Sistahs in Law

Intellectual property law is often considered the "sexiest" form of law. Learn more about this practice area from this week's guest who is an expert in the field. 

Kamanta  Kettle is a commercial litigator and "Top 40 Under 40" intellectual property lawyer recognized by the National Black Lawyers association. A child of immigrants from Jamaica, West Indies, Kamanta  received her JD from Cornell Law School and Bachelor's Degree, cum laude from New York University. Kamanta  handles complex commercial disputes. Across a broad range of industries, including aeronautics finance and software engineering. In addition, she is a passionate trademark attorney who helps clients in the fashion, retail and beauty industries protect their brand assets. She is currently a Senior Attorney at Arent Fox Schiff. 

Sometimes a passion can be your life's work.  For this week's guest, fashion has always had a unique place in her mission and allowed her to design her own pathway into bridging it with the legal industry. 

Ashley N. Cloud founded The Cloud Law Firm, PLLC to educate and empower creative business owners with the tools and resources to establish and build their empires. 

She comes from a long bloodline of entrepreneurs ranging from the beauty industry to the trucking and food industries. Ashley graduated from Howard University with her law degree and Master's of Business Administration in supply chain management in 2016. While at Howard, Ashley worked to educate the local and broader community on fashion law as co-chair of Fashion Law Week and co-founder and president of the Fashion Law Society. Shortly after graduating from Howard, Ashley served as an Assistant Attorney General in the District of Columbia Office of Consumer Protection. There, Ashley advised local and national businesses on their marketing and advertising practices. 

Ashley's passion for supporting entrepreneurs, led her to serve as an attorney for the U.S. Small Business Administration. The first Black and highest ranked attorney to serve in her office as founder and managing attorney of The Cloud Law Firm PLLC, Ashley has successfully represented fashion and lifestyle brands before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. 

She has also negotiated numerous partnership deals on behalf of her clients. Ashley has also assisted our clients in navigating the complicated process of receiving funding and support from the federal government. Ashley speaks on numerous topics, including business formation and development, intellectual property protection, diversity in fashion, cultural appropriation, supply chain management and resources for creative entrepreneurs. Ashley is licensed to practice law in the state of New York, the District of Columbia, and is awaiting bar admission to her home state of Texas. 

When you first think about immigration law, the creative lives of artists and other innovators may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But for this week’s guest, her mission is to “serve artists and creative professionals by helping them secure artists visas, cement their brands, and monetize their artistry.”

Elektra B. Yao, Esq. is the founder and principal attorney at Yao Law Group law firm dedicated to international and domestic artists.Elektra earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Arts from Marymount Manhattan College in NYC, one of the top art schools in the nation. During her undergraduate university career, Elektra wrote, directed, and produced two documentaries (N*gga What? and The Choking Game) which were screened in Texas and New York City.

Elektra is a very active attorney and is a member of The American Immigration Lawyers Association, Black Entertainment and Sports Lawyer Association, and The New York City Bar Association, where she is a member of several committees.

As a multicultural attorney, with immigrant parents from Italy and Cote D’Ivoire, Elektra is fully fluent in French, Italian, and Spanish. She has lived, studied, and worked internationally in the US, the EU, and Africa. Not only does she understand the language her clients speak, she understands the cultural and artistic landscape of where they come from.

Elektra has successfully represented record labels, modeling agencies, production companies, individual artists, and creatives. Check out more on Elektra at yaolawgroup.com.

Living life out loud and in multiple capacities is not very common in the legal field. However, when you are a mother, strategist, sustainability advocate and attorney, you forge your own pathway.

Whitney McGuire. Esq. is a mother, a New York state licensed attorney, legal and sustainability consultant & strategist, and co-founder of Sustainable Brooklyn, an organization that disrupts the whitewashing of sustainability in order to concretize equity in the sustainability movement. With more than a decade of experience in law and sustainability, she is a pioneer in the field of fashion law and a fierce advocate for the sustainability of communities first and most impacted by environmental and social degradation. In 2013, after graduating law school at the Catholic University of America - Columbus School of Law, Whitney opened her own law firm to support the sustainability of primarily BIPOC artists and fashion designers. Whitney has held positions in fashion lobbying, the U.S. federal judiciary, various fashion-oriented for profit and non-profit companies, and in law firms. In addition to her work as a mother, attorney and sustainability strategist, Whitney is a co-founder of the record label swiMMMers ear with her husband, multi-disciplinary artist, Nelson Nance. Whitney received her undergraduate degree in English and Africana Studies from The George Washington University.

P.S. This is our final episode of the season, so continue to follow us on social media to get updates on when the new episodes for Season 2 will premiere!

Alternatives pathways after law school are not always highlighted to law students or young lawyers. This week’s guest has such an expansive imagination that has led her down an incredible journey through arts and the law.

Clark L. Edmond (she/her/hers) is from Atlanta, GA, and lives between London and New York. After receiving her J.D. from University of Pennsylvania Law School and a Master’s in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art-London in 2019, she decided to launch __crate with the goal of introducing new audiences to diverse perspectives through art and creating opportunities for historically underrepresented artists. In the past, she has worked at Jack Shainman Gallery in NYC and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. She is co-founder of Black@Sotheby's, the Black student and alumni group at Sotheby's Institute of Art. She is also a member of the New Art Dealers Alliance. In addition to founding __crate, she specializes in the intersection of art, business, intellectual property, and national economic development.

Getting a foot in the door to the entertainment field can be an incredible feat! This week’s guests both have forged a formidable path in and are bringing unique strengths with them.

Maya Day, Esquire is an Associate Attorney at Bruns, Brennan & Berry PC where she serves as production counsel, drafting talent and above-the-line personnel agreements for production companies such as BRON Studios, Jax Media, and A24. Maya has served as counsel for various television series and films, most recently “A Black Lady Sketch Show”, "Pieces of a Woman", “Emily in Paris" and “Desus & Mero.”

Maya holds a B.A from The George Washington University and a J.D. from Howard University School of Law. During her time at Howard Law School, she served as a Student Attorney in the Intellectual Property Clinic with a concentration in trademark law and served as the program coordinator for the Howard Law Sports and Entertainment Law Student Association. She also previously interned at BET Networks, the Federal Communications Commission, and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Maya is an active member of the Black Entertainment & Sports Lawyers Association (BESLA), Young Lawyers Division and Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated.

Taylor Washington handles a broad range of entertainment transactions for clients in the film and television including production companies, actors/actresses, producers, directors, authors and influencers.

Prior to joining Frankfurt Kurnit, Taylor was a Law Clerk for the NBCU News Group at NBCUniversal Media, LLC., where she served as legal counsel for CNBC prime time programming including “Deal or No Deal”, “The Profit”, and “Jay Leno’s Garage.” She also advised and counseled business teams on other commercial transactions including venue and content licensing agreements. Additionally, Taylor performed pre-broadcast review of long-form programming on CNBC, including “Secret Lives of the Super Rich”, and advised on potential legal issues pertaining to privacy, defamation, libel, and intellectual property.

During law school, Taylor  interned in the Enforcement Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission and in the Business and Legal Affairs department at Scripps Networks Interactive (now Discovery, Inc.), where she worked with counsel to structure and draft production and talent agreements. Prior to law school, Taylor had extensive experience in the entertainment industry including jobs and internships with the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the Recording Academy, Octagon, and Viacom.

Taylor is a former member of the Hollywood Radio and Television Society Junior Board, and a current member of the New York State Bar Association, and Metropolitan Black Bar Association. She is admitted to practice in New York.

Have you ever wondered what it's like to practice law in Louisiana? Well this week's guest has had pretty robust experiences in her early legal career in the state of Louisiana. ReAzalia Allen (aka Attorney SouthernBelle) is a native of Shreveport, Louisiana.  She is a licensed attorney in the State of Louisiana. She received her Juris Doctor and Graduate Diploma in Comparative Law from The Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University on May 29, 2015.  She was admitted to the practice on October 22, 2015.  More, recently in August of 2017, she received her Masters of Science in Organizational Development from Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. She was the first attorney ever to go through the curriculum for the degree at Abilene Christian University. While she loves everything about the law and the practice of the law, her true passion has always been writing, whether it’s a poem, article, short essay, stage play or screenplay she can do it. She received her Bachelors of Arts in English-Creative Writing from Louisiana State University on May 18, 2012.

She currently manages her own businesses including this blog and her own small firm. She is a three-time published poet and is currently working on several writing projects.

ReAzalia enjoys a plethora of hobbies including baking, traveling, reading, speaking publicly to others, spending time with her Mini Australian Shepherd affectionately called Music, and spending time with her family.  She is a member of  Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, The Baton Rouge Bar Association, The Louis A. Martinet Legal Society—Baton Rouge Chapter, and the Louisiana State Bar Association. 

Sports and entertainment are such buzzy industries with so many superstars. Jaia Thomas knows a thing or two about navigating a legal career in the sports and entertainment industries. 

Jaia Thomas is a Los Angeles-based sports and entertainment attorney. With over 10 years of experience on both coasts, Jaia has been quoted as a legal expert in publications, such as the New York Times and USA Today. She has served as a panelist for the Los Angeles County Bar Association and Beverly Hills Bar Association, and a speaker for several sports and entertainment law conferences throughout the country. She has several articles published in journals, including Pace I.P., Sports and Entertainment Law Journal, Journal of Sports Media and the American Bar Association. 

Jaia is currently an adjunct professor at UCLA where she teaches a course titled "Copyright Law and the Entertainment Industry" and all-day seminar titled "The Nuts and Bolts of Starting a Law Practice." Prior to her appointment at UCLA, she was an adjunct professor at American University in Washington, D.C. where she taught graduate students about the inner workings of production company formation. She has guest lectured at several colleges and universities, including Stanford Law School, and Georgetown Law School. Jaia is also a contributor to Forbes where she writes about the intersection of diversity and the entertainment industry.

Jaia recently launched Diverse Representation, a company aimed at increasing the exposure and hiring of Black agents, attorneys, managers and publicists in the sports and entertainment industries. In addition to providing the first ever comprehensive database of Black agents, attorneys, managers, and publicists in the sports and entertainment industries, Diverse Representation also hosts various events and programs. For more information, please visit www.diverse representation.com. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Jaia Thomas is a graduate of Colgate University and the George Washington University Law School. She also holds a certificate in Television, Film, and New Media Production from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Being a criminal defense attorney is not an easy job. But when you have a foundation of resilience connected to a belief in a higher power, it can make the role a bit more manageable. Jana Dixon, Esq. is a native of Conyers, Georgia. She graduated from Heritage High School in 2010 with an academic and athletic scholarship to Erskine College in Due West, SC. She graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor's of Arts degree in Political Science and a minor in Business in May of 2014.  Her desire to become an attorney led her to Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, FL.  She graduated in May of 2018 and became a licensed attorney in June of 2019. Jana previously worked as an Assistant Public Defender for the Conasauga Judicial Circuit in Dalton, Georgia. Currently, she serves as a lead attorney at the Law Offices of  Lister Holt & Dennis. Her passion for criminal defense stems from her belief to be a true servant and fight for those most in need.

Having a career in law is not always so cookie cutter. There are so many ways to navigate a legal career. This episode features a multi talented guest who has had a robust career even at such a young age. Erika Stallings currently works as an assistant general counsel at Facebook with a focus on counseling on use of music across the Facebook family of apps. She is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where she attended as a Morehead Cain Scholar. In addition to her legal career, she is a freelance writer who focuses on the experience of Black women in the workplace and in accessing healthcare and has been published in The New York Times, the Washington Post, O Magazine, The Cut, NPR and others. She is also a BRCA2 mutation carrier and serves as the founding co-chair for the Basser Center for BRCA Young Leadership Council which raises money to support research. She currently resides in Jersey City, NJ with her fiancé.

Law school can be hard enough, so add on top of that the complex and nuanced identity of being a Black woman and/or first gen law student in the space. On this episode of Sistahs in Law, five current law students share insights into their experiences navigating life while in law school.

Guest Bios:

Mieola Easter is a 1L at Cardozo School of Law. She is from Houston, Texas, and will be completing her first year there remotely. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and worked at a legal technology company after undergrad. Currently, she is the 1L Representative for Cardozo's BLSA and a member of the Entertainment Society. In her free time, Mieola enjoys singing and attending dance classes. Mieola hopes to combine her interest in art and law by pursuing entertainment and media law. Twitter: @mieola_easter, Instagram: @_mieeast_ and Clubhouse.

Victoria Lowe is a 2L at Cardozo School of Law. A believer in the impossible and an avid advocate for all things womxn. Victoria is from the Bronx with roots in Harlem. She is the President of the Black Law Students Association at Cardozo and sits on the executive board of the Minority Law Student Alliance. When she is not studying, you can find her hanging with her family or in the dance class nearest you. Instagram: @v.c.lowe

Khensani Mathebula is an international student from Johannesburg, South Africa. After graduating from Fordham University as a double major in Political Science & Dance, in partnership with The Ailey School, she worked as a professional modern dancer & choreographer in New York City, including directing her company @MATHETAdance. She is currently a 2L student at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she is a staff editor on Moot Court Honor Society and a legal intern for the Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic. Instagram: @khen.sunny

Jasmine Cooper-Little is a current 3L from Connecticut. She attended Boston University for undergrad where she studied International Relations and minored in Spanish. Before law school, she worked in International Education. Her law school experiences have included providing legal services to asylum seekers, family-based immigration, business immigration, legal compliance at an investment bank, securities arbitration, securities enforcement, and privacy law. Outside of law school, she enjoys traveling, learning foreign languages, spending time with family, and inventing plant-based recipes. Instagram: @jazzii76

Ayana McPherson is a Brooklyn, NY native and a third year law student at Cardozo School of Law. Prior to law school, she earned her B.F.A in Dance and Minor in Writing from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. At Cardozo, she is a legal intern in the Advanced Indie Film Clinic, she serves as the Broadcast Music Inc., Competition Editor of the Moot Court Honor Society, and is an active participant in the Minority Law Student Alliance, Black Law Student Association, and the Entertainment Law Society. Outside of law school, Ayana is a student member of the Black Entertainment & Sports Law Association, and has interned at Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, Franklin Entertainment at Twentieth Century Fox, SAG-AFTRA and Bruns, Brennan & Berry PC! She also recently launched an inspiration platform called The Gem Jar, where the mission is "inspiring people into purpose." Instagram: @yanaamac and @_thegemjar

Welcome to the first episode of the Sistahs in Law podcast. In this episode, I will share a bit more about the origin story of the podcast and its beginnings as a physical event series. What started out as a monthly brunch and dinner party series will now transition as a space for intimate conversations with Black women in law. I want these discussions to be a guide for Black women who want to pursue legal careers and for those who are already doing so. Sharing our stories helps us to understand that we are not alone in our journey. The power of one’s story can  make a significant impact on another person’s life. Please follow us on social media @SistahsinLaw on Instagram and @sistahsinlawpod on Twitter. You can subscribe to our newsletter on www.sistahsinlaw.org to keep up with latest updates. Transcripts for each episode will be uploaded to the website as well.

Welcome to the Sistahs in Law Podcast. My name is Charity Gates, recent law school graduate and host of the podcast.

What started out as a brunch and dinner style networking event will now become a platform for intimate conversations with Black women about their journeys navigating careers in the legal field. Join me every other Friday starting in January 2021 for a conversation with a different Sistah in Law. 

Follow us on Instagram @sistahsinlaw and on Twitter @sistahsinlawpod! If you know of any fabulous Sistahs in Law feel free to send us a message to sistahsinlawusa@gmail.com.