All Attendees Welcome
Workplace Advocate: How to Counter Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism at Work (CLE)
Featuring Mark Donig, Sara Wyn Kane, Steven Phillips
Speakers
Mark Donig
Of Counsel, Grossman Young & Hammond LLC; Millennium Fellow, Atlantic Council
Mark Donig is an attorney in Washington, D.C., whose practice fuses international transactions, commercial diplomacy, venture capital, and immigration. Mark also serves as a Millennium Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
In addition to his corporate work, Mark has co-led or advised on multiple operations to defend dissidents and secure the release of hostages from Iran, Uganda, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Gaza and elsewhere. Mark is a two-time recipient (2017 and 2019) of The Certificate of Special Recognition from the Office of the Speaker of the House for his humanitarian and diplomatic work in the Middle East and Africa.
Mark serves as board member of the National Library of Israel and the James W. Foley Memorial Foundation, and Regional President of United Hatzalah’s Board for Northern California. He is the co-founder of the African Middle Eastern Leadership Project (AMEL). Finally, Mark serves as Global Ambassador for the ADIR Challenge, as well as on the advisory board of the Future Resilience Fund and the Helen Diller Berkeley Institute of Jewish Law and Israel Studies (UC Berkeley School of Law). Mark holds a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law, an M.A. from Reichman University, and a B.A. (Public Policy) from Stanford University.
Sara Wyn Kane
Founding Partner, Valli Kane & Vagnini LLP
Sara Wyn Kane one of the founding partners at Valli Kane & Vagnini LLP (“VKV”), has devoted over twenty (20) years of her legal career fighting for her clients Civil Rights. Ms. Kane honed her litigation skills while working as an Assistant Corporation Counsel in the Manhattan Trial Unit for the City of New York. While defending the City’s employees and the City itself, Ms. Kane conducted and defended hundreds of depositions, participated in extensive motion practice, pre-trial and trial work.
Following her time at Corporation Counsel, Ms. Kane represented plaintiffs in employment discrimination disputes while working for a NY civil rights litigation firm. Ms. Kane supervised a team of attorneys in the prosecution and settlement of numerous mass action race, gender and age discrimination cases involving thousands of plaintiffs, resulting in millions of dollars in settlements for her clients. Since forming VKV Ms. Kane has focused her practice on the negotiation, mediation and litigation of individual as well as complex mass, class and/or collective actions primarily in the areas of employment discrimination, sexual harassment and hostile work environment, wage and hour violations and whistleblower/Qui Tam cases.
Ms. Kane has been co-lead counsel in a number of mass/class/collective action cases against a wide variety of national and international companies throughout the country. These include but are not limited to: representing a class of women in a Hostile Work Environment and Gender Discrimination action against Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp., (settled $7.15M in DCD); represented Parking Production Assistants against numerous major film and television companies, including HBO, Warner Brothers, ABC, NBCUniversal, SONY, FOX, CBS (FLSA & NYLL claims settled for a combined total of $30M-SDNY); represented workers in an environmental racism case against Sara Lee ($4M, EDTX); represented Assistant Store Managers against Marshalls (TJX) in a wage and hour misclassification case (Training Claims Settled- $4,750,000, ASM case settled for $31,500,000) -DCMA); represented managers in a misclassification case against Panda Express (settled – SDNY) and Allstate Insurance (ERISA, Breach of Contract & Age Claims-resolved – EDPA).
Steven Phillips
Co-Founder, JewishERGs
Born and raised in London, Steven built a career in technology, solving large scale IT and Cyber Security challenges. While at Amazon, he founded their Jewish Employee Group, igniting his passion for building Jewish communities and educating others about Jewish identity.
In 2022, Steven co-founded JewishERGs, now the world’s largest network of Jewish Employee Resource Group (ERG) leaders. The organization helps establish and grow Jewish ERGs globally, fostering inclusion in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
In 2024, Steven left his technology career behind to focus full-time on JewishERGs. Since then, he has created and led two trips to Israel, partnered with Clal on groundbreaking research into Jewish workplace experiences, and has built a thriving global community of Jewish leaders.