© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
Staff Writer for The Texas Lawbook
Though it only opened to the public a little over a week ago, lawyers have already made an appearance at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Baker Botts is officially the first Texas firm to host an event at Southern Methodist University’s newest campus addition.
Roughly 135 women in-house counsel and senior-level business executives of Dallas companies on Monday showed up at the Bush Center for Baker Botts’ 2013 Spring Enterprising Women’s Series, which featured a luncheon and keynote address by Charity Wallace, the Bush Institute’s Women’s Initiative director.
The companies represented at Monday’s event are in the construction, defense, energy, finance, food and beverages, manufacturing, real estate, retail, technology and transportation industries.
The Enterprising Women’s Series is an 11-year-old program that strives to empower women lawyers by bringing together Baker Botts women attorneys and some of the firm’s female clients for educational events – which are sometimes women’s issues topics.
Wallace, also senior advisor and former chief of staff to former First Lady Laura Bush, spoke of her experiences with George W. and Laura to educate and empower women all over the world to help develop countries, both during and after the Bush administration, and what the Center is doing to continue with those efforts.
“We know the empowerment of women will lead to progress,” Wallace said.
A point of interest to the audience was Wallace’s description of the Institute’s Women’s Initiative Fellowship Program, which trains groups of women from predominately Middle Eastern and North African countries on leadership and networking skills in hopes of promoting significant and lasting change in their home countries.
“We thought our women clients would be interested in the Women’s Initiative Program and how they are impacting the lives of women around the world,” said Pat Stanton, the first woman partner-in-charge of Baker Botts’ Dallas office. “Charity Wallace’s remarks were very inspirational and many in attendance expressed an interest in getting involved with her work at the women’s initiative.”
One of them was Wendy Hallgren, vice president of corporate compliance at Dallas Fortune 500 Fluor Corporation. Though not immediately, Hallgren said she will consider getting involved with the Women’s Initiative down the road when her life is less busy.
Hallgren, who was a securities transactional lawyer during her private practice years, said hearing about helping other women inspired a pro bono desire among her and the audience.
“It set a camaraderie and you could tell people were really moved and wanted to help out with this [the Women’s Initiative],” she said.
Accustomed to often being the only female in her work setting, Hallgren said the event created an “empowering” setting that “gets all of these strong, intelligent women together with similar backgrounds.”
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