Mentorship and sponsorship are different. Mentors are people who listen and advise, while sponsors open doors and lift you up. Mentors may tell you where the door is, but sponsors open the door. Sponsors have skin in the game and use their personal and professional capital to foster and provide opportunities.
Last night my husband and I were sitting in a sports bar in Cabo San Lucas while I was ruminating on how to write this blog post – romantic, I know…. Quite unexpectedly we struck up a conversation with the man next to us. He was a tall, lean man in his early 50s, and his name...
Laura Lee Norris, Associate Clinical Professor
Mary Fuller, Senior Clinical Fellow
Joy Baker Peacock, Interim Managing Director, High Tech Law Institute
Sydney Yazzolino, 2L Tech Edge JD student
Santa Clara University School of Law
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
~Nelson Mandela
As explained in our previous post, Santa Clara University School of Law is partnering with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to conduct a study on best practices in including diverse individuals in the invention and innovation process. We are soliciting...
Laura Lee Norris, Associate Clinical Professor
Mary Fuller, Senior Clinical Fellow
Joy Baker Peacock, Interim Managing Director, High Tech Law Institute
Sydney Yazzolino, 2L student
Santa Clara University School of Law
The Santa Clara University School of Law and the United States Patent Office (USPTO) are partnering on an ambitious diversity and inclusion study. We are taking a deep-dive to identify, understand, and provide actionable advice about the best practices for attracting and including diverse inventors in the invention and patenting process....
Verona Dorch, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer for Peabody Energy, was recently interviewed by Kristin Calve of Corporate Counsel Business Journal. Dorch shared several strong messages that resonated with me personally, so much so that I wanted to highlight how they’ve been important in my practice and work with clients.
Influence Leadership
Like Dorch, I’m a strong believer in teams. She says, “I’m a strong believer in building a team of leaders. I like to give people the ability to lead, and I sometimes do it before they are ready.”
This describes how I sometimes...
We talk a lot about diversity, and how important it is for companies. In addition to mirroring their customer base, companies want to make sure they have diversity of thought at the leadership level. Companies like Uber (and indirectly perhaps the entire car-share industry) have suffered because they were trapped in a singular “bro leadership” mindset that led to some disastrous results. If everyone thinks the same way and no one pushes back, the CEO echo chamber becomes a very dangerous place.
There was a study published in the Harvard Business Review that examined the performance of companies...
