DICK'S Sporting Goods’ legal department is led by General Counsel and Senior Vice President John Hayes. DICK’S is a Pittsburgh-based company founded in 1948, currently with over 728 stores throughout the nation.

"DICK’S Sporting Goods is proud to join the Pittsburgh Legal Diversity & Inclusion Coalition. We know that diverse teams are more effective and we’re committed to promoting an inclusive culture within our company and our communities."

Lightning Trainings are programs lasting no more than 30 minutes designed to tackle just one discrete topic. Part of the Coalition’s Towards a Culture of Inclusion series, this Lightning Training will present a basic primer on the key terms swirling around the D&I conversation. Its goal? To help people stop worrying about saying the wrong thing and feel more comfortable engaging with people of all backgrounds. Joining Coalition ED Susan Yohe to present this program will be Danielle Mundekis, Employee Relations and Inclusion Manager at member Eckert Seamans. Register below. Since this program will be brief, it will start right on time!

Save the date for our next lightning training on March 19 from 12-12:30 p.m., entitled: Microaggressions: Small Acts, Big Consequences. Yohe will also present this program - more details on this event to be announced soon.

Kenji Yoshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law and the Director of the Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. He’s a graduate of Harvard, Oxford, and Yale and more important for Coalition purposes, a deep thinker and terrifically engaging speaker. Regularly interviewed on radio and television, you may have heard him on NPR, CNN, PBS, and MSNBC. (Yes, that guy!) He has written a number of books, including one on the topic he will discuss with the Coalition, covering. As Yoshino points out, we all cover and so it can serve as a bridge of empathy between people of different races, genders and other identities that matter to us. Covering brings all of us into the inclusion paradigm. 

Trainers from Visions Inc. — Angela Bryant, Tokunbo Green, and Vincent Johnson — have been meeting with our Ally-Ready Training Program 30+ participants since last October and will continue to work with them in the coming months, leading up to next June’s Third Conversation on Race: Where Do We Go from Here? Now the Coalition and the ACBA will share their expertise with the wider community in a two-hour CLE on March 3 from 12 - 2 p.m. entitled Diversity is Everyone - Tell Us How To Do It and We’ll Do It! Registration deadline is March 1 for this practical guide to making diversity work at work. Lawyers employed at PLDIC member organizations enjoy a discounted price. 

Over 65 legal professionals heard Michelle Silverthorn’s observations on being Black in the legal profession at the Coalition’s Second Conversation on Race: Race in the Legal Community. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive: “excellent!”; “I leaned in the entire time”; “very real & practical — the content was not overly managed or sanitized”; [Silverthorn is] “a real star.”

A video of her presentation and the Q&A session afterward with Reed Smith Pittsburgh Managing Partner Jason Hazlewood will be available for 30 days only on the Members Only page of the Coalition’s website. (Please note that the video picks up shortly after Michelle starts speaking.) You may also want to check out these additional resources which Michelle provided after the program (password: justice), along with additional resources provided to attendees by the Coalition available on our website.

Follow the links below to learn about these outstanding individuals and hear their thoughts on Black History Month and how to observe it with books, movies, and TV shows, along with advice on how to make your workplaces more inclusive for African-American lawyers.

The ACBA Homer S. Brown Division will host its 17th Annual Black History Month Celebration on February 23 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The Division will present its Spirit Award - presented to an individual or organization who has demonstrated leadership and a commitment to the promotion of equality and the advancement of justice among the African-American community - to Jasiri X and 1Hood Media. Its Young Leader Award will go to ACBA member Jesse Exilus.

The Coalition received a lot of positive feedback from last September's program for attorneys of color presented by Ritu Bhasin entitled The Internalization of Bias: What Happens in the Workplace. Bhasin, through her bci Inclusion Academy, is now offering a two-part, six hour program on March 4 and 24 entitled “Let’s Dig Deep: Thrive at Work as a BIPOC Professional,” designed to provide BIPOC professionals with practical, hands-on tools and strategies for thriving in the face of racial bias in the workplace.

Parents may also be interested in Bhasin’s free webinar on how to talk to children about anti-Black racism on February 24 at 4 p.m., for which she will be joined by renowned anti-racism and education expert Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr.

Pittsburgh and Allegheny County both passed CROWN Acts last fall, prohibiting discrimination based on hairstyle. Buchanan CDIO Lloyd Freeman and Professor Greene will discuss the effects of racial discrimination against African descendants’ natural hair in the workplace. The two will discuss the “invisible harms” and other negative impacts caused by race-based natural hair discrimination. One of the world’s leading experts on “grooming codes discrimination,” Professor Greene will explore landmark legal reforms on this topic that are aimed at creating truly inclusive workplaces that celebrate Black hairstyles and diversity.