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Jody initially joined the firm in 2001 and has more than twenty years of experience doing civil rights and employment-related work, both as a lawyer and as a nonprofit social justice advocate. Jody spent fifteen years at BLH litigating civil rights and discrimination cases and then seven years working in the nonprofit sector before returning to BLH in 2023.

 

As an attorney with BLH, she specialized in class action, pattern-and-practice and individual race and gender employment discrimination and retaliation cases.  Her most prominent case was a class action lawsuit against the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, Wright v. Stern, 01-CV-4437 (S.D.N.Y.), 553 F.Supp.2d 337 (S.D.N.Y. 2008) and 450 F.Supp.2d 335 (S.D.N.Y. 2006),  representing a class of over 3500 African-American and Hispanic employees alleging systemic discrimination in hiring, compensation, assignment, and promotion tactics, which resulted in a transformative consent decree and a settlement of over $21 million dollars. Jody worked on the case with attorneys from NAACP LDF and Outten & Golden LLP, as well as labor economists, and oversaw the Claims Administrator’s distribution of nearly $12 million to over 2000 class members.

 

During her tenure in the nonprofit sector, Jody managed, led, trained, and collaborated with nonprofit and community leaders on capacity-building consulting and other projects for numerous nonprofits, including OneSource Center for Nonprofit Excellence, the Greater Cincinnati area’s only nonprofit resource center providing services, products and connections to strengthen the impact of area nonprofits. As OneSource Center’s Consulting Services Manager, Jody managed the delivery of professional consulting services by 100+ consultants to hundreds of nonprofit organizations. Her areas of nonprofit expertise include governance, leadership and board development, DEI, talent management, employee engagement, employment law/HR, and strategic planning.

 

Prior to joining BLH in 2001, Jody was a fellowship attorney first with the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union and then with the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project, where she was involved in developing and litigating federal and state constitutional cases concerning fair housing, sex offender registration, the state public defender system, and reproductive rights.

 

Jody clerked for the Honorable Alvin W. Thompson, Senior Judge, United States District Court, District of Connecticut. During law school, in addition to the Yale Law School Clinical Program, Jody worked at the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama and the Legal Aid Society.