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.

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.