Through her support of the nearly 90-year-old New York Women’s Bar Association (NYWBA), Dyan Gershman gives back to her profession at the height of a distinguished career focused on handling major mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and other multi-faceted corporate matters. The founder and partner of Gershman Law, PLLC, she has previously served in major executive counsel positions with General Electric and other Fortune 500 firms. Dyan Gershman’s continued assistance to the NYWBA helps the organization’s foundation to support initiatives that uplift and provide equity to women, girls, and marginalized youth.
The NYWBA Foundation’s major community-building work over the years includes its grant in support of the Teen Voices project at Women’s eNews. This independent nonprofit is dedicated to journalistic coverage of the issues most important to women’s lives.
The NYWBA grant-funded Teen Voices piece went on to earn a finalist slot for the Ippie Awards, presented by the City University of New York’s Center for Community and Ethnic Media at its Graduate School of Journalism. The piece, written by two young female reporters, described the suffering of teenage women housed in adult prisons.
Before the Raise the Age law was enacted in 2019, New York was one of only two states that allowed prosecution of 16- and 17-year-olds as adults. The 2015 Women’s eNews piece described the fear and isolation of teenage prisoners housed in adult prisons in their own words, and in harrowing detail. It also made clear the long-term toll this type of carceral practice takes on the lives of young women.
Through its grants, the NYWBA Foundation works to eliminate gender bias from the legal community and from legal systems. In addition, NYWBA grants center on the needs of women and children for safe, secure, and stable environments and for competent legal representation.
