Retention and Advancement Subcommittee

A message from our Co-Chairs:

The Subcommittee on Retention and Advancement was initiated to address the challenges facing women in the intellectual property law workplace that have resulted in more women than men leaving the IP profession and a lack of women leaders within their workplace's management structure.  Although there is anecdotal evidence of the challenges and issues that face women in the IP profession, there has been no reliable survey evidence on these topics.  The Subcommittee addresses these concerns for women and their employers with the following agenda. 

This subcommittee participates in programming to support women in achieving their career goals including developing leadership skills, seeking out sponsors and mentors in the workplace, and providing other educational programs at the AIPLA meetings.  A major project of the committee has been the inclusion of questions on the state of the profession on retention and advancement in the AIPLA bi-annual membership survey with answers broken out by gender, age and other factors.  Starting in 2011 and continuing with the 2013 survey questions were included on why practitioners were leaving the profession, job satisfaction criteria, and career goals, among other topics.  Also, the AIPLA Economic Survey is now broken out by gender in order to obtain reliable data on advancement in corporations and law firms, pay comparisons and other financial information.  The AIPLA has retained Annette Kahler, a renowned expert in women’s contributions to the innovative ecosphere, to analyze the information and prepare a paper reporting the results from collected data. 

The subcommittee will continue to work on the membership survey and economic surveys to obtain the most relevant information on retention and advancement in order to provide programming for the AIPLA members on this topic and to encourage and assist our women members to seek their individual career goals.

Meg_Boulware.jpg
Meg Boulware – Co-Chair
Melissa Buss
Melissa Buss – Co-Chair

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