Mergers & Acquisitions names 2021 Top 25 Most Influential Women in Mid-Market M&A, including Duane Morris’ Nanette Heide.

What’s new?
What was new was presenting information via online technologies. It worked out amazingly well. I was able to expand my reach to people that may or may not have attended a conference presentation and have meaningful interactions with those in attendance, which is not always the case at an in-person event.

How are you a champion for change?
I am a member of the Duane Morris steering committee for the Women’s Impact Network for Success (WINS) as well as the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. We have continued to broaden and expand a program I helped design called “Stars Rising.” The program is designed to help women (and now men) partners at a certain level of business increase and grow their client base. The program involves one-on-one business coaching so that each attorney can find what works for them to help them grow their practice.

How are you a champion for inclusion and equality?
This past year was a challenge for every organization to address the national atrocities of racial inequality. Having worked for years on initiatives to promote gender equality in the legal practice and the financial industry ecosystem, it was inspiring that we, as a nation, embraced the need to address racial issues immediately. At Exponent Women, of which I am a founding member, we are hopeful that the heightened awareness will allow us to move the gender equality issues forward more rapidly. Through our events at Exponent Women in 2020, we continued our programs throughout the year to highlight women in our industry and expanded our programming to include women who are new to the finance industry.