What are some of your proudest achievements from the past year? I am most proud that we stayed connected over the past year and that our women attorneys continued to pursue growth opportunities and leverage the training and support that we offer at the Women's Forum. Our goal this past year was to continue our programming for our women attorneys despite the remote working environment and we were largely able to do that without skipping a beat given the strong foundation that we had in place. We have been constantly evolving our programming each year so when the pandemic hit, it was fairly easy to pivot to the virtual environment. Our use of technology, including our internal social media platform, WF Connect, helped us remain connected, and we sought feedback from our women attorneys at all levels in terms of the substantive training and programming that they needed in the moment. Our women attorneys at all levels took advantage of our mentoring circles, grant program, workshops, Women@RopesTalk podcast, and speaker series to continue their growth and development and to connect with each other. It was very rewarding to watch, and to take part in.

What, if any, obstacles stood in the way of your innovation, and how did you overcome them? It probably goes without saying that developing remote programming that engages people is a challenge. We made extra efforts to ensure our programming was unique—and not just another Zoom webinar. Something as simple as adding music (Imagine Dragons) and slideshows at the outset of the program to ensuring that the content was interesting and as interactive as possible, made our programs among the most attended of any year prior. For example, we had a fireside chat in honor of Women's History Month with our firm Chair, Julie Jones, the first women attorney to lead the firm in its 156-year history. We had two partners who worked closely with Julie interview her and engage in a discussion of what it was like to work together on deals. The discussion that resulted was personal and, most importantly, elicited practical advice, which is what our women attorneys crave and what makes our programming successful.