Empowering Workers' Rights Attorneys
Please join us for our special two-part Gala celebration of our NELA community. We welcome your support whether or not you can join us in person.
Included in Convention Registration
NELA will honor three of your colleagues for their distinguished service, inspiring leadership, and strong commitment to the cause of justice for workers.
NELA’s 2024 Distinguished Service honorees are The Honorable Bernice B. Donald (ret.) (TN) and Bruce A. Fredrickson (DC). Camille Fundora Rodriguez will receive NELA’s 2024 Spotlight Award, which recognizes a NELA leader who represents our future. Click on a photo to read more about the honoree.
NELA has the immense privilege of presenting a special distinguished service award to a true hero, The Honorable Bernice B. Donald (Ret.), a trailblazer with an extraordinary record of public service. In January 2023, she retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, concluding a 40-year judicial career which began when she won election to the General Sessions Criminal Court for Shelby County, TN and became the first African American woman judge in the state. Judge Donald later became the first African American woman to serve as a U.S. Bankruptcy judge and made history again first, when President Bill Clinton nominated her to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, and then when she was appointed to the Sixth Circuit by President Barack Obama. While Judge Donald’s long-standing involvement with NELA may be a small component of her countless contributions to American jurisprudence, it has been highly significant to us. She is one of our most popular speakers at CLE events, and her pioneering work on implicit bias has elevated the national conversation about systemic inequities in the law and legal profession. Following her retirement from the bench, Judge Donald joined Burch, Porter & Johnson in Memphis. A nationally recognized third-party neutral, Judge Donald serves as an arbitrator or mediator in a wide range of specialized areas and regularly serves as a court-appointed special master. A 1979 graduate of the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, Judge Donald also holds an LL.M. from Duke University School of Law and an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Suffolk University.
Our colleague Bruce A. Fredrickson (Webster & Fredrickson, PLLC, DC) exemplifies the very best of NELA. He has had a successful, pioneering career as a plaintiffs’ employment lawyer, including having led the class action against the U.S. Information Agency which after 23 years resulted in a settlement of $508 million, the largest settlement in the history of Title VII. A former president of NELA and the Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association (MWELA), Bruce has generously devoted countless hours to supporting other NELA lawyers, including as a frequent speaker at our CLE events. He has played a key role in advancing NELA’s legislative priorities, including helping to lead our charge to secure the 2004 enactment of the provision of the Civil Rights Tax Relief Act eliminating double taxation of attorneys’ fees in employment and civil rights cases. Bruce was the founding president of the National Institute for Workers’ Rights, NELA’s public interest organization, and currently serves on the Institute’s Board. He teaches trial advocacy at American University’s Washington College of Law and an undergraduate law course at Dartmouth College, his alma mater. He earned his JD from The George Washington University Law School.
NELA is proud to present our 2024 Spotlight Award to Camille Fundora Rodriguez (PA), a shareholder in Berger Montague PC’s Employment & Unpaid Wages practice group where her practice focuses on wage and hour class and collective actions arising under the Fair Labor Standards Act and state laws. Her leadership in advancing DEI issues at her firm of more than 100 attorneys and her involvement in NELA, including as a CLE speaker and member of the Annual Convention Committee, demonstrates that she is a NELA leader who represents our future. Camille is Berger Montague’s DEI Coordinator and leads the firm’s DEI Task Force, which enacts a broad range of diversity efforts, including efforts to hire and retain attorneys and non-attorneys from diverse backgrounds and to foster an inclusive work environment, including through Firmwide trainings on implicit bias issues that may impact the workplace. She is a graduate of Widener University School of Law. In 2023, Camille was named as one of The Best Lawyers in America: Ones to Watch, received the “Diversity Initiative” award by The Legal Intelligencer, and was an honoree for the “Diversity in Business Awards” by the Philadelphia Business Journal.
NELA’s Gala Celebration will take place after dinner (on your own) on Friday, June 28. Please join us for a fun and festive evening of music and dancing. The Gala is a separate ticketed event and includes sweet and savory snacks. Each Gala attendee will receive two complimentary drink tickets courtesy of Dundon Advisers LLC.
Our most important fundraiser, the Gala is vital to NELA’s mission of empowering workers’ rights attorneys through legal training, promoting a fair judiciary, and advocating for laws and policies that level the playing field for workers. Proceeds fuel our community as we develop new CLEs and other knowledge- and career-building opportunities and bolster our committees, practice groups, and Affiliates. Your support ensures that NELA’s voice is heard in our nation’s capital and in its courtrooms on significant workers’ rights issues.
NELA offers a wide range of sponsorship levels and flexible payment schedules so everyone in our community is able to participate. Sponsorship opportunities starting at $150 include recognition in the 2024 Convention Program Guide, on our website, and at the Convention. Table sponsorships begin at $3,000. Pre-event sponsors will be listed in the Gala invitation if your pledge is received by April 30.
For more information, or to make a pledge, please contact Leah A. Hofkin, NELA’s Director of Development (Tel: (415) 625-5421; Email: lhofkin@niwr.org.
Armstrong & Associates
Bennett & Belfort, PC
Bernabei & Kabat, PLLC
Law Offices of Kathleen Cahill, LLC
Cashdan & Kane, PLLC
Deutsch Atkins & Kleinfeldt, PC
Gaul and Dumont
Henrichsen Law Group PLLC
Horne Daller LLC
Hynes & Kreuser, SC
Law Offices of David L. Lee
Maine Employee Rights Group
Mason, Griffin & Pierson, PC
Messing, Rudavsky & Weliky PC
O’Malley & Madden, PC
Pontikes Law, LLC
The Villegas Law Firm, APC
Bracker & Marcus LLC
Chet Levitt Fund for Employment Law
Joyce L. Collier
Costello, Mains & Silverman, LLC
Jamie S. Franklin
Shelby Leighton
Law Offices of Colleen M. McLaughlin
Pedro A. Valverde
Ashley O. Westby & Sean P. McKee
Patrick Cowlin
Law Office of Howard Mark Fine
The Law Office of Lenore C. Garon, PLLC
Patricia Losacker
McElroy Law Firm
Nisar Law Group PC
Rintoul Law, LLC
Nina B. Shapiro
As of May 1, 2024
NELA Headquarters
1800 Sutter Street, Suite 210
Concord, CA 94520
(415) 296-7629
Washington DC Office
C/O AFL-CIO 815 Black Lives Matter Plaza NW
Washington DC, 20006
Email: nelahq@nelahq.org
Fax: (866) 593-7521
© 2000–2024 NELA. All Rights ReservedBernard Alexander, III prosecutes demanding private and public sector employment cases. He has tried over sixty cases to verdict with seven- and eight-figure judgments for claims of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation based on gender, race, age, sex, sexual orientation, and disability, among other things. Over the last 9 months his verdicts include: (1) $3 million for a security guard terminated for “job abandonment” after he took emergency leave from work to care for his school age daughter (February 2018); (2) $5.3 million for a 25-year FedEx employee fired after not having his disability accommodated (March 2019); (3) $1.3 million for CFRA retaliation, for a 29-year employee terminated before his return from leave (April 2019); and $100,000 in a Title IX retaliation case where a Girls’ Soccer Coach complained of unequal treatment compared to boys sports (Sept 2019). Board Member of the National Employment Lawyers Association; Past Chair of the California Employment Law Association; 2016 CELA Joe Posner Award Recipient; 2019 Top 100 Attorneys in California; Top 75 California Labor and Employment Lawyer (2012 to present); Top 100 Southern California Super Lawyers (2015 to present); American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA): Associate 2013.