Bressler, Amery & Ross earlier this month named Lauren Fenton-Valdivia chair of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee.

Fenton-Valdivia, a litigator, joined the Florham Park-based firm in 2014 and made partner on Jan. 1, 2020.

In her practice, Fenton-Valdivia handles commercial disputes, employment litigation, professional liability and environmental matters. She graduated from Rutgers University in 2008 and Seton Hall University School of Law in 2011. She is currently based in Bressler's Fort Lauderdale office.

Fenton-Valdivia "has worked tremendously hard to distinguish herself in her career," and "has demonstrated a deep commitment to the cause of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession, including as a Board member of the New Jersey State Bar Association's Minorities in the Profession Section," managing partner Frank Cuccio said in a statement.

*The responses were edited lightly for style.

What are your specific goals and strategies as you take on this role?

Bressler has made strides forward in diversity & inclusion (D&I) in the last few years, including, for instance, implementing unconscious bias training for all firm leadership, including our Executive Committee and Compensation Committee, and increasing our professional development efforts through Q&A sessions with our Principal Tracking Committee and Compensation Committee. I hope to use the momentum from those efforts as a springboard to continue to improve our D&I initiatives moving forward.

We know that D&I requires a team effort and I have an engaged committee and the support of Bressler's leadership to be innovative in our approach to D&I. Our specific goals for this year are as follows:

1) Increase our recruitment efforts for diverse attorneys in our firm;

2) Improve our retention of diverse attorneys through better inclusion efforts;

3) Increase the number of diverse attorneys in leadership roles throughout the firm; and

4) Engage our entire firm, including non-diverse allies, on topics of D&I.

In the near term, I am working to draft a strategic plan for Bressler's D&I Committee, with both long-term and short term goals and action items for each.

The thrust of our plan will be action, not just words, and will focus on a) increasing recruitment efforts, including through diverse associate and lateral hiring and b) improving current inclusion efforts, including through programming geared towards diverse attorneys. We intend to partner with and listen to our corporate clients to facilitate improvements and solutions. We also intend to have monthly check-ins and benchmarks so that we can critically assess where we are at the end of my term as chair.

Law firms of many types and sizes struggle to move the needle on diversity and inclusion. What might they be overlooking, or addressing in an unproductive way?

I think firms are overlooking the inclusion piece, which is certainly not a new sentiment, but remains a larger issue that needs to be confronted to pave the way toward greater diversity in the legal profession. It is not enough to go out and recruit diverse candidates, give them work and just expect them to succeed. There is a unique experience to being a diverse attorney (the "only one in the room" feeling) that firms need to recognize and work to address through inclusion, including, for instance, programming and mentoring geared towards diverse attorneys. Firms need to do better on the inclusion piece, which complements and improves diversity in a firm.

Firms also need to understand that it is OK to admit that what they are doing or what they have done in the past is not working or did not work. I think that there is a fear in "saying out loud" that past D&I efforts have not worked exactly the way the firm hoped they would. There is power in admitting shortcomings in this area. The art of doing so means that a firm can set the stage for new, innovative ideas for moving the needle on D&I.

As the new chair of Bressler's D&I Committee, I intend to look critically at the last few years, both at Bressler and other firms in our market, and speak to the efforts that have worked and those that have not worked for D&I. I want to bring a new perspective and innovative ideas to D&I at Bressler and I think our leadership is with me on that front. Bressler's leadership has shown that it is welcoming of new ideas for continuing to improve our firm. For example, the firm recently supported and invested in me taking a new bar exam and expanding my litigation practice into Florida (I continue to also practice in New Jersey and New York). I expect the same level of support for innovation on the D&I front.

COVID-19 has disrupted nearly every area of personal and professional life. How do you anticipate it will affect law firms' D&I efforts?

COVID-19 presents novel issues for all aspects of practicing law, including D&I efforts. Frankly, we still do not know what the world will look like one month or three months from now, so it is difficult to say what impact the current pandemic will have on D&I at law firms.

We have a lot of ideas for ways that we can virtually work on inclusion at our firm, including through virtual check-ins, happy hours and programming geared towards our diverse attorneys. Inclusion efforts will be critical to firms exiting the current pandemic with their diverse attorneys remaining (and wanting to remain) part of their ranks. In my opinion, one of the big inclusion pieces while working remotely is mentoring, which is critical for all attorneys, but especially diverse attorneys. Where mentoring usually occurs organically when all are working in the office (whether a quick cup of coffee or a chat in the office), we now need to affirmatively push mentoring to occur virtually through scheduled check-ins. Bressler previously instituted a mentoring program two years ago and I am collaborating with the chair of our Mentoring Committee to ensure that we are not losing the mentoring piece in the shuffle of the current pandemic.

I assume that if the current pandemic continues, we will have to get similarly creative in recruitment efforts, including the manner in which we engage with law schools as they also navigate this new terrain where they are remotely teaching, networking and performing career services.