The St. Louis Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) celebrated its 2018 Diversity Summer Kickoff, a celebration and recognition of two ACC programs, on June 5 at the Anheuser Busch Tour Center.
One is the Street Law Program, a pipeline program for high school students where they are taught basics of intellectual property law, contracts law, and employment law. The program had 87 students this year, nearly double of last year’s participation number, and around 50 volunteer lawyers helping.
The second is the Diversity Summer Internship Program, where the ACC pairs five law students from Washington University, St. Louis University, and Howard University with five corporations, including AT&T, Bunge, Bunzl, Wells Fargo, and Enterprise Holdings.
“It’s very important to have different points of view, different experiences,” said ACC St. Louis Chapter President Toni Douaihy, who is vice president, assistant general counsel at Mac’s.
“Whether it’s because of race, age, sex, socioeconomic background, people come to the table with different experiences so they see problems differently and might come up with different solutions for those problems.”
The five students were chosen by the diversity committee of ACC St. Louis out of nearly 50 applicants. They started working only a week prior to the celebration.
“Believe it or not, I already have four projects that I’ve been assigned,” intern Raquel Maragh said. “I had six meetings today, back to back, all morning, and it’s been so amazing.”
Maragh attends Washington University School of Law and is interning with Enterprise Holdings.
According to her, diversity doesn’t mean one thing. Maragh is an immigrant, born and raised in Jamaica, a woman, and the first in her family to go to university or law school.
“It doesn’t matter where you’re from, and it doesn’t matter who you’re parents are,” Maragh said. “What matters is who you are, and what you make yourself. We are told that we can’t do so many things, but when we stop believing what people tell us, and we start believing in ourselves and have our own confidence, then we can really accomplish anything.”
The St. Louis Chapter has won chapter of the year in the global ACC organizations three times. Last year it won the Gold Chapter of Distinction, and also got special recognition for its diversity efforts.
Jan Alonzo, founder of the Diversity Summer Internship Program, said that her reason for starting the program was “a commitment to diversity.”
“St. Louis has issues with that, and the legal profession has not done as well with diversity as other professions, including the medical field and engineering, which are doing much better in getting representation of minorities and other ethnic diversities,” said Alonzo, who is senior vice president, general counsel at UniGroup.
“We are very happy to participate in something that we think is part of the solution to the imbalance in diversity in the legal profession.”
This is the seventh year that the program has been running, sponsored by Thompson Coburn LLP all seven years, and the ACC has helped over 40 interns in the process. Many of the interns have graduated from law school and went on to professions in the law field.
“This program done right will really change the trajectory of a person’s career,” Alonzo said. “Because they come in after the first year, and then they learn so much that summer that they’ll be more confident and they’ll be able to perform better even in law school in the second year. Having the credential on their resume of having this internship at a very strong company in St. Louis, that helps them to get a good job after their second year, which often leads to full-time employment.”
For more information on ACC, visit https://www.acc.com.
