Brooksley Born Receives Prestigious Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award
March 2010 - Arnold & Porter's Brooksley Born is one of five recipients of the 20th annual Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award. The award, established by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, recognizes and celebrates the accomplishments of women lawyers who have excelled in their field and have paved the way to success for other women lawyers.
Ms. Born, a retired partner at Arnold & Porter and chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from 1996 to 1999, will be honored at a luncheon on August 8, 2010 in San Francisco at the ABA Annual Meeting.
Ms. Born was one of the first women to become a forceful and effective leader in the American Bar Association. In 1977, she was the first woman appointed to the prestigious ABA Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary, which evaluates all nominees for federal judgeships. She led the effort in rewriting the standards for evaluation of judicial nominees, ensuring that more women and minorities could be appointed to the federal courts. Ms. Born served on the ABA's board of governors and is a founder of the ABA Women's Caucus. She also chairs the board of the National Women's Law Center.
Ms. Born is a 2009 recipient of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation's Profile in Courage Award. The Foundation cited Ms. Born's political courage, as chair of the CFTC, in sounding early warnings about conditions that contributed to the current global financial crisis.
Ms. Born joined Arnold & Porter as an associate in 1965. She was the head of the firm's derivatives practice and represented domestic and international clients in legislative, litigation, regulatory, and transactional matters involving derivatives transactions and financial markets.
Additional 2010 honorees include Elizabeth J. Cabraser (Partner, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP and leader in the plaintiffs' complex litigation/class action bar; in San Francisco, CA); Willie Stevenson Glanton (Civil Rights Activist and the first African American woman elected to the Iowa Legislature General Assembly; in Des Moines, IA); M. Margaret McKeown (Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the first woman partner at Perkins Coie LLP; in San Diego, CA); and Laura Stein (Senior Vice President-General Counsel, The Clorox Company and the first woman general counsel at two Fortune 500 companies; in Oakland, CA).