Lucinda Soon
Co-Chair
Lucinda Soon is a legal ethics lawyer, organisational psychologist, academic researcher and consultant to the legal sector. Her work focuses on applying psychology to legal practice to develop ethical and healthy workplaces in law. She is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Business and Law at Birkbeck, University of London, and a visiting lecturer at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. Within the Professional Law Institute, she leads the Psychology for Legal Practitioners module on the MSc Law and Professional Practice program. Lucinda is a solicitor of England and Wales and a member of the British Psychological Society. She is also a Board trustee for LawCare, the mental health and wellbeing charity for the UK legal profession, and an officer of the IBA Academic and Professional Development Committee.
Email: lucinda.soon@kcl.ac.uk
Desi Vlahos
Co-Chair
Desi is an Australian Legal Practitioner and Mentor at Leo Cussen, Centre for Law, Victoria, Australia. She was admitted as a solicitor in the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2005 and has practiced in mid-tier, suburban and private firms. In 2013, Desi completed a Graduate Diploma of Education with a focus on legal studies and literature. As a certified mental health first aid trainer, Desi is a strong advocate for mental health, the well-being of new lawyers and the profession as a whole. She regularly presents at conferences in Australia as an ambassador for mentally healthy workplaces. In 2019 she contributed to a book chapter on time perspective in relation to wellbeing and productivity in Lexis Nexis’ ‘Wellness for Law: Making Wellness Core Business.’ Most recently Desi joined the International Bar Association’s Wellbeing Taskforce charged with tackling the problem of poor mental health among the world’s lawyers and in promoting policies and working practices to help to improve wellbeing within the legal profession.
Contact: dvlahos@leocussen.edu.au
Adriana Castro
Adriana is a BLP Partner in the San José office. She specializes in the practice areas of Business Law and Telecommunications, Media & Technology. In addition, she has experience in Dispute Resolution and family-owned business issues.
For over 17 years, she has advised national and transnational companies setting up in Costa Rica as well as in day-to-day matters. Adriana also leads complex cross-border transactions across Latin America and the Caribbean. She is highly regarded by local and multinational clients and has become a trusted advisor in the biggest transactions in the region. Her expertise also includes restructuring, the design and execution of corporate structures, shareholder conflict and organizational aspects of family businesses.
She is described as a lawyer focused on developing and understanding the business of her clients, with a comprehensive vision and great attention to detail, as well as highlighting the clarity of her answers.
Adriana was a Private Law professor at the University of Costa Rica for three years. She is currently the Co-Vice Chari of the the Young Lawyers’ Committee of the International Bar Association (IBA) as well as the Young Lawyer initiatives officer at the Latin American Regional Forum of the IBA.
Locally, she is also a board member of Fundación Jóvenes por Costa Rica, an organization that seeks to promote better economic conditions for younger Costa Ricans by promoting projects that will have an impact in generating jobs, entrepreneurship qualities and better education. Moreover, she is one of the founders and the executive director of the Catalina Vega Foundation, an organization that helps hospitals provide for better facilities for hospitalized babies.
In addition, Adriana participates as an active member of the board of directors of several family-owned businesses.
She joined the BLP team as a legal assistant in 2003 before becoming an associate in 2007. In 2017 she was named Partner of the firm. Previously, she was assistant to the presidency of the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica.
Contact: acastro@blplegal.com
Antoinette Moriarty
Antoinette Moriarty is a psychotherapist and organisational consultant. Over the past 20 years she has assisted lawyers, legal teams and law firms to integrate a psychologically informed approach to legal practice. She is particularly interested in the interplay between psychological insight, identity and professional success. Antoinette is the clinical lead of the Law Society of Ireland’s Psychological Services, and the developer of ‘Shrink Me; Psychology of a Lawyer’, a unique feature of Irish professional legal education.
Contact: A.Moriarty@LawSociety.ie
Banke Olagbegi-Oloba
Banke Olagbegi-Oloba is a Nigerian lawyer, Researcher, Law teacher, Mediator and Arbitrator.
She currently lectures at the Faculty of Law, Department of Jurisprudence and International Law, Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State Nigeria. She is the immediate past Treasurer (2018-2020) of the Nigerian Bar Association; American Bar Association Section of International Law's liaison to the Nigerian Bar; current Secretary & Diversity and Inclusion officer, IBA Academic and Professional Development Committee, Governing Council member, Institute of Chartered Mediators and Conciliators (ICMC) in Nigeria and pioneer chair, ICMC Akure, Ondo State Branch.
She has published peer reviewed articles in several local and international journals. She has attended, facilitated and presented in several local and international conferences.
Her research and practice areas include International Law, Arbitration and Mediation amongst others.
Contact: victoria.olagbegi-oloba@aaua.edu.ng
Chris Owen
Chris is a member of the Professional Wellbeing Commission of the IBA and past Co-Chair of the European Regional Forum. He promotes practices, policies and new ways of working that encourage wellbeing in the legal workplace. His interest in the area comes primarily from his experience as a corporate partner working in the City as well as many years of study and practice around wellbeing. He seeks to reconcile the practical realities of a high intensity workplace with the need to promote a safe and supportive work environment. He lectures internationally on different aspects of wellbeing including individual skill based learning and effective institutional working practices. In his spare time, he is a mindfulness and wellbeing coach working both on-line and within his local community in Southeast London. Chris has an MBA in Legal Practice Management from Nottingham Law School.
Contact: chris.owen883@gmail.com
Deborah Enix-Ross
Deborah Enix-Ross is Senior Advisor, Global Engagement, for the International Dispute Resolution Group at Debevoise & Plimpton and a member of the firm’s ESG Group. She served, from January 1998 through September 2002, as a Senior Legal Officer and Head of the External Relations and Information Section of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center in Geneva, Switzerland. Before joining WIPO, Ms. Enix-Ross was the Director of International Litigation for the Dispute Analysis and Corporate Recovery Services Group (DA&CR) of Price Waterhouse, and, before that, served, for seven years, as the American representative to the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Court of Arbitration.
Contact: denixross@debevoise.com
Elizabeth Rimmer
Elizabeth Rimmer is the CEO of LawCare, the mental health charity for the UK legal sector. She started her working life as a solicitor specialising in clinical negligence, practicing at Leigh Day. She joined LawCare from the Institute of Group Analysis, a membership and training organisation for group psychotherapists. Before that she headed up Alzheimer’s Disease International, a worldwide federation of Alzheimer associations. Elizabeth is Co-Chair of the Helplines Partnership (national charity for support and advice services) and a member of the International Bar Association’s Professional Wellbeing Commission and chairs the Commission’s regulatory and ethics committee.
Contact: erimmer@lawcare.org.uk
Dr Emma Jones
Dr Emma Jones is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Director of Student Wellbeing for the School of Law at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research interests focus on the role of emotions and wellbeing in legal education and the legal profession and she has published widely on these issues. She is also a solicitor (non-practising), qualified teacher and mediator and an Associate Fellow of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.
Contact: emma.j.jones@sheffield.ac.uk
George Artley
LPRU
As an undergraduate George studied history at the University of Oxford, before training as a commercial lawyer at Macfarlanes LLP in the City of London. He then returned to Oxford for graduate study, where he undertook a DPhil. In legal history, focusing on the political origins of the rule of law and judicial independence in England.
As BIC Project Lawyer, his role is to assist the BIC in co-ordinating and implementing projects that exclusively support member bar associations and law societies, including capacity assistance projects to developing bars, BIC Policy Committee projects, and projects involving the BIC International Trade & Legal Services committee.
Hanim Hamzah
Hanim Hamzah is the Regional Managing Partner of ZICO Law, a network of independent local law firms with a full presence across all 10 Southeast Asian countries. As Senior Vice Chair of the IBA Law Firm Management Committee, she has dedicated much of her time championing mental wellness, diversity, and inclusion in the legal industry at large.
Contact: hanim.hamzah@zicolaw.com
Izabela Zielińska-Barłożek
Izabela Zielińska-Barłożek leads the Corporate M&A practice in Poland at Wolf Theiss. She is also a Member of the Real Estate Section Advisory Board of the IBA. During her legal practice she acquired an interest in mental wellbeing and completed MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction), MBCL (mindfulness based compassionate living) and MBB (Mind Body Bridge) courses to spread the knowledge about the importance of mental wellbeing in the legal profession. She spoke on the subject at several professional events to eventually join the IBA Professional Wellbeing Commission.
Contact: izabela.zielinska@wolftheiss.com
Jeff Davis
Jeff is the Chief Legal & Corporate Affairs Officer of Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, where he sits on the Executive Team and proudly oversees a dynamic team of over 80 professionals across the globe comprising Ontario Teachers’ Corporate Affairs division, including lawyers, compliance officers, lobbyists, plan policy experts and other governance support functions.
Jeff has over 25 years of legal experience, specializing in mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance. He is the Co-President of Canada's Legal Leaders for Diversity and Inclusion, and has spoken at numerous venues around the globe, and authored several articles, on leadership, culture, mental health and DE&I in the legal profession. Jeff is also an officer of the IBA’s Law Firm Management Committee Advisory Board.
Contact: jeff_davis@otpp.com
Mark Hsu
Mark Hsu is a partner at Hawkins Parnell & Young in New York City with other 25 years of specializing in commercial litigation, toxic torts and product liability. He was extensively involved in the IBA Young Lawyers’ Committee, where he served in a variety of officer roles ranging from publications to communications to training to membership, as well as the North American Regional Officer. On behalf of the IBA, he has planned and organized a number of training sessions for law school students and young attorneys worldwide, which are designed to educate them on various practice areas and give them more agency in molding their careers. He has spoken frequently at IBA conferences on issues such as attorney resilience, emotional intelligence, law firm retention of talent and career development. Similarly, at his firm he has mentored associates and junior partners on issues such as marketing, client management, professionalism and work/life balance, as well as organizing and presenting office-wide training sessions to teach litigation skills and help develop the personal attributes to become successful attorneys. He has served as a volunteer mentor to college-bound high school students and to law school students.
Mark is a certified professional executive/life coach, having completed a 10-month course with iPEC (Institute of Professional Excellence in Coaching), which involved over 400 hours of coach training certified by the International Coaching Federation. He is the author of Please Open in the Event of My Death, an-award winning humorous book of life advice addressed to his daughters.
Mary-Jane Ierodiaconou
The Honourable Associate Justice Ierodiaconou is the Principal Associate Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. She has played an active role in developing and providing judicial education and workplace training programs. Before her appointment, Her Honour held the position of managing partner at a workplace law firm. She has also served as a Councillor for the Law Institute of Victoria and as an Advisory Board Member of the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law at the University of Melbourne. Associate Justice Ierodiaconou has extensively published on the topic of mental health and wellbeing, including articles on disclosure, unlawful discrimination, and occupational health and safety.
Michelle Rose Sharpe
Michelle Sharpe holds a Bachelor of Arts (Juris) and a Bachelor of Laws (First Class Honours) from the University of Adelaide and a PhD from the University of Melbourne. In 2007 Michelle was a founding member of the Victorian Bar’s Health and Wellbeing Committee and has served as its Chair. Michelle helped to establish the Barristers Counselling Service in 2010 which offers free around the clock counselling to barristers and their immediate family members. In 2023 Michelle was involved in launching a pilot reflective practice program for barristers and a film, Bar None, which explores wellbeing issues at the Bar. Michelle has hosted innumerable seminars on wellbeing in the profession and has published journal articles and book chapters on the topic.
Oaikhinan Isibor Aigbe
Isibor is a Climate Reality Leader trained by former US Vice President Al Gore, and currently working with the Central Bank of Nigeria as a Legal Officer. He has dedicated over 7 years of his relevant professional experience to community service, legal aid sensitization, civic activism, diversity inclusion and mental wellbeing.
He is committed to strengthening the initiative for lawyers to provide Pro Bono legal services to the most vulnerable people in the society. Therefore, he seeks the opportunity to create a hub for youth development agencies, religious groups, and civil society to work together. He believes that giving back to society and creating awareness for mental wellness should be our priority because healthy lawyers make a robust judicial architecture.
Contact: IAOAIKHINAN@nigerianbar.ng
Richard Martin
Richard heads up byrne dean’s mental health work and he is also involved in its dispute resolution work.
Before byrne·dean he spent 20 years as an employment lawyer in the city of London. He trained and became a partner at London firm Gouldens before that firmed merged with Jones Day where he stayed for a few years post-merger. Wanting to get into management, he joined London firm Speechly Bircham where he led the employment law team and served on the firm’s management committee.
In 2011 he experienced a serious mental breakdown, which resulted in time in hospital and a lengthy recovery process. While life shattering on pretty much every level, the experience forced him to think more about himself and how he reacts and responds to the world, a greater curiosity perhaps. That led him to look at other people in a different way, with that same curiosity, wanting to understand why people do what they do, and to help them to that understanding, both to support them in their work and wider lives, avoid and resolve conflict, but also to promote mental health and help people avoid the experiences he had. Joining byrne·dean in 2013 was the obvious platform to enable that!
He spends a lot of his time delivering training in an increasingly global classroom and help clients think more strategically about mental health and wellbeing withing their organisations. He co-chairs the steering committee of the Lord Mayor of London’s This is Me campaign which is all about using personal story telling to reduce the stigma around mental illness. This was the catalyst for him publishing his first book, This too will pass – Anxiety in a Professional World, which came out in November 2018.
He leads byrne dean’s work on the ground-breaking Mindful Business Charter which is a cross business initiative looking to reduce the unnecessary stress in the ways we work within and between our organisations so as to create healthier and more effective ways of working.
Outside of work, when not taxiing kids about, or watching them perform on stage or field, he is most likely to be cycling, cooking, or spending time in his haven in the Charente countryside in rural France.
Contact: richard.martin@byrnedean.com
Steven Richman
Steven M. Richman holds a law degree from New York University School of Law, J.D. cum laude, 1980, Order of the Coif, and a B.A. degree, summa cum laude, from Drew University. He is a member of Clark Hill PLC, based in Princeton and New York, with a national and international litigation and arbitration practice including representation of foreign and domestic companies in dispute resolution and contract matters. He is the author of the ABA book, Photography Law Handbook, and has written and spoken extensively in the areas of international law, corporate social responsibility, contracts, litigation and arbitration, and professional responsibility. He is a Past Chair of the American Bar Association’s member Section of International Law, a member of the the ABA House of Delegates, as well as an ABA Liaison to the IBA and UIA. He is also ABA Representative to the United Nations. Within the International Bar Association, he is Chair of Bar Issues Commission. He is also president of the Business and Human Rights Commission of the UIA.
Contact: srichman@clarkhill.com
Sara Carnegie
LPRU
Sara is an employed barrister with over 20 years’ experience in the criminal justice and public policy sector. The majority of her career has been spent working for government, most recently as Director of Strategic Policy at the Crown Prosecution Service.
Sara has led the legal teams on two public inquiries (The Baha Mousa Inquiry and the Detainee Inquiry) and spent several years as a legal and policy advisor to the Senior Presiding Judge and Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.
She has sat in a judicial capacity on the Council of the Inns of Court Disciplinary Tribunal between 2013 and 2020 and was appointed as a reviewer for the National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel in 2019.
She currently heads up the Legal Policy and Research Unit at the International Bar Association, working across all Committees and Divisions to lead and support a wide range of IBA projects. This frequently involves collaboration with external stakeholders, including the United Nations, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European Union institutions and World Bank. Current projects cover business and human rights, anti-corruption, rule of law, cybersecurity and mental well-being in the legal profession.
Tracy Kepler
Tracy L. Kepler is Risk Control Consulting Director for CNA’s Lawyers Insurance Program where she designs/develops content and distribution of risk control initiatives relevant to the practice of law. Prior to her role at CNA, she served as the Director of the ABA’s Center for Professional Responsibility, providing national leadership in developing and interpreting standards and scholarly resources in legal and judicial ethics, professional regulation, professionalism, client protection, professional liability and attorney well-being. Tracy also has nearly 20 years of experience as a regulatory/disciplinary litigator with the USPTO and the Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission. She is a past president of the National Organization of Bar Counsel, a Board member of the Institute for Well-Being in Law (formerly the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being) and is a co-author of its Report & Recommendations. She also teaches legal ethics/professional responsibility at Loyola School of Law School (Chicago), American University Washington College of Law and Georgetown University Law Center.
Contact: Tracy.Kepler@cna.com
