Webinar Recording
Apr 7, 2021
Webinar Recording: Personal Branding in the Virtual Landscape
About the Program
Building an authentic and impactful personal brand is a lifelong journey. A strong personal brand can lead to career opportunities and is essential for business development. This engaging panel provides tips, anecdotes, and advice on how to strategically build your personal brand. Topics covered include: Understanding your current brand, developing your brand strategy, and amplifying your brand through board service, writing, panel participation, and using social media platforms like LinkedIn.
Moderator
Paula Edgar, Attorney, CEO of PGE Consulting Group LLC
Paula T. Edgar, Esq. is an attorney and CEO of PGE Consulting Group LLC, a strategy firm that provides diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and professional development solutions for organizational inclusion initiatives.
Paula is a highly sought after speaker and facilitator across industries. She conducts live and virtual facilitated workshops, delivers keynote speeches, and provides executive coaching. Paula develops customized diversity training on topics including unconscious/implicit bias, anti-racism, inclusive leadership, workplace sexual harassment, and EEO compliance. Paula’s professional development expertise includes mentor/sponsor best practices, personal branding, networking, social media, business development, and career planning strategies.
Paula has written for and been featured in a wide array of publications including the New York Times, Bloomberg Law, Essence Magazine, Business Insider, and US News and World Report.
Paula is active in numerous organizations and social justice initiatives, including her current role as Treasurer and past President of the Metropolitan Black Bar Association (MBBA), New York State’s largest Black bar association and serving as President of its charitable arm, Friends of the MBBA, Inc. She is a founding Board Member of The Black Big Law Pipeline, Inc. Additionally Paula is a 2015 Council of Urban Professionals (CUP) Fellow and a member of the CUP Alumni Board, a Trustee of the Ellis L. Phillips Foundation, a member of the Executive Committee of the Deerfield Academy Alumni Association, and has been nominated to serve on the New York City Bar Association’s Board beginning in 2021. Paula’s professional experiences include serving as a founding partner of Inclusion Strategy Solutions LLC, inaugural Chief Diversity Officer at New York Law School, Associate Director of Career Services at Seton Hall University School of Law, and Executive Director of Practicing Attorneys for Law Students Program, Inc. (PALS). Additionally, Paula practiced employment and workplace discrimination law for the Law Enforcement Division of the New York City Commission on Human Rights.
Paula received her BA in Anthropology from California State University (Fullerton) and her JD from the City University of New York School of Law.
She has been recognized by The Network Journal Magazine as a “40 Under Forty” Achievement Awardee, a Ms. JD “Woman of Inspiration”, and a “Rising Star'' by A Better Chance. She has also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Black Law Students Association at CUNY Law School and the Ruth Whitehead Whaley Service Award from the Association of Black Women Attorneys (ABWA).
Stay up to date with Paula at paulaedgar.com, Linkedin, and on Twitter (@PaulaEdgar)
View Paula Edgar’s Speaker Reel
Speakers
Neysa Alsina, General Counsel & Deputy Comptroller for Legal Affairs, Office of the City of New York Comptroller, New York, New York
Neysa Alsina is currently with the New York City Comptroller’s office as General Counsel and Deputy Comptroller for Legal Affairs. Ms. Alsina directly advises the Comptroller on all legal issues that come before the office, including those related to the Comptroller’s role as trustee of four of the five City pension funds. She also directs the Office of the General Counsel and oversees the Bureau of Law and Adjustment and the Bureau of Labor Law.
Ms. Alsina previously served as Senior Policy Advisor to Congresswoman Nydia M. Velázquez in Washington, D.C. Prior to that role, she was the Counsel to the New York City Bar Association where she provided legal advice on contract review and negotiation, labor and employment, intellectual property, corporate governance, not-for-profit corporation law, and privacy, among other practice areas. Ms. Alsina also spent eight years in insurance and financial services companies. She advised management on regulatory compliance at MetLife, served as an ethics liaison for the Latin American region of Citigroup, and counseled on a variety of legal matters at Municipal Credit Union. She began her legal career as a labor and employment associate at Nixon Peabody, LLP.
Ms. Alsina has been named one of Crain’s New York Leading Women Lawyers, and was a Council of Urban Professionals Fellow. She is a recipient of the City & State Above and Beyond Award, the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Regional President of the Year Award, the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Top Lawyers Under 40 Award, and the Puerto Rican Bar Association’s Flor de Maga Award. Ms. Alsina is a graduate of Fordham University School of Law and Rutgers University at New Brunswick.
Roy D. Prather III, Partner at Beveridge & Diamond, P.C.
Roy is a partner in the Baltimore office of Beveridge & Diamond, P.C., an environmental law firm, where he represents companies and public sector entities in complex environmental and commercial litigation in federal and state courts. He has a broad range of experience defending citizen suits and class actions under federal environmental laws and state analogues, advising clients on issues relating to environmental regulatory compliance, and representing clients in indemnity and other commercial contract disputes relating to construction and contaminated site cleanup. Roy also works with clients to proactively manage sensitive multi-stakeholder interactions related to environmental justice, including developing creative solutions to address environmental justice community concerns. He serves as the Chair of the firm’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and is also a founding member and serves on the Board of the Black BigLaw Pipeline, Inc., a non-profit comprised of senior Black attorneys established to promote positive outcomes for Black attorneys working in large law firms.
Stefanie Marrone, Owner of Stefanie Marrone Consulting and Author of The Social Media Butterfly
Stefanie advises law firms of all sizes, professional service firms, B2B companies, professional associations and individuals with brand building and revenue generating strategies and tactics in marketing, business development, social media and communications. She also serves as outsourced chief marketing officer/marketing department for law firms.
Over her nearly 20-year legal marketing career, Stefanie has worked at and with a broad range of big law, mid-size and small firms, including Sullivan & Cromwell, Paul, Weiss, Tarter Krinsky & Drogin, Proskauer, McKee Nelson, Mayer Brown and Morrison & Foerster.
Stefanie is a frequent published author (Law360, the New York Law Journal, the Mid-Market Report, the American Lawyer and JD Supra), and has a blog, the socialmediabutterflyblog.com socialmediabutterflyblog.com [socialmediabutterflyblog.com].
She also is an active public speaker (the New York City Bar Association, the Legal Marketing Association, Ark Group, Association of Legal Administrators, Perrin Conferences, Fordham University School of Law, Columbia University and American University Washington College of Law).
Sonya Som, Partner at Heidrick & Struggles
https://www.heidrick.com/Where-We-Work/Consultants/Som_Sonya_24658
Sonya Olds Som is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles' Chicago office focusing on executive search and consulting services. She focuses on general counsel/chief legal officer and other senior roles within corporate legal departments and law firms across industries and geographies, as well as on executing board searches and providing diversity advisory services. Sonya provides diversity and inclusion consulting to Heidrick & Struggles internally and to its corporate clients, helping to strengthen the organizations’ culture of diversity and inclusion by positioning it as an integral component of the business.
Before joining Heidrick & Struggles, Sonya was a partner at another global executive search firm. For nearly a decade, she was integrally involved with various areas of recruiting within the legal field including advising organizations on their legal recruiting needs with emphasis on diversity and inclusion.
Previously, Sonya served for a decade as a labor & employment and immigration attorney at the associate and partner levels at various national, regional, and super regional law firms. During this time, in 2007, Sonya was named one of the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin's "40 Illinois Attorneys Under Forty to Watch."
In 2019, the organization Ms. JD recognized Sonya as a Woman of Inspiration in the Legal Profession and the Metropolitan Black Bar Association of New York honored her with its Presidential Award. In 2018, the National Bar Association’s General Counsel Invitational named Sonya its “Executive of the Year” and the Hispanic National Bar Association presented her with its “Ally of the Year” award. In 2014, Sonya was included on Lawyers of Color's Midwest Hotlist.
Sonya is licensed to practice law in Illinois and Georgia (though she is currently in inactive status in both states). She is a member of the American Bar Association, Chicago Bar Association, Illinois State Bar Association, Black Women Lawyers Association of Greater Chicago, National Bar Association, Cornell Black Lawyers Alumni Network (Midwest Chapter Co-Chair), Hispanic National Bar Association, National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and Metropolitan Black Bar Association of New York. Sonya is a member of the WILEF Global Advisory Board and the Advisory Board of HIGH PERFORMANCE COUNSEL (HPC). She is also an Emeritus member of the President's Council of Cornell Women.
Education:
Sonya earned her JD with a specialization in international legal affairs and concentration in business law from Cornell Law School. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English with honors from Kalamazoo College.