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Ms. JD is proud to announce that Pat Gillette, Partner at Orrick, will keynote the 2015 Ms. JD Honors which will mark the beginning of Ms. JD's 2015 Stronger Together Conference.  During the Ms. JD Honors, Ms. JD will present seven awards to inspiring legal professionals.  

Ms. JD chose Pat as the 2015 Ms. JD Honors Keynote because her career history demonstrates her commitment to this year's conference theme, Stronger Together.  Pat has been a tireless advocate of women in the legal profession.  She is the founder of the Opt-In Project and a co-founder of the San Francisco Bar's No Glass Ceiling Initiative.  She has been involved in extensive research into women's attrition and success in the legal profession from her work with the NAWL Foundation to her more recent work on a study into the characteristics of rainmakers.  She has served in nearly every national organization that supports women in the legal profession from NAWL to the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession to the University of Texas Center for Women in the Law Consortium.  She has also been working to improve the representation of women on corporate boards through Direct Women.  As if all of that were not enough, Pat's "day job" is as a rainmaker at Orrick with a very successful book of business.  

Pat is also the personification of another key Ms. JD tenet - she is a dedicated mentor.  Speak to any of the associates who have worked on Pat's teams and they will tell you that she is invested in their development.  Outside of the office, Pat has served as a mentor to several Ms. JD Fellows and is an active role model who remains involved with the Women's Association at her law school, the University of San Francisco.  In short, Pat is someone who would easily qualify for Ms. JD's Sharing Her Passion Award for her commitment to supporting the men and women who have come behind her. 

While Pat has always been an active speaker, in recent years she has become nationally recognized for her keynote speeches particularly about the importance of women seeking economic and institutional power in their firms and companies.  As we were considering keynotes for this year's Ms. JD Honors, we were struck by one of the underlying themes to Pat's presentations around the pursuit of economic and institutional power.  Aside from the power that it gives the individual woman, Pat points out that we can improve firms and companies for women when there are women in positions of power who can represent those interests.  It is a restatement of Ms. JD's theme for this year's conference that we are all Stronger Together. 

The 2015 Ms. JD Honors promises to be an incredible evening made even better by Pat Gilette's acceptance of our inviation to keynote.  If you have not yet purchased your tickets, you can get them here.