gender Pay Gaps

Elizabeth Falcone is a shareholder with Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C. Elizabeth represents private and public employers in all aspects of employment law, including wage/hour matters, wrongful termination, discrimination, and harassment litigation. She is known for her skills as a litigator. She is frequently called upon to take on cases that are demanding, contentious, or complicated. That includes defending class action and collective cases, as well as difficult single and multi-plaintiff cases. She has tried cases for employers in state and federal courts. Elizabeth has significant experience representing clients faced with putative class and representative actions, including in California. She has litigated class action claims in many different industries, including retail, tech, financial services, health care, and the construction trades. She has experience leading class and representative actions from filing through settlement. Her experience includes defending against claims of misclassification for purposes of exempt status, missed meal and rest periods, adequacy of paystubs, and other wage-related claims. She has also represented defendants in class actions alleging disparate impact and other discrimination claims.

In addition to her class action work, Elizabeth has represented employers at trial in various courts in California and Oregon, and in private arbitration. In addition to courtroom work, she has appeared before the United States Department of Labor, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, and the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries. She also has experience litigating against government agencies, including the EEOC and BOLI. Elizabeth has broad expertise in the area of disparate treatment, harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, and other issues commonly raised by individual employee litigants. She provides day-to-day advice to clients on issues including wage and hour matters, leaves of absence, accommodation of disabilities, and risk management when making disciplinary decisions. Elizabeth has represented both public and private employers in grievance arbitrations, as well as at the bargaining table. She regularly speaks on issues including basic employment law, reasonable accommodations, wage/hour considerations, the law of harassment and workplace investigations. Elizabeth is a member of the State Bars of California and Oregon, and actively practices in both jurisdictions. She received her B.A., cum laude, in English with Departmental Honors from Northwestern University in 1998. She received her J.D. from New York University School of Law in 2001. At NYU, she was a McKay Scholar, an editor of the Moot Court Board, and was named to the Order of Barristers upon graduation.

Prior to joining Ogletree Deakins' Portland, Oregon office, Elizabeth was employed for nearly ten years in the Employment Law Department of the Los Angeles office of Paul Hastings LLP. She has received awards including listing in the Best Lawyers in America and in Chambers and the Super Lawyer designation.

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.

Jennifer is a solutions-oriented senior employment attorney and HR professional with almost two decades of law firm and in-house legal experience. She currently serves as Associate General Counsel at Mattel, Inc., where she leads a global employment law team with close strategic collaboration and operational execution with Human Resources. She is a past leader of global employee relations and compliance at Amgen Inc. Jennifer is a respected thought partner and legal counselor at Fortune 500 companies and a strategic advocate with over 10 years of employment litigation experience prior to moving to in-house roles.

Jennifer graduated with a B.A. from the University of Washington, and she earned a J.D. and an LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Cornell University.