Joan C. Williams

Joan C. Williams has played a central role in reshaping the debates over gender, class, and work-family issues for the quarter century. The culmination of this work is Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter (Harvard, 2010). Williams' prize-winning book Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It (Oxford, 2000), and reports such as The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict (co-authored with Heather Boushey); Opt Out or Pushed Out: How the Press Covers Work-Family Conflict, and One Sick Child Away from Being Fired: When Opting Out is not an Option have influenced policymakers, the press, and activists.

Williams, who is Distinguished Professor of Law and 1066 Foundation Chair at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, has authored or co-authored six books and over seventy law review articles, including one listed in 1996 as one of the most cited law review articles ever written.

As Founding Director of the Center for WorkLife Law, Williams has played a central role in documenting workplace discrimination against adults with family responsibilities. WorkLife Law works with employers, employees, employment lawyers, unions and public policymakers to eliminate discrimination against caregivers, to develop best-practice workplace flexibility policies, and to facilitate adoption of public policies to reconcile work and family. Williams also is co-founder (with Cynthia Thomas Calvert) of the Project for Attorney Retention, which has played a leadership role for the past decade in helping the legal profession advance and retain women, and offer work-life balance to men as well as women.

Williams current research focuses on how work-family conflict differs at different class locations; on the "culture wars" as class conflict; on how gender bias differs by race; and on the role of gender pressures on men in creating work-family conflict and gender inequality. Follow her work on her Huffington Post blog.  

	Cynthia Thomas Calvert

Cynthia Thomas Calvert is WLL Senior Advisor for Family Responsibilities Discrimination. Calvert practices law in the District of Columbia and Maryland. She was with the D.C. litigation firm of Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, L.L.P. (now Baker Botts LLP) for fourteen years, six as a partner. At MCLL, she worked full-time, part-time, and flex-time. She has now set up her own employment law practice, in which she counsels businesses about issues such as employment contracts, non-compete clauses, employee manuals, sexual harassment prevention, and terminations. See www.CynthiaCalvert.com.

Calvert speaks frequently about attorney retention, alternative work arrangements, and women in the law. She has written numerous articles that have appeared in the ABA's Law Practice Management magazine, The Legal Times and Raising The Bar (Women's Bar Association of the District of Columbia), and on the Internet. She is co-author (with Joan Williams) of Solving the Part-Time Puzzle: The Law Firm's Guide to Balanced Hours (NALP, 2004). Calvert is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center (cum laude, 1985), where she was a staff member and production editor of the American Criminal Law Review. After graduation, she clerked for the Honorable Thomas Penfield Jackson, United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She is married and has two children.

Penelope Huang is the Research Sociologist at the Center for WorkLife Law and the Project for Attorney Retention. She has worked with PAR and WLL on a variety of projects including a qualitative study of gender bias in academia and a survey study of the gendered career trajectories of law school graduates.

In addition to her work at WLL, Penny is a senior research analyst with Applied Survey Research, where she conducts evaluation research for non-profit, state and county-administered programs and initiatives to evaluate efficacy and to render recommendations for program improvements. As an independent research consultant, she has advised on workforce development, diversity, and EEO compliance issues, and authored a comprehensive study on the work-life policies and practices of Atlanta area law firms for the Georgia Association of Women Lawyers which examines the mismatch between firm policies and attorneys’ needs.

Penny received a bachelor’s degree cum laude from UC Irvine, a master’s degree in Psychology from Brandeis University, and a doctoral degree in Sociology from the University of Washington, where her dissertation assessed gendered inequalities in the workplace and family and examined public policy efforts at the work-family intersection. She received postdoctoral training in family demography at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and she has taught undergraduate courses in gender, family, and research methods at the University of Washington, Mills College, and Sonoma State University.

	Linda Marks

Linda Marks is Director of Training and Special Projects for WLL. She has over 25 years experience in corporate consulting and training and specific expertise in flexible work arrangements and work-life balance. She previously directed the Work Time Options in the Legal Profession project for New Ways to Work (NWW), a nonprofit organization founded in 1972 to promote workplace flexibility, and is co-author of Negotiating Time: New Scheduling Options in the Legal Profession. While at NWW she also directed the FlexGroup, a consortium of 14 companies that were taking the lead in moving workplace flexibility forward as a business strategy. Included in this group were Hewlett-Packard, Marriott International, Royal Bank of California, Chevron and other major corporations.

In addition, Marks worked for WFD (Work Family Directions), a Boston-based consulting firm, and for Rupert & Company as part of their flexibility consulting and training practices, working remotely from her home in San Francisco. She is a frequent presenter and has spoken to meetings of the American Bar Association, Association of Legal Administrators, NALP and the state bars of California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. She is currently working with the Bar Association of San Francisco on their Work/Life Balance task force. She holds a bachelor's degree cum laude from Brandeis University.

	Manar Sweillam Morales

Manar Sweillam Morales is Senior Advisor of WLL and Executive Director of PAR. Morales practices law in the District of Columbia and Maryland, where she is Of Counsel with the firm of Barr & Camens. Prior to joining Barr & Camens, she was an associate with the firm of Woodley & McGillivary. She has represented labor unions and employees in all aspects of labor relations and employment law. She also represents and advises employee benefit plans in all areas of employee benefit law. Morales has litigation experience in federal court, before federal administrative agencies, and in arbitration. In addition, Morales is an adjunct faculty member of Georgetown University, where she teaches labor and employment law in Georgetown's Paralegal Studies Program.

Morales is a 1997 graduate of the Columbus School of Law, Catholic University. She is a member of the Maryland and District of Columbia Bar. Morales is also a member of the Women's Bar Association and on the Steering Committee for the Lawyers at Home Forum. She is married and has two children.