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Lauren Rikleen

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Nationality
  
United States


Name
  
Lauren Rikleen


Education
  
Brandeis University (B.A.) Boston College Law School (J.D)

Occupation
  
Lawyer, Author, Speaker

Lauren Stiller Rikleen is an attorney, author and expert speaker on workplace issues whose first book, Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women's Success in the Law, was released in 2006. You Raised Us - Now Work With Us: Millennials, Career Success, and Building Strong Workplace Teams was published by the American Bar Association in March 2014.

Contents

Early life and education

Rikleen was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts, and graduated from Winthrop High School. She attended Clark University and then transferred to Brandeis University, from which she graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1975. She earned a law degree from Boston College Law School in 1979.

Career

Her law career began in 1979 as the assistant director of the Franklin N. Flaschner Judicial Institute, a Massachusetts non-profit engaged in judicial education. In 1981, she joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 1, as an attorney. In 1984, she was hired by the non-profit Clean Sites, Inc. She became an assistant attorney general in early 1987 in the Massachusetts Office of Attorney General, first in its Government Bureau and later in its Environmental Protection Division. In 1988, she joined the Massachusetts-based law firm Bowditch & Dewey, where she founded its environmental law practice and directed the Bowditch Institute for Women’s Success. She is also a former president of the Boston Bar Association.

She is president and founder of the Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership and executive-in-residence at the Boston College Center for Work and Family in the Carroll School of Management.

An opinion piece by Rikleen in The Boston Globe was noted as one of several national commentaries on the 2012 Harvard cheating scandal. In it, Rikleen suggested the event could have been the result of the Millennial Generation's inexperience with navigating ambiguity. When U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf wrote in a blog that women attorneys should tone down their dress in court, Rikleen told the Associated Press his statements perpetuated a double standard.

Books

Rikleen's first book, Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women's Success in the Law, published in March 2006 by Thomson Reuters Legalworks, focuses on the institutional challenges and roadblocks women face in their efforts to succeed at law firms. A second book, Success Strategies for Women Lawyers, was released in October 2010 by Ark Group.

Fortune.com, in an August 2014 interview with Rikleen, wrote that Rikleen's third book, You Raised Us - Now Work With Us: Millennials, Career Success, and Building Strong Workplace Teams, turned her attention to young people in the workplace by examining the role younger generations have in corporate America and the challenges they face. CBS Boston's "NightSide with Dan Rea," in a radio interview and on his Web site, said that while some claim "this is the most spoiled generation our country has ever seen," Rikleen in her book wrote that it was an unfair stereotype.

The Boston Herald wrote that as part of Rikleen's research for the book, she "surveyed more than 1,000 people born from 1978 to 2000 for their opinions on entitlement, loyalty, commitment, family relationships, communication, technology and how they view success." Fortune.com (which TIME magazine picked up in September 2014), citing the survey, wrote that it "suggests that young workers are looking to big businesses to address the world’s problems." A piece on KGOradio.com about the book centered on stereotypes that baby boomers and millennials face at work, and how to help a mixed-generation team succeed. AARP quoted Rikleen in its review as saying, "If boomers want to coexist with twentysomethings, then they — the older generation — need an attitude adjustment."

Awards

  • 2015 - Influencer of the Year in Aging from PBS's Next Avenue
  • 2010 - Leading Woman Award Honoree, Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts
  • 2007 - Barbara Gray Humanitarian Award from Voices Against Violence
  • 2005 - Lelia J. Robinson Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts
  • 2004 - Boston College Law School Alumni Award for Excellence in Law
  • 2001 - Athena Award for Professional Excellence
  • References

    Lauren Rikleen Wikipedia