Caren has 30 years of management and leadership experience as the head of talent and diversity for many of the world’s top law firms, including Arnold & Porter, Cooley, and Weil Gotshal. After hiring 3700+ lawyers and supporting their advancement to partner and other high-level roles, Caren co-founded Lawyer Metrics (a start-up company later acquired by the Access Group) that pioneered a “Moneyball” data-analytics approach to selecting and advancing high-performing talent. Following that success, Caren founded Diversity Lab to focus on increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in law and other professions through the use of data, science, and technology.
As Diversity Lab’s CEO, Caren works with more than 20 talent experts and data scientists to create and experiment with innovative initiatives that cultivate diversity in the leadership ranks of top law firms, legal departments, government agencies, and other organizations. Her passion for diversifying these high-level roles is driven in part knowing that many of these leaders will eventually serve in other influential positions – such as judges, C-suite executives, board members, university presidents, and Congress – that impact society more broadly.
Caren was awarded the National Association of Legal Professionals (NALP) Mark of Distinction in 2009, the InnovAction Award by the College of Law Practice Management in 2014, and the Ms. JD “Strength in Numbers” Award in 2015. In addition, Caren was elected in 2010 as a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and appointed to the Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice’s Commission on Improving the Legal Profession in 2013. In 2016, she was honored with Legal Momentum’s Women of Achievement Award and also selected from more than 500 entrepreneurs as one of the inaugural 10 Tory Burch Foundation Fellows. In 2019, she was selected by members of Congress to assist with the Congressional Black Caucus task force on increasing diversity in law and tech.
Caren currently serves on the Legal Advisory Committee for the Silicon Valley Urban Debate League and as a Board Member for the US National Committee for UN Women in Silicon Valley.
Over the past two decades, she has contributed to over 250 presentations and publications on talent management and authored several highly regarded books, including Loyalty by Design: A Practical Guide for Developing an Effective Attorney Integration Program. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, The American Lawyer, The Wall Street Journal, and on Fox News.