By Angela Morris (law.com, Feb. 4, 2019)
In her day job, Dallas lawyer Chasity Henry works in-house at Kimberly Clark-Corp., but when she’s not tending to the global giant’s transactions, she’s extending her hand to pull other black woman lawyers up the career ladder.
It started when Henry and former law school friends, all black women, began meeting for casual happy hours about eight years ago, discussing their challenges in the legal profession. It was Henry who pitched the idea of creating an official nonprofit organization—The NEW Roundtable—with the mission of empowering African-American woman lawyers, enhancing their careers and influencing the wider legal profession to improve hiring, retention and promotion of black women. (NEW stands for Network of Empowered Women.)
“Formal networks aren’t in place, oftentimes, for African-American women,” said Henry, assistant general counsel of corporate affairs and legal strategy at the Irving, Texas-based $18 billion company with brands like Kleenex, Huggies and Kotex. “We felt we didn’t always have the opportunity to join the other tables, so we created our own.”
