2016 Employment Law & Legislative Conference

Keynote Speakers

  • Henry G. (Hank) Jackson, CPA

    Henry G. (Hank)
    Jackson, CPA

    Henry G. (Hank) Jackson is the president and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the world's largest HR professional Society. He previously served as the Society’s interim president and CEO, and as chief global finance and business affairs officer.

    Under Jackson’s leadership, the Society has grown to a record 290,000 members and hosted its largest-ever Annual Conference and Exposition. To better serve a diverse and more complex HR profession, the Society expanded its global reach and impact, formed partnerships with the Council for Global Immigration and SHRM’s Executive Network, HR People and Strategy, and opened its first state office in California, home to the largest concentration of HR professionals in the U.S.

    During Jackson’s tenure, the Society developed and launched its competency-based certification—the accredited SHRM-Senior Certified Professional and SHRM-Certified Professional—to further advance the HR profession. Within two years, the number of SHRM-certified professionals grew to more than 100,000 worldwide.      

    At the helm of SHRM during the economic downturn, Jackson spearheaded the Society’s initiatives on pressing HR and employment issues such as workforce readiness, veterans’ employment, and long-term unemployment. The Society has also strengthened its position as a highly sought-after voice on workplace public policy, as HR and workplace issues have increasingly been part of national discussions and public policy debates.

    Jackson believes that the HR profession is at an exciting and pivotal moment, calling it the “Decade of Human Capital.” Businesses are beginning to better understand and embrace human resource management as the most critical contributor to the strategic direction of their organizations, and the HR profession is being propelled into a key business leadership position.

    A long-tenured SHRM employee, Jackson has ensured as CEO that the organization remains an employer of choice and invests in a world-class workplace and work environment. In 2013, Washingtonian magazine recognized SHRM as a Great Place to Work in the Washington, D.C. area. 

    Jackson came to SHRM from Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he was senior vice president/chief financial officer and treasurer of the university. In this role, he oversaw the financial well-being of the university’s 11 schools and colleges, hospital, public television station, and commercial radio station. He served in several previous positions at Howard University, including comptroller, deputy comptroller, and systems accountant, before becoming senior vice president.

    Prior to joining Howard University, Jackson worked in public accounting with Hurdman Main and KMPG as senior auditor and a computer audit specialist. For several years, he was a consultant for the Southern Association of College and University Business Officers.

    Jackson earned his Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from Stonehill College in Massachusetts. He is a certified public accountant.

    Welcome and Opening Remarks

    Monday, March 14, 2016 - 8:00am to 10:00am

  • Michael P. Aitken

    Michael P.
    Aitken

    Mike Aitken has worked at SHRM since 2003 and currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Government Affairs. Prior to joining SHRM, he served for 14 years as associate director for Governmental and External Relations at the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR). Previously, Aitken worked on state public policy issues at Bonner & Associates, a public affairs firm in Washington, DC. Currently, he is based in Alexandria, VA.

     

    Countdown to November: The Washington Outlook for HR Public Policy

    Monday, March 14, 2016 - 8:00am to 10:00am
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    The Current Political and Legislative Environment and Election Forecasting

    Monday, March 14, 2016 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm

  • The Honorable Eric H. Holder Jr.

    The Honorable Eric H.
    Holder Jr.

    Eric H. Holder Jr. was born in New York City and attended public schools there, graduating from Stuyvesant High School, before earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in American History from Columbia College in 1973 and a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School in 1976.

    Upon his graduation from law school, Holder joined the Department of Justice through the Attorney General’s Honors Program. He was assigned to the newly formed Public Integrity Section, where he investigated and prosecuted corruption involving officials in local, state and federal government. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan appointed Holder to serve as an associate judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, where he presided over hundreds of criminal and civil trials during his five years on the bench. In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed Holder to serve as the United States attorney for the District of Columbia. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Holder to serve as Deputy Attorney General of the United States, a position that he held until the end of the Clinton Administration. He was the first African-American to serve as Deputy Attorney General and United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. At the request of President George W. Bush, Holder served as Acting Attorney General in 2001 pending the confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft.

    In July 2001, Holder joined the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling as a partner in the firm’s litigation practice group, where he represented clients in complex civil and criminal cases as well as internal corporate investigations.

    President Barack Obama nominated Holder to be Attorney General and the United States Senate confirmed his nomination on February 2, 2009. Holder began his service as the 82nd Attorney General of the United States the following day. He was the first African- American to serve in that position. He remained in office until April 27, 2015, becoming the third-longest-serving Attorney General in the nation’s history.

    While Attorney General, Holder oversaw the government’s efforts to address many critically important issues arising at the intersection of law and public policy, including national security investigations and prosecutions; landmark antitrust, environmental, fraud and tax cases; the defense of voting rights and marriage equality; and reform of the federal criminal justice system. In 2014, TIME magazine named Holder to its list of “100 Most Influential People,” stating that he “worked tirelessly to ensure equal justice.”

    After his departure from the Department of Justice, Holder returned to Covington & Burling and is resident in their Washington office. He focuses on complex litigation and investigatory matters that are international in scope and raise significant enforcement issues and substantial reputational concerns.

    Holder’s many civic commitments have included service on the boards of Columbia University, the National Center for Victims of Crime, the Meyer Foundation and the Save the Children Foundation, among many others. He also served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission Ad Hoc Advisory Group.

    Holder has received numerous awards and honorary degrees in recognition of his professional and civic contributions, including the NAACP “Chairman’s Award,” the Department of Justice’s “John F. Keeney Award,” the District of Columbia Bar Association’s “Beatrice Rosenberg Award,” George Washington University’s “Martin Luther King, Jr. Medal for Outstanding Service in Human Rights,” and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights’ “Robert F. Kennedy Justice Prize.” The District of Columbia Bar Association has recognized Holder as its “Lawyer of the Year,” and in 2008, the Legal Times named him as one of the “Greatest Washington Lawyers of the Past 30 Years".

    A Conversation with The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.*

    Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 8:00am to 9:00am

  • Jim Clifton

    Jim
    Clifton

    Jim Clifton has served as CEO of Gallup, a global leader in consulting and public opinion research and analytics, since 1988. Under his leadership, Gallup has expanded from a predominantly U.S.-based company to a worldwide organization with 30 offices in 20 countries and regions.

    Mr. Clifton is the creator of The Gallup Path, a metric-based economic model that establishes the linkages among human nature in the workplace, customer engagement and business outcomes. This model is used in performance management systems in more than 500 companies worldwide. His most recent innovation, the Gallup World Poll, is designed to give the world’s 7 billion citizens a voice in virtually all key global issues.
     
    In June 2015, the Clifton Foundation and Gallup announced a $30 million gift to the University of Nebraska to establish the Don Clifton Strengths Institute. The gift will support the early identification and accelerated development of thousands of gifted entrepreneurs and future business builders.
     
    Mr. Clifton is the author of The Coming Jobs War and coauthor of Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder, as well as many articles on global leadership. His blog appears regularly in the Influencer section of LinkedIn and on Gallup.com’s Chairman’s Blog. He serves on several boards and is Chairman of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. He has received honorary degrees from Jackson State, Medgar Evers and Bellevue Universities.

    Jenny Yang

    Jenny
    Yang

    Ms. Yang was named Chair by President Barack Obama on September 1, 2014. She was first nominated to serve on the Commission by President Obama on August 2, 2012, and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on April 25, 2013, to serve a term expiring July 1, 2017. Ms. Yang had served as Vice Chair of the EEOC since April 28, 2014.

    As a member of the Commission and Vice Chair, Yang has led a comprehensive review of the agency's systemic program, which addresses issues of alleged discrimination that have broad impact on an industry, profession, company or geographic area. She also represents the agency on the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and on the White House Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force.

    Throughout her career in the private, government, and nonprofit sectors, Ms. Yang has worked to ensure fairness and equal opportunity in the workplace. Ms. Yang was a partner of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC. She joined the firm in 2003, and represented employees across the country in numerous complex civil rights and employment actions. As chair of the firm's hiring and diversity committee, Ms. Yang gained experience with the myriad issues employers confront in making hiring and other personnel decisions.

    Prior to that, Ms. Yang served as a Senior Trial Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Employment Litigation Section, where she enforced federal laws prohibiting discrimination in employment by state and local government employers from 1998 to 2003. Before that, she worked at the National Employment Law Project to enforce the workplace rights of garment workers. Ms. Yang clerked for the Honorable Edmund Ludwig on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

    The Will of the World Has Changed – And So Must We

    Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 12:15pm to 2:00pm

  • Doris Kearns Goodwin

    Doris Kearns
    Goodwin
    Doris Kearns Goodwin is a world-renowned presidential historian, public speaker and Pulitzer Prizewinning, New York Times #1 best-selling author. Since 2020 she has served as executive producer for the History Channel’s miniseries events Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, with more to come!

    Her seventh book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, was published in September 2018 to critical acclaim and became an instant New York Times bestseller. A culmination of Goodwin’s five-decade career of studying the American presidents focusing on Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson, the book provides an accessible and essential road map for aspiring and established leaders in every field, and for all of us in our everyday lives.

    Goodwin’s career as a presidential historian and author was inspired when as a 24-year-old graduate student at Harvard she was selected to join the White House Fellows, one of America’s most prestigious programs for leadership and public service. Goodwin worked with Johnson in the White House and later assisted him in the writing of his memoirs.

    She then wrote Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, which became a national bestseller and achieved critical acclaim. It was re-released in 2019 with a new foreword highlighting LBJ’s accomplishments in domestic affairs that have stood the test of time.

    Goodwin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys was adapted into an award-winning five-part television miniseries. Her memoir Wait Till Next Year is the heartwarming story of growing up loving her family and baseball. Her sixth book, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, won the Carnegie Medal and is being developed into a film. Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln served as the basis for Steven Spielberg’s hit film Lincoln and was awarded the prestigious Lincoln Prize, the inaugural Book Prize for American History, and the Lincoln Leadership Prize.

    Well known for her appearances and commentary on television, Goodwin is frequently seen in documentaries including Ken Burns’ The History of Baseball and The Roosevelts: An Intimate History; and on news and cable networks, and shows including Meet The Press and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She played herself as a teacher on The Simpsons and a historian on American Horror Story.

    Goodwin graduated magna cum laude from Colby College. She earned a doctorate degree in Government from Harvard University, where she taught Government, including a course on the American Presidency. Among her many honors and awards, Goodwin was awarded the Charles Frankel Prize, the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal, the New England Book Award, as well as the Carl Sandburg Literary Award. Goodwin recently founded Pastimes Productions with Beth Laski to develop and produce film, television and digital projects.

    Goodwin lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She was the first woman to enter the Boston Red Sox locker room in 1979, and is a devoted fan of the World Series-winning team.

    Every Four Years: The 2016 Presidential Campaign

    Tuesday, March 15, 2016 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm

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