GC and HR: Closing the Gender Gap & Ensuring Pay Equity

Tom Maher is the Senior Vice President & Deputy General Counsel at Dow Jones & Company.

Stacey Chervin Sigda is a Senior Vice President, Associate General Counsel & Global Employment Counsel at Sotheby’s, the NYSE listed, multi-national art auction house. She began employment at Sotheby’s as an Assistant Vice President and Associate General Counsel in 1999. Since that time her role has expanded to include responsibility for all employment law, employee benefit plans and executive compensation issues world-wide. She advises on executive compensation agreements, equity compensation plans, health and welfare plans, and serves as counsel to the Company’s Retirement Administrative Savings Committee that oversees the Company’s qualified and non-qualified plans. She advises on global employment, benefit, pension and labor law matters and oversees related litigation. She also handles art law litigation concerning title and authenticity claims and other commercial litigation.

Prior to working at Sotheby’s, she was an associate at Rogers & Wells (acquired by Clifford Chance LLP) and prior to that was an associate at Proskauer Rose LLP.

Ms. Chervin obtained her J.D. from New York University Law School and was the Senior Articles Editor of the Annual Survey of American Law in which she published “Reinstatement and Promotion to Partnership Ann Hopkins v. PriceWaterhouse”. She graduated from Cornell University, magna cum laude, and was named a Merrill Presidential Scholar. She was also a visiting scholar at Oxford University, Wadham College.

Ms. Chervin is admitted in New York State, the Southern and Eastern District Courts of New York and the Second Circuit.

She has been a member of the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Committee, Art Law Committee and Federal Legislation Committee of the New York City Bar Association, National Association of Stock Plan Professionals, Westchester/Fairfield Employment Lawyers’ Group and Society for Human Resource Management. She has also been a speaker for the Practicing Law Institute.

Denise M. Visconti handles a broad variety of employment litigation matters, most often stemming from claims arising under the California Labor Code and the Fair Labor Standards Act, alleging overtime misclassification and other wage and hour violations.

A large portion of her practice involves the defense of clients in class action litigation, particularly in wage and hour matters, along with representative actions and private attorney general matters.

Denise also has extensive experience conducting pay equity audits for all types of employers, from start-ups to Fortune 50 companies, and helped develop the Littler Pay Equity Assessment™, including counseling employers on a broad range of state and federal issues related to pay equity, from compliance, to updating policies and job descriptions, to training managers and recruiters, and more.

She appears in state and federal courts and has handled arbitrations in various forums, including the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the American Arbitration Association, and JAMS. She is particularly familiar with the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and federal, state and local laws and regulations pertaining to gender identity and expression.

Denise regularly provides advice and counseling to clients regarding gender identity and gender expression-related issues, gender transitions in the workplace, and various issues relating to domestic partnerships and same-sex couples. She also has given a number of presentations to human resource professionals, managers, and employees on valuing diversity and creating and maintaining a diverse workplace.

Denise previously served as the San Diego Office Managing Shareholder. Prior to that, she served as the San Diego Office representative of the Associates Committee.

Prior to joining Littler Mendelson in January 2004, Denise served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Louisa S. Porter, Presiding Magistrate Judge, Southern District of California and also served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Peter A. Nowinski, Eastern District of California. She spent her third year of law school working in the Immigration and Human Rights Legal Clinic helping newly-arriving immigrants obtain political asylum. She also was student director for the Legislative Journal.

Eben serves as the Chief Labor & Employment Counsel for Honeywell’s Performance Materials and Technologies (PMT) business group, based in Morris Plains, New Jersey. In this role, he has worldwide responsibility for all labor and employment legal matters (including litigation, collective bargaining, counseling, compliance and corporate transactions) for PMT’s global workforce of over 28,000 employees in more than 100 countries.

Prior to joining Honeywell in 2010, Eben was an attorney in the Labor & Employment group of an international law firm (Proskauer) and spent time in their New York and Boston offices. He is a frequent speaker and panelist on issues involving the NLRA, union organizing and negotiations, and various employment law aspects of managing a global workforce. He has also served as an adjunct professor, teaching employment law at NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. Eben is a graduate of Colgate University (BA) and Boston College Law School (J.D.). He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert J. Cordy, on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.