Please join us for a very special meeting of the InterLaw Diversity Forum’s LGBT+ Network celebrating Black History Month by looking at the intersection of LGBT+ with  Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME).

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We will be speaking with a panel of BAME and LGBT+ professionals who will discuss their challenges and triumphs with us, as well as observations on how we can be better allies to our intersectional colleagues.

• Rob Berkley MBE, Founder and Managing Editor at BlkOutUK.com

Award-winning busybody, recovering academic and reforming social reformer, Rob is currently developing BlackOutUK, a community owned media asset for and by black gay men. He recently completed a stint advising the BBC on accountability and audience engagement. Impatient with injustice and exasperated by wasted potential, he volunteers on the boards of Baring Foundation, and Doc Society, has previously served on the boards of LGBT rights charity Stonewall, the Equality and Diversity Forum, and been Chair of Naz Project (NPL). He was Director of the racial justice think-tank Runnymede Trust 2009-14. Alongside his academic writing on education, social justice and community organizing, a recently appointed Simon Industrial Fellow at the University of Manchester, he has lectured across the UK and beyond, and written for The Guardian and The Independent on social justice and movement-building. His current fixation on forms of collaborative ownership, innovations in media technology and their potential for social justice means that he spends a lot of time on his phone and calls it ‘research’. Dr Berkeley was awarded an MBE in 2015 for services to equality. 

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• Yetunde Dania, Partner, Trowers & Hamlins, Real Estate Litigation Partner

Yetunde is a partner in the Trowers & Hamlins' Property Litigation team. She specialises in residential landlord and tenant litigation and issues on behalf of landlords in the social housing sector. 

She joined Trowers & Hamlins' in 2011 to help set up their Birmingham office. 

Yetunde read Law at Leicester Polytechnic, before going onto to study for a LLM in Human Rights & Civil Liberties at Leicester University before studying the Legal Practice Course in its first year at De Montfort University. Yetunde qualified as a solicitor in 1996 and made partner in 2005. 

Yetunde takes a special interest in mentoring and encouraging young people to achieve their full potential having benefited from people taking the time to mentor and support her from a young age. Yetunde's personal mantra is to "live life to the fullest" and "Believe that you can achieve anything you put your mind to”.

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• Krishna Omkar, Senior Associate, King & Spalding

Krishna Omkar practises in international mergers and acquisitions, private equity, and capital markets transactions at King & Spalding. He is actively involved in the intersection of business and equality, served as pro bono counsel in the decriminalisation of same sex relations in India, and was invited by the UN Under Secretary General to host the UN’s consultation on LGBTQI rights this year. Krishna has been named a Future Leader by the Financial Times, and received a 2019 Asian Achievers Award.

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• Daniel Winterfeldt, Partner, Reed Smith; Chair, InterLaw Diversity Forum (Moderator)

Daniel is a partner in Reed Smith’s Global Capital Markets practice. 

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Daniel founded the Forum for US Securities Lawyers in London in 2006 to address US securities issues in the London market across law firms, banks and intermediaries. The Forum was short-listed by the British Legal Awards in 2009 for ‘Law Firm Innovation’. The Forum was 'Highly Commended" by the FT Innovative Lawyers Awards in 2016 in the category ‘Innovation in Navigating Regulation’.

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Daniel is also the founder and chair of the InterLaw Diversity Forum, which seeks to promote meritocracy and inclusion for diverse groups in the legal sector. The InterLaw Diversity Forum currently has more than 6000 members from over 300 law firms and 500 corporates and financial institutions. Since its founding in 2008, the InterLaw Diversity Forum has expanded its scope to encompass all strands of diversity and inclusion (including social mobility), with a particular focus on cultural change in the workplace and 'multiple identities'/intersectionality. The InterLaw Diversity Forum was "Highly Commended" by the FT Innovative Lawyers Awards in 2016 for 'Innovation in Human Resources". 

Daniel was named the "Legal Innovator of the Year" at the FT Innovative Lawyers Awards in 2012 for his work in capital markets and diversity and inclusion. 

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Daniel was a member of the Equality & Diversity Committee at the Law Society of England & Wales for six years and is a member of the Judicial Diversity Forum organised by the Judicial Appointments Commission.

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Daniel was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States in 2013.

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Thanks to Gowling WLG for generously hosting this event!

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