Description
I served for several years as an attorney in the Office of the Solicitor for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), which covers a five-state region and is responsible for all legal actions brought by any of the twenty DOL Agencies. In that role, I litigated enforcement proceedings and represented agency officials in the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), the Wage and Hour Division, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs (OWCP), and the Employment Standards Administration (ESA). I have also served as in-house corporate counsel for TXU Corp., and as a Senior in a national employment firm, Fisher & Phillips, LLP (“FP”). In these roles, I’ve provide employment relations counseling and representation to a variety of retail, and manufacturing, and construction clients, as well as for the Dallas County Public Hospital System (DCCD) and the Grand Prairie Independent School District. I regularly handle matters involving Title VII, ADA, FMLA, and reduction in work-force issues. I have also successfully negotiated several employment matters that involved NLRB approval processes and negotiated contracts and regulations that required union consensus for implementation. In 2009 I was able to open a private employment law practice, which I currently maintain. In 2010, in addition to my employment practice, I joined the Grand Prairie Independent School District (GPISD) as part of its CTE advisory team. In that capacity, I facilitated the creation of one of the School District’s first “Programs of Choice”, The Center for Law and Public Safety (CLPS). As part of my duties, I lead a team of teachers in creating and implementing a State approved curriculum for a number of CTE pathway courses. I evaluated and facilitated the implementation of strategies regarding House Bill 5 (Texas 83rd Legislative Session), including college advising and career readiness processes. I have successfully directed, wrote, and/or facilitated several grants, including a $5.4 million TTIP Grant and a $1.15 million Education Opportunities Center Grant. For the last few years, while working for GPISD, I’ve reduced my active litigation docket to focus primarily on delivering employment law updates and analysis for HR workshops in connection with SHRM and other employment groups. I also research, prepared, implemented updates to employment handbooks and hiring policies for several organizational clients. I am privileged to have had many incredible career opportunities over the past fifteen years. With each experience I have improved personally, advanced professionally, obtained new skill sets, and refined others. In this way, I have been able to acquire an uncommon degree of practical knowledge and legal expertise that unique among employment attorneys. I am now looking to re-focus my legal skills entirely in the field of HR and employee relations.
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