WLC Keynote Speaker

We are pleased to welcome Martha Barnett, former American Bar Association president and first woman chair of the ABA House of Delegates, as the UF Women’s Leadership Conference keynote speaker for 2013.

After graduating from law school, Barnett became Holland & Knight’s first female attorney when she was hired and subsequently mentored by Chesterfield Smith, sometimes known as “America’s Lawyer,” the firm’s founding father and the first of four UF Law graduates to serve as president of the ABA. Barnett now serves as chair of the firm’s Directors Committee (the firm’s highest policy-making body). Her primary areas of practice are administrative, governmental law, and public policy.

Considered a trailblazer for her work championing minorities in the legal profession, Barnett was the second woman president in the ABA’s history. In addition to serving as president, Barnett chaired the ABA’s main policy-making body, the House of Delegates, as well as serving alongside First Lady Hillary Clinton on an ABA task force that studied women in the legal profession. She was also chair of one of its most significant sections, Individual Rights and Responsibilities, and served on the committee that supervises legal education and the committee that sponsors technical assistance for legal reform in emerging Central and East European democracies.

She was recently recognized in the 2013 "Lawyers of the Year" report by The Best Lawyers in America. In 2007, Barnett was one of 11 members appointed by Florida Governor Charlie Crist to serve on the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. In 2006, she was named by the National Law Journal as one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America,” a prestigious list representing those attorneys who have made a national impact in their fields both currently and over the past five years. In 2004, Barnett was named one of the 174 “Most Influential Floridians” by Florida Trend. We look forward to learning from her experiences at the Women's Leadership Conference.