Katherine Mazzaferri Complete Oral History

Oral History Of
Katherine A. Mazzzaferri, Esq.
Interviews Conducted by Annamaria Steward
Published 2026
________
The Stephen J. Pollak Oral History Project
Of the Historical Society of the District of
Columbia Circuit
________
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and history of the courts of the District of Columbia Circuit.
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of the District of Columbia Circuit (the “Project”) is to preserve the recollections of the
judges of the courts of the District of Columbia Circuit, as well as those of the lawyers,
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February 2024.
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Oral History of Katherine A. Mazzaferri, Esq.
Table of Contents
Oral History Agreements
Katherine A. Mazzaferri, Esq………………………………………………………………………….. i
Annamaria Steward, Esq………………………………………………………………………………..iii
Oral History Transcripts of Interviews
Chapter 1 – Inspirations from Early Family Life………………………………………………. 1
April 8, 2023
Chapter 2 – Early Seeds for a Career of Service ………………………………………………11
April 8, 2023
Chapter 3 – Law Student and Young Attorney Activism…………………………………. 17
April 15, 2023
Chapter 4 – EEOC: Tackling Racial and Gender Discrimination ……………………….28
June 11, 2023
Chapter 5 – League of Women Voters: Breaking Down Gender Barriers……………39
October 13, 2024
Chapter 6 – FTC: Lessons about Law and Policymaking. ………………………………….50
July 16, 2023
Chapter 7 – D.C. Bar and D.C. Courts Partnerships in Evolving Programs…………59
August 16, 2023
Chapter 8 – D.C. Bar Leadership Development and Building …………………………… 72
August 29, 2023
Chapter 9 – The D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center: Serving the Client Community………79
November 17, 2024
Chapter 10 – Strengthening Ties within the D.C. Legal Community ………………..102
September 4, 2023
Postscript and Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….116
Appendix 1 EEOC 1973 Press Release: Agreement with Bell Telephone Companies
Appendix 2 Affidavit of John M. Heneghan
Appendix 3 Katherine A. Mazzaferri, Chief Executive Office Emeritus
Appendix 4 List of D.C. Bar Past Presidents
Appendix 5 List of D.C. Bar General Counsels 1981-2020
Index ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. A-1
Table of Cases……………………………………………………………………………………………..B-1
Biographical Sketches
Katherine A. Mazzaferri, Esq……………………………………………………………………C-1
Annamaria Steward, Esq………………………………………………………………………….D-1
The Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit
Oral History Donation Agreement of Interviewee
Katherine A. Mazzaferri
Donor Name
I, Katherine A. Mazzaferri, do hereby grant and convey to The Historical Society of the District
of Columbia Circuit, Washington, D.C. and its employees, agents, successors and assigns
(hereinafter collectively, “the Society”) all my rights, title, and interest in the voice recordings (including but not limited to digital recordings and cassette tapes) and transcripts of my oral history interviews as described in Schedule A hereto, including literary rights and copyrights, for the
purpose of preservation and publication of my oral history.
All copies of such recordings and transcripts are subject to the same terms herein provided.
I understand that the Society may duplicate, edit, or publish such recordings and transcripts in any form or format, including publication on the Internet. I permit the use of such recordings and
transcripts in any manner that the Society considers appropriate.
I waive any claims I may have or acquire to any royalties from such use.
I reserve for myself and to the executor of my estate only the non-exclusive right to use such recordings and transcripts and their content as a resource for any book, pamphlet, article, or other
writing of which I or my executor may be the author or co-author.
Katherine A. Mazzaferri
SWORN TO AND SUBSCRIBED before me this 12 day of A
Notary Public
と
MyCommission expires: ay,12027
ACCEPTED this/1 day of
DAVID KIM
Notary Public – State of Maryland Montgomery County
My Commission Expires May 1, 2027
2025
20, by James E. Rocap, III, President of
The Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit.
James E. Rocap, III
Schedule A to Oral History Donation Agreement of
Katherine A. Mazzaferri
Donor Name
Voice recordings (including but not limited to digital recordings and cassette tapes) and
transcripts resulting from the oral history interviews of _Katherine A. Mazzaferri_conducted by
Annamaria Steward on the following dates:
Interview No. Date Description of
Media Containing
Voice Recordings
Ex. .m4a files
Transcript Page
Numbers
1 April 8, 2023 m4a files 1 -10
2 April 8, 2023 m4a files 11-16
3 April 15, 2023 m4a files 17-27
4 June 11,2023 m4a files 28-38
5 October 13, 2024 m4a files 39-49
6 July 16, 2023 m4a files 50-58
7 August 16, 2023 m4a files 59-71
8 August 29, 2023 m4a files 72-78
9 November 17, 2024 m4a files 79-101
10 September 4, 2023 m4a files 102-115
The Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit
Oral History Donation Agreement of Interviewer
Annamaria Steward
Donor Name
I, Annamaria Steward do hereby grant and convey to The Historical Society of the District of
Columbia Circuit, Washington, D.C. and its employees, agents, successors and assigns
(hereinafter collectively, “the Society”) all my rights, title, and interest in the voice recordings
(including but not limited to digital recordings and cassette tapes) and transcripts of the oral
history interviews I conducted with Katherine A. Mazzaferri, as described in Schedule A hereto,
including literary rights and copyrights, for the purpose of preservation and publication of his
oral history.
All copies of such recordings and transcripts are subject to the same terms herein provided.
I understand that the Society may duplicate, edit, or publish such recordings and transcripts in
any form or format, including publication on the Internet. I permit the use of such recordings
and transcripts in any manner that the Society considers appropriate.
I waive any claims I may have or acquire to any royalties from such use.
I agree that I will make no use of the oral history, or the information contained therein, until it is
concluded, edited and published by the Society, or until I receive earlier permission from the
Society.
Amarns
Annamaria Steward
25 ACTD day of 20, 202 by James E. Rocap, III, President of
The Historical Society of the District of Cdlumbia Circuit.
James E. Roçap, III
Schedule A to Oral History Donation Agreement of
Annamaria Steward
Donor Name
Voice recordings (including but not limited to digital recordings and cassette tapes) and
transcripts resulting from the oral history interviews of Katherine A. Mazzaferri conducted by
Annamaria Steward on the following dates:
Interview No. Date Description of
Media Containing
Voice Recordings
Ex. .m4a files
Transcript Page
Numbers
1 April 8, 2023 m4a files 1 -10
2 April 8, 2023 m4a files 11-16
3 April 15, 2023 m4a files 17-27
4 June 11,2023 m4a files 28-38
5 October 13, 2024 m4a files 39-49
6 July 16, 2023 m4a files 50-58
7 August 16, 2023 m4a files 59-71
8 August 29, 2023 m4a files 72-78
9 November 17, 2024 m4a files 79-101
10 September 4, 2023 m4a files 102-115
1
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine Mazzaferri. The interview took place on
Saturday, April 8, 2023. This is the first chapter.
MS. STEWARD: Welcome. Give us a little bit about you. Tell us your date of birth, your
place of birth, and a little bit about your family, starting with your
grandparents.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My name is Katherine Aquino Mazzaferri. I was born May 14, 1947, in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My maternal grandparents were Michael
(Michele) Aquino and Rebecca Kaplan. Michael was born in Italy in 1880,
and he came here when he was just 16. On the ship manifest, it says he
was a peasant. My grandmother, Rebecca Kaplan, was born in Brooklyn.
She and my grandfather met somehow in New York City. I don’t know
exactly how. Her parents disowned her for marrying my Catholic
grandfather.
On my dad’s side, my paternal grandmother, Antoinette Venturi,
was born in Italy in 1893, and she came here with her parents, Rocco
Venturi and Angela Mormando when she was just 6. My paternal
grandfather, Domenic (Domenico) Santo Mazzaferri, was born in Pisticci,
Italy, in 1881. He was 21 when he came to this country.
MS. STEWARD: Your grandmother was disowned because she was Jewish and married a
Catholic peasant?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: That’s right.
MS. STEWARD: Can you tell us a little bit more about how that impacted your family?
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MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. It was I think a point of great sadness for my mother that she never
got to know her mom’s family. There was one aunt who would come to
visit occasionally, but that was it. My uncles attempted to see their
grandfather, but he refused them. I think in those days in particular, those
religious differences were significant.
MS. STEWARD: Can you tell us how old your grandparents were when they married and
about the family that your mom grew up in?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Sure. My grandmother was either 16 or 17. The marriage license is
partially torn. My grandfather was 24. They wound up having twelve
children. They purchased three plots of land in Brooklyn, so they were
able to plant vegetables and plant fruit trees providing enough food to feed
the family for the year. My grandfather would put the boys to work
planting, and my grandmother would put the girls to work cooking and
cleaning.
MS. STEWARD: How many children were in the family?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There were twelve in all. They were able to survive the 1918 pandemic
and through the financial hardships of the Depression. It was an interesting
time. This family worked hard and stayed together. My grandfather
worked in a shoe factory, and he was very productive. When the labor
union was starting, management tried to convince him not to go with the
union but to be part of management. However, he felt it was important to
be with his colleagues, so he declined. But he did learn on his own how to
make shoes for deformed feet. He would pick up pieces of leather from the
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floor in the factory and experiment on how to make shoes for a foot that
was deformed. He wound up opening a shoe shop on his home property.
Of course, he and my grandmother would argue about how much to
charge. My grandfather had a soft spot for people and didn’t want to
charge too much, but my grandmother pointed out they had many mouths
to feed. My grandmother started a candy store on the property, so the two
of them were industrious, figuring out ways to support the family.
MS. STEWARD: Let’s talk about your dad’s side of the family.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My grandfather, Domenico Mazzaferri, was an inspector for the fire
department. He was also very hard working, and my grandmother and he
had three children, my dad, and his two sisters. They also had a garden in
the back of their house. They had a house on 57th Street in Brooklyn.
Sadly, my grandfather Domenico was inspecting a building and there was
a fire. He was overcome. So, he passed away when my dad was just 15.
My dad, who had dreamt of going to medical school to become a doctor,
abandoned that idea and dropped out of high school and went to work for
a printing company. He learned every aspect of that business and later
started a lithography company. His sisters also ultimately worked as well.
My grandmother, whom I called “Gram,” was the grandparent that
I saw the most growing up. She was a wonderful, warm, kind woman who
cooked a lot, baked a lot, had great stories about Italy. She was a
wonderful person to have in one’s life.
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MS. STEWARD: Both of your grandfathers came from Italy. Did your family have
connections with Italy back and forth during this time?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Not a lot during this time. I guess what I know most about is my
Grandmother Mazzaferri who corresponded with my grandfather’s sister
in Italy over many years. In fact, many years later when I was in college, I
took a trip to see the family, to see my grandfather’s sister, my great-aunt
in Italy.
MS. STEWARD: Your parents met because they grew up in the same neighborhood. Can
you talk more about your parents?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. They both attended the Catholic church just around the corner on 57th
or 56th Street. They knew each other from the neighborhood. My mother’s
name was Rose, and my dad’s name was Joseph. I think he was intrigued
by this creative gal, and my mom thought he was very handsome. They
ultimately got married and moved to New Jersey and later to Philadelphia
for my dad’s work. He stayed in the printing industry. He learned the
business, as they say, and, in fact, became quite knowledgeable to the
point that he developed new ways to do lithography. He wrote books on it.
He was very industrious, very creative.
My mom, for her part, was incredibly creative. She loved art from
the beginning, from high school on. She painted in oils. When my parents
moved to Philadelphia, she studied modern dance. She even did
choreography. They were both engaged, involved individuals, and my dad
would talk a great deal about his work and business to my mom, so she
5
enjoyed hearing about it even though she didn’t have any first-hand
experience.
MS. STEWARD: Your mom’s mom, your grandmother, was a voracious reader by all
accounts, and she also was interested in art, and that was passed down to
your mom. Can you talk about both of those experiences and how it
impacted you?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Indeed. It’s said that my maternal grandmother read every book in the
local public library in Brooklyn. My mom would read all the time. She
loved to read, and she loved art. I didn’t so much learn art as I did music.
Although my mom didn’t know music herself, she felt it was important for
us, my sister Valerie and me, to be educated in music. She got us piano
lessons, my sister also had voice lessons, and I studied the cello. My dad
loved Villalobos, and there was a particular cello concerto that he loved
and that he’d play a lot on the record player. I decided when I was in fifth
grade to study the cello, and that instrument has been with me all these
many, many years.
MS. STEWARD: There’s an artistic creative side of your family but tell us about your aunts
and your uncles and more extended family. What kind of people were
they?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My aunt in Philadelphia, my Aunt Carolyn and her husband Dan, were
very much activists in the community. When I was young, they took me
on a housing demonstration not too far from where we lived. I didn’t
understand it, but my aunt explained what was going on. There were some
6
white people in the neighborhood who had dogs that were barking, and
people were shouting, and Aunt Carolyn explained to me that it was
important to be brave. She told me that we had the law on our side, and we
needed to demonstrate and show that we were in support of the black
people who wanted to be able to live in that neighborhood. She explained
racial covenants to me in a very simple way that helped me understand
how serious and problematic they were.
MS. STEWARD: How old were you at that time?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I was probably about ten. I had another aunt, my Aunt Florence, who lived
in New York City, whom I got to know well when I went to college at
NYU. She was very creative and active. She was an actress, and a
playwright. One play she wrote was called “The Winner.” It was a play
about young people who are debating about whether to stay in school or
not and having this dilemma in their lives about how to move forward. I
don’t really know how she got started, but she worked with young people
who were in the Job Corps and had them help her with this play. They
would act in the play. She had some other adults in the theatre,
specifically, she engaged two of my other aunts to be in the play. She had
some other individuals as well, and I participated when I could. I would
help her. I’d do anything that had to be done. I would tutor some of the
kids. I would help sweep the floor. I would act in the play. She performed
this play from high school to high school in some of the toughest
neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. During the
7
intermission, she would invite some of the students to the stage to act out
the second half, to see how Tommy, the protagonist, should move forward
in his life. Should he stay in school, or should he drop out? She and her
co-director, Amelia Romano, would meet with this new cast who would
decide how they wanted to end the play. The house would go dark, the
lights would come up, and the students from the school would act out the
second act, how they would end the story.
Later, Florence’s team would act out the play the way it was
written. But what it showed was there are so many paths one can follow in
one’s life. It was a remarkable play and experience, and my aunt was a
special individual who gave me a lot of ideas about how to live.
MS. STEWARD: On the one hand, you had your parents, your dad the printer is into
lithography and your mom’s into the creative, the arts, the dance, the
literature, then you have this Aunt Carolyn who’s this activist, then you
have your other Aunt, Florence, who takes both of those and mixes them
together in terms of using plays and creative ventures to create more
activism and to illustrate the point. So you really had a very interesting
family upbringing. You mentioned your sister Valerie earlier. Can you say
a little more about growing up with her?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My sister Valerie is two years older. We were best friends growing up. It
was so great to have her in the school ahead of me because the teachers
already knew the Mazzaferri family. I didn’t have to break the ice, and she
was well-loved.
8
My parents decided to send us to a Quaker elementary school. So,
my kindergarten through fourth grades were spent at Greene Street Friends
School in Germantown. Val was there through the sixth grade. It was
really a remarkable experience. I think it was the grounding for me to
understand the importance of diversity, to accept people as they are and
how to be kind. It was a very wonderful start to school life.
There was a Quaker Meeting every Wednesday morning, so we’d
all go to the meetinghouse. It was a very quiet, peaceful place. We’d bring
our bibles. I had my Catholic bible, other people had their Jewish bibles,
or what have you. We all went with our own religious books. The Meeting
was really a place for people to speak if they were so moved. Normally the
students did not, but people could. You would rise if you wanted to speak
and say what you needed to say.
The principal, Ms. Branson, was a very respectful, respected
individual. I’ll never forget her and what she was like and what she
represented for that school.
MS. STEWARD: You grew up going to this Quaker school. What was your family life like
with your immediate family?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My dad loved woodworking. I think he taught himself how to craft things.
He made what we called a “contraption” for Val and me. It was like a
wagon, and it was made from wood. We lived in a twin house at that
point, and there was a long driveway that ran behind the houses, and all
the kids would want their chance to be on the contraption.
9
When Val and I went to overnight camp one summer, my dad and
my mom created a little theatre in our basement. My dad took apart a giant
desk, making the top of the desk the floor of the stage. He made wooden
boxes to hold up the “stage floor.” My mother sewed drapes for the
curtain. So, we had a real live stage for the neighborhood. It was the cat’s
meow. It was so much fun. We would put on plays. We’d have the parents
come. It was quite remarkable. My parents spent a lot of time helping us
have good times.
My mother was very creative, as I mentioned, and she decorated
the house in ways that were very interesting. She bought a Danish modern
table that I still have today as my dining room table. It’s just beautiful.
MS. STEWARD: I do happen to know that your mom was into gardening. Can you talk a
little more about that, and this later plays a role in your life, so can you
talk more about the outside of your house?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Sure. In this house, it was the first place where they had space to plant, so
my mother got a mulberry tree from her dad’s, my grandfather’s, house in
Brooklyn, she got a fig tree cutting from the family house in Brooklyn,
and she planted tomato plants as any good Italian family should do.
From that house, we moved to a larger house. It was my father’s
dream house. It had almost two acres of ground. My dad created a big
vegetable bed where he planted all kinds of vegetables. My mother tended
the formal flower garden. It was a beautiful piece of land with magnolia
trees, pine trees, azaleas, and all sorts of interesting, beautiful plantings. I
10
think I learned in part from that experience and later experiences with my
mom how important the garden is, and I really loved the garden being part
of my life.
11
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine A. Mazzaferri. The interview took place
on Saturday, April 8, 2023. This is the second chapter.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, your life growing up with your creative and artistic mom and,
well, your creative parents, seems idyllic. Was that throughout your whole
life growing up?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: It was up to a point. When I was 12, my dad took a business trip on a
plane. They hit bad weather, and there was an accident. There was one
survivor, but not him. I’ve heard others who were children when they lost
a parent speak of life before and after the death of the parent, and that’s
how it was for me. Life was idyllic ahead of my dad’s death, and
afterwards, it was so different and difficult. His empty chair at the kitchen
table was a daily reminder of the terrible and devastating loss we all felt.
My mom, who didn’t have any experience in business except for
the many late-night conversations she had with my dad about his business,
had to figure out how to move forward, and she did. She put on business
suits and high heels and met with lawyers to take the necessary steps to
sell my dad’s business. At that point, he had been the solo proprietor of his
company. In addition, she needed to deal with the plane accident. And she
had to figure out whether we could afford to live in our dream house. She
concluded that we couldn’t, so she needed to find a new home for us in the
same school district. She took care of all those things and managed to
move us to a beautiful new house in the same neighborhood, and once
12
again, used her creative skills to decorate the home and to create a
beautiful garden out of nothing. The land had been clear-cut, so she had
the chance to start from scratch and made a beautiful garden. Once again,
fruit trees and vegetable plants, plus flowers. She was an artist in all that
she did.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, let me stop you here for a second. I’m so impressed that she
was able to do this while grieving. Did your parents have formal
educations?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: No. My dad some took college classes at NYU while he was still in
New York, and my mom got her GED when she moved to Philadelphia, so
neither one of them had a college education. But they both got their high
school diplomas.
MS. STEWARD: Your mom had the wherewithal to meet with lawyers, sell the business,
and you moved to a new house all while experiencing profound grief. Can
you talk about your life after that experience?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Our mother demonstrated resilience. We followed her lead. One of the
beautiful things that my mom cared about so much was music, and she
decided that Valerie and I should have formal music education, even
though she herself had no background in music. She signed us up for
classes and lessons at the New School of Music in Philadelphia. I studied
the cello, and Val studied piano there. She got Valerie a wonderful baby
grand piano. And my mother bought me a beautiful French cello, which I
still have, from a violin maker in Philadelphia. She would love listening to
13
the two of us play music together, which we often did. The piano was in
the living room, and so was the cello. The two of us would play while our
mother made dinner. I think these moments were very renewing for her.
She really enjoyed that and so did we.
We had a lot of family. My mom being one of twelve, there were
lots of cousins. My dad had been one of three, plus my paternal
grandmother had seven siblings. There were lots of second cousins, so we
had lots of family visiting us, and we went to New York to visit them.
Those were very good times, important times.
Christmas Eve was always a big event. Before my dad’s death and
after, my mother put on a wonderful Christmas Eve party, the typical
Italian meal with lots of fishes, and my paternal grandmother would
always come as well, and she’d bake lots of cookies. So, it was a very
wonderful time of the year.
MS. STEWARD: In your junior year in high school, you experienced one of the most
profound historical events this country has ever seen, the assassination of
President John Kennedy. Can you discuss the impact of that experience on
you?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I can remember when John Kennedy died. I can remember hearing about
it from the principal at my high school. I was shocked by his death as I
was later by the death of Reverend Martin Luther King. I felt those losses
keenly, in part, because I knew what it was like to lose somebody special,
14
and these were two individuals who were so important to this country. I
felt very saddened by those two deaths.
MS. STEWARD: After junior high and high school, you went on to college. Were you the
first person in your family to go to college?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Of my parents, I was, certainly. I had other cousins who had gone to
college. My sister went to college. I decided to apply to NYU because my
dad had taken courses there, plus I had family in New York City, and my
paternal grandmother was in Brooklyn. It was a very fun experience. I
brought my cello with me. I played chamber music with various groups
while I was there at NYU.
When I was in high school, my sister had taken me folk dancing at
the art museum in Philadelphia. Some of my friends and I wound up
starting a folk dancing club at NYU. And I got to know the New York
family better. I went on visits with my grandmother to see her siblings and
their children in various boroughs in New York, and my mom’s sisters and
brothers were nearby, so I really had a wonderful family time while I was
at NYU studying Latin American literature. The coursework itself was
both challenging and interesting.
I chose that topic because I love Spanish. And I decided I wanted
to learn it even better, so I attended a program in Guadalajara, Mexico
during my junior year and studied more Spanish. So, college was a very
exciting time for me.
15
MS. STEWARD: In addition to your courses, you were also active in the community. Can
you talk about some of your internships and the opportunities and
volunteer activities you did while you were in college?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I worked with Aunt Florence. She had written and performed the play that
I mentioned. I would go up to Sixth Avenue to her studio and spend time
with her. I’d travel to the schools where she performed this play, doing
whatever needed to be done. For me, it was an experience about learning
what more one could do for the community. Being hands-on with my aunt
every step of the way was very inspiring and fulfilling. It added to my
education.
MS. STEWARD: We’re nearing the end of the foundational years of your life, and when you
look back on your family and the way you grew up, how would you
describe your parents, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles as a unit?
What are the characteristics that you learned from them that have
impacted you in your life and that you feel have been guiding principles?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: When I look back at them, my grandparents and my parents and my aunts
and uncles, all of them in their own ways were creative, caring and
courageous. Three of my grandparents came from another country, and
one married outside of her faith, which I’m sure was so, so difficult. They
were very principled and caring with their families and with others. And
they had very strong values, all of them, my grandparents, my parents and
my extended family. So, I come from a history that was special. I feel very
16
lucky to have come from that kind of background. I am still close with
most of my cousins today. Those early connections endured.
There’s one more thing I want to add. When you asked about my
volunteer activities, I wanted to mention this. When I was a junior in
college, I was thinking about what I was going to do with my degree in
Latin American Literature. One of my friends was applying to law school,
and I thought that was very interesting. I asked Aunt Florence what she
thought, and she said to me that there was a Mobilization for Youth Office
right near NYU. She suggested that I see if I could volunteer there and talk
with some of the lawyers and see what I could learn. That’s what I did. So,
for about eight months, I was a receptionist and a librarian. I did whatever
they needed me to do, but I took the opportunity to interview the lawyers
there and ask them what they liked about it and why they became lawyers.
I was so impressed with them. They were dedicated, hard-working
individuals, and I thought I would like to be like them.
MS. STEWARD: Well, thank you, Katherine.
17
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine A. Mazzaferri. The interview took place
on Saturday, April 15, 2023. This is the third chapter.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, welcome. Tell us why you decided you wanted to go to law
school.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: In college I had majored in Latin-American literature because I love
Spanish, and I really enjoyed Spanish literature. But I really wanted to
make a difference in the community. As I mentioned, the lawyers at
Mobilization for Youth made a lasting impression on me.
MS. STEWARD: Where did you apply, and where did you decide to go?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I applied to many law schools. I applied to NYU, and I applied to some
schools in Boston. I got into all of them except NYU, where the dean said
to me, interestingly, that he had his “quota” of women with my
credentials. At the time I thought it was odd, but I didn’t really think too
much about it. In retrospect, I’m guessing many schools had those kinds of
restrictions. As it turns out, I decided to go to the National Law Center,
which is now GW Law School, because it had an excellent public interest
program as part of its curriculum. It felt like a fit. And so, I went to GW.
MS. STEWARD: So, you moved to Washington, D.C., and where did you live? What was
going on in the world at that time?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I got an apartment at first on 24th Street, Northwest, and then I wound up
moving to another studio apartment near Pennsylvania Avenue and
21st Street, right near the law school. It was a tumultuous time in the
18
world. This is now 1969, and the Vietnam War was in full swing. There
were demonstrations because of the prosecution and trial of the Chicago 7.
There were protests in 1969 and 1970, and then on May 4, 1970, four
students were killed at Kent State University in a protest. There were
demonstrations in the District of Columbia, as well, and many of the
universities, including the National Law Center at GW, were closed for
the semester.
MS. STEWARD: For a whole semester?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Through the end of the semester. The shootings at Kent State happened on
May 4th, demonstrations were significant everywhere in the country, and
the schools simply shut their doors.
MS. STEWARD: What did that mean for you and your legal education? That’s right before
exam time.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Right. I believe we were given pass or fail grades for that semester. It
really was a turbulent time. Tough for the city, tough for everybody.
MS. STEWARD: What was your experience at GW Law School like?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I was really surprised at my experience at law school because I had never
been a minority. In each of the four sections of the law school class, there
were a hundred students, more or less, and there were ten women in each
of the sections. For the first time in my life, I felt like a minority, and I had
never understood what it was like to be in that situation. Many of the
professors were fine, but some of them were, frankly, sexist. My criminal
law professor called on women to recite the rape cases, and many of the
19
professors used hypotheticals in which only men, not women were the
lawyers. It was a surprise. A few of us in law school were concerned about
what this meant for us, and we decided to form a women’s rights
committee in June of 1970.
Interestingly, one of the professors who had said to me personally
that he didn’t think women should be in law school heard that we were
discussing organizing, and he called on me in class. He said his wife was
interested in “women’s lib,” and asked if I could get her an application.
The class roared, and I felt so humiliated. I was mortified. But it also made
me realize that it was time to get organized.
MS. STEWARD: What did the Women’s Rights Committee do?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: One of the first things Linda Colvard Dorian and I as co-chairs decided to
do was to research GW’s admissions policies. We were also co-editors of
the law school newspaper. We discovered, and then published, that GW
had higher standards for women than for men in admissions. In retrospect,
I don’t think GW was alone. I think this was the way it was, just as my
conversation with the dean at NYU. But like many of the aspects of life at
law school, it was a surprise. The dean of admissions said he didn’t get
many applications from women, not as many from women as men, and we
offered to go to our alma maters to recruit women. So, for one semester,
we did that.
MS. STEWARD: You’re organizing this Women’s Rights Committee, and what other
impacts did it have or were you able to achieve during your time at GW?
20
MS. MAZZAFERRI: One of the women who was ahead of us by one year in law school,
Nancy Stanley, had been part of a women’s law firm in New York, and
she said to us that Sue Ross, who was then a lawyer at EEOC, had been
instrumental in starting a Women and the Law class at NYU. So, she
urged us and was part of the process to try to get this kind of class at GW.
Some of us spoke with the dean, Robert Kramer, who was quite good on
women’s issues. He was very special. He was interested. He told us, if we
developed the curriculum and recommendations for professors, he would
consider it, and so we did. We researched the curriculum, and we
interviewed some candidates. We asked Sue Ross and Gladys Kessler,
who at that time was at a small firm, and later became a superior court
judge and then a district court judge, to teach our first class, which was
offered in the Fall of 1971. It was quite wonderful.
MS. STEWARD: These are amazing accomplishments for such a small group of women at
GW Law School. You get there, within your first year, you’re organizing a
women’s law committee, getting a Women and the Law course established
at the law school. What else were you all able to do?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The women’s movement was in full swing, so we were in touch with
women from other law schools, and there was a lot of talk about what the
next steps could be. So a group of us began discussing whether there
should be kind of a city-wide group on behalf of women’s rights. Around
that same time, Sue Ross, from EEOC, was contacted by the National
Organization for Women. NOW wanted to know whether our little group
21
in Washington was interested in being part of the NOW Legal Defense
Fund. In the Spring of 1971, Lucy Komisar, who was then the National
Vice President of NOW, came to a meeting at Sue Ross’s house. It was a
small group. As I recall, Sue and Nancy Stanley, Judy Potter, Judy’s sister,
Hope Eastman, Cindy Gitt, and myself. There were others, but those are
the individuals whom I can recall. So Lucy asked if we wanted to be a
chapter of the NOW Legal Defense Fund. We all listened. It was an
intriguing idea.
MS. STEWARD: You had a national organization reaching out to you?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Right. I guess NOW had heard of us, I don’t know quite how. It was an
interesting possibility. But after Lucy left, the group of us in Sue’s living
room talked about it and decided that we wanted to form our own group.
We decided to create the Women’s Legal Defense Fund, which is now the
National Partnership for Women and Families. Gladys Kessler was the
first president, and I was the second.
MS. STEWARD: Tell us about WLDF. You’re getting Gladys Kessler, first she’s teaching a
Women in the Law course, and now she’s the first president of the
Women’s Legal Defense Fund, and you’re the second. So what was
WLDF able to do?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: We had organizing committees. We had an employment committee, a
name change committee, those were the main ones that I can recall. We
were interested in working on legislation that affected women. We
realized, pretty shortly after we started, that we really couldn’t do it as a
22
group of volunteers and we needed to have a staff. As a board we
interviewed candidates, one of whom was Judith Lichtman. Judy was a
civil rights lawyer and was a fantastic attorney and organizer. She became
the executive director. She started in July of 1974 and served until July
2004. She really made the National Partnership into a key player on the
many important issues facing women in this country.
MS. STEWARD: I’m sensing a theme of strong women in your life. We have of course your
mom, your Aunt Florence. We have Judge Kessler and allies with Dean
Kramer. So now you’re moving on and you’re in law school and you’re
organizing courses. What happens next for you? What internships did you
have?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I was lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. Sue Ross reached out
to me and asked me for the summer of my second year of law school if I
would be interested in interning at EEOC. EEOC had brought a case, a
matter in front of the FCC against AT&T for gender and race
discrimination in employment. EEOC didn’t yet have enforcement
authority. That came in 1972, but the EEOC had intervened in a rate case
arguing that AT&T shouldn’t have a rate increase if it was discriminating
based on race and gender. Sue was asking me if I wanted basically to take
the lead or help significantly on the gender case, and, of course, I jumped
at the opportunity. What a chance to make a difference.
MS. STEWARD: Tell us about that case. How were you able to back door race and gender
into an issue that was involving rate increases? It seems like a novel idea.
23
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I can’t take any credit for the legal theory. David Copus, who was the head
of the task force, was I think the mastermind behind the concept. It was a
small group: just a couple of lawyers, a researcher, a financial person, a
couple of secretaries, and me. David asked Sue Ross to draft the
complaint, and when she drafted it, she drafted it for gender and for race.
She said to me recently when I spoke with her that she wasn’t sure that
David would have included gender in the complaint because it wasn’t
something that EEOC was particularly pursuing at that point. But she
drafted it, and she included it, so it was a part. Sue was the resident expert
at the agency on gender discrimination, so she was a tremendous resource
for me. In addition, she directed me to speak with Catherine East, who was
then the head of the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor.
Catherine became a wonderful resource for me as well.
MS. STEWARD: In preparation for this, you all are litigating this big case against AT&T, a
huge corporation. Tell us about the proceedings leading into it and your
role.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I was asked to identify some expert witnesses, and two of the most
fascinating ones were a couple, Doctors Sandra and Daryl Bem. They
were psychologists from Stanford University. I also helped prepare a
couple of medical experts who would testify about the ability of women to
work during pregnancy. But the Bems were particularly helpful because
the way AT&T and its 24-hour operating companies worked, they had
entry-level jobs. They had telephone operators and they had line workers,
24
and they basically hired men to be line workers and women to be
operators. Although the requirements were the same, the entry-level pay
was different, higher for line workers than for operators. But there wasn’t
any reason that we could find for women only being considered for
operator jobs.
One of the interesting projects that Drs. Bem and Bem did was to
create a survey of high school students to gauge their interest in applying
for jobs at AT&T. They crafted job advertisements. Some were just like
AT&T ads. Some were gender neutral, and some were what we call
“gender reversed”. They invited men who had sexy voices to apply for
operator jobs and women who wanted to be slim and trim to apply for the
line workers jobs, and in this sample, the pay was the same in both line
worker jobs and operator jobs. What they discovered was that with the
gender reversed ads, more women would apply to be line workers, and
more men would apply to be operators than any of the other options. Their
research demonstrated that AT&T really was getting the type of
employees that it was seeking, and if it changed its recruitment techniques,
it could have men for certain jobs and women for other jobs. The Bems
testified together, as a team. It was special.
I should have mentioned that there was another player added to the
EEOC team. Judy Potter was brought in as a trial attorney. It was very
helpful to have her on the team because at that point, EEOC didn’t have
25
court-enforcement authority, and didn’t have a lot of experience doing
trial work. So Judy was a significant player in that FCC hearing.
MS. STEWARD: What ultimately happened with the case?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Ultimately, AT&T and EEOC settled. It was in January of 1973. At that
time, it was the largest single award of back pay in the nation’s history.
The settlement included one-time payments of $15 million for 15,000
then-current employees. I understand that about 13,000 of them were
women. Also, the settlement included a new wage adjustment plan that
increased the wages of both minorities and women by $23 million a year.
After the settlement, AT&T began using some of the very ads that Drs.
Sandra and Daryl Bem had developed during the litigation. And I believe
that’s why we have male operators today.
Interestingly, there’s a book that was written about this AT&T
case. It’s entitled, The Bell Women, a story of the landmark AT&T sex
discrimination case, and it’s by Marjorie Stockford.
MS. STEWARD: What was the impact of all this? You’re in law school. First, how long
were you working on this case with the EEOC, and second, what was the
impact on you of going through this experience on a novel issue of law
bringing in gender and race on a wage hike issue and with the attorneys
that you worked with?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: It was a life-changing experience really to understand that the law is
important. What the law says is important, and interestingly, it gave me
some insights into my life at GW Law School. I noticed that there were
26
job advertisements at the law school inviting women to be secretaries and
men to be law clerks, and I wondered whether it was a violation of
Title VII. It didn’t seem right to me, so I went to Dean Robert Kramer,
whom I mentioned before, and he was surprised. He hadn’t noticed them.
He walked over with me to the bulletin board, reached in his pocket and
pulled out the key to the glass covering of the bulletin board and ripped
them down. He said to me that it wouldn’t happen again. And it didn’t
because he understood that it wasn’t a good thing.
I worked on the case about a year. I thought it was so important
for me to understand how enforcing the law can bring about change.
After I graduated from GW, I wrote another article for The
Advocate, the school newspaper, about gender bias, and I also talked about
how fair and unbiased Dean Robert Kramer had been. He was a man
before his time.
MS. STEWARD: At GW you started off with the Women’s Rights Committee during your
first year and later you worked with the EEOC. With what was going on in
the country during that time, did you feel like women’s rights had made a
substantial jump and advancement?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I think I felt like we were on the cusp, we were at the beginning, but that
there was a lot more work to do. But I also thought that there were laws on
the books that could be helpful, that this was a moment in time when the
law was ahead of society, that the law had requirements for equal
opportunity that society wasn’t in many areas ready for, but that the EEOC
27
was an agency that had the authority to enforce those laws. So, for me it
was an interesting time to begin to understand the relationship between
society and the law. I decided to continue to work at the EEOC because I
thought it gave me the opportunity to try to enforce some of those laws.
28
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical Society
of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the interviewee
is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine A.Mazzaferri. The interview took place on Sunday,
June 11, 2023. This is the fourth chapter.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, you graduated from law school in 1972. What did you do
afterwards?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. I took the D.C. bar exam and passed it and then went to work full
time at the EEOC in its Trial Division. The agency had just gotten its
court enforcement authority in 1972, and I worked on some of the very
first cases. Some of them were new cases, and some were enforcement
actions, enforcing cases that had been litigated by the Department of
Justice.
One case that was very interesting was an enforcement action
against a longshoreman’s Local in Baltimore. The case had been handled
by the Department of Justice. It had been tried before Judge Alexander
Harvey in the Federal District Court in Baltimore. He had decided the case
in 1970 and issued a decree in February of 1971. The case was affirmed
by the 4th Circuit and the Supreme Court denied certiorari. So, we had an
order, and my job was to figure out what was happening. In my
investigation, I realized that not many things had changed.
And just to pause for a minute, in handling an enforcement case as
a new attorney, I initially assumed it was going to be kind of a boring case
and there wouldn’t be much to do. That could not have been further from
the truth. It turned out to be a fascinating case at so many levels, the law,
29
the individuals, and trying to be creative to bring about the kind of results
that the judge had ordered initially.
MS. STEWARD: Tell us about the case. What was happening with the longshoremen in
Baltimore?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The Department of Justice had brought the case because there had been
two separate labor unions, a black union and a white union. The white
longshoremen were getting the more desirable jobs. They were working
longer hours, so they were getting paid better.
The judge ordered that the labor unions be combined. The concept
of merging the labor unions was that the work gangs would be integrated,
and the work would be doled out more fairly. Judge Harvey had prohibited
discrimination based on race and had ordered that jobs should be filled in
order of seniority and that all the temporary jobs should be handled out of
the central dispatch center, the hiring hall. He also had retained
jurisdiction to alter the order if necessary.
My job was to figure out what was happening. I did an initial
investigation and realized that not much had changed since the order was
issued. When I spoke with the Department of Justice lawyer who had
handled the case, he gave me the background. He told me that this was a
difficult case and that the individuals involved, some of the white
longshoremen, were not happy about the case. He warned me that I
probably would not have a warm reception when I met with the
longshoreman board, and he was right.
30
But that’s what I did. I went with Ada Blount, a paralegal from the
EEOC, to Baltimore to meet with the board. The president was the former
president of the white union, and the vice president was the former
president of the black union. The remaining members were white
longshoremen. They told me that when the last government lawyer came
to see them, they had asked him to leave. I knew it was true. But I told
them that my job was to understand what was happening and to encourage
them to make the changes that the court had ordered several years earlier.
To further my investigation, I went to the hiring hall one morning
because I wanted to see for myself. I think it’s important as a lawyer to
understand the facts of the case in all ways. So at 6:00 or so in the
morning, I went to the hiring hall in Baltimore. I was shocked because I
saw only black longshoreman waiting for work. That meant all the
temporary jobs that were held by white longshoremen had been doled out
in some other way; it wasn’t through this hiring hall.
Also, this was part of my education. Some of the black
longshoreman leaders told me they didn’t really want integrated work
gangs. They just wanted a fair share of the work. They explained that the
shipping system was containerized. They told me that being in the hole,
waiting for the container to be lowered, you wanted to have somebody
above whom you trusted. So, from the perspective of the black
longshoremen, they just wanted a fair share of the good-paying jobs, and
that simply wasn’t happening.
31
I wound up going back to my team at the EEOC, and we puzzled
over this and realized that we really needed to bring in the stevedoring
companies. There were fifteen or so major stevedoring companies that
were part of the system. If they were doling out jobs in a different way
than the judge had ordered, then they needed to be part of the answer to
this difficult problem. So we brought an action that would enjoin the
stevedoring companies from interfering with this court order and would
have them be included in this enforcement action.
This case involved a pretty novel and challenging legal issue. I
briefed this issue and argued the motion before the federal judge. Later
that same day, Judge Harvey read his opinion from the bench and agreed
with the government on this.
This case taught me so many things. Number one, not to judge a
case before you know everything about it. It was a fascinating, difficult,
complex case in terms of the legal issues and the individuals involved.
And I had assumed that it would be routine, but it was anything but that. I
think what was helpful to me was the idea that sometimes you must be
creative to figure out solutions in the law, and sometimes the law is ahead
of society, which is something I’ve mentioned before. And although I’m
not sure that I fixed the long-standing problems here, it was an honor for
me to try to be part of the solution and part of the remedy for this difficult
case.
32
MS. STEWARD: I want to ask you, because you mentioned that you went up there and you
met with these longshoremen. You had just graduated from law school as
one of the very few female law students and then presumably you were
one of the very few female lawyers at this time. They sent you up to meet
with the longshoremen, who had already turned away a government
attorney, and that was the first thing they said to you. So what were you
thinking when you went up there and met with these people? Why were
you not afraid of meeting with these longshoremen about a very hot issue
that was affecting their livelihood?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I was afraid. There was one particular longshoreman who called me on a
regular basis, a white guy who was very unhappy about the litigation. He
had threatened Judge Harvey, and, as a result, he was prohibited from
entering the federal courthouse in Baltimore. I never met him, but it turns
out he came to my office one day and met with my supervisor. And,
ironically, I had passed him in the doorway as I was leaving the office for
lunch that day. He made his views clear to my supervisor, so I knew there
was at least that person who was very unhappy.
In addition, one evening we were going to drive to Baltimore to
interview some of the black longshoremen. An attorney who was handling
a private litigation had made his office available for us to conduct the
interviews. Before we left for Baltimore, we received a threatening phone
call saying that if we came, something might happen to us and they’d be
waiting for us.
33
This was 1972. It was the beginning of the women’s movement,
and I was active at the Women’s Legal Defense Fund. I didn’t feel I could
say that I was afraid. I thought the only thing that I could do was to do my
best to protect my team. As we left for Baltimore that evening, for
example, I said to the team, “we’re going to drive together, we’re going to
park together, we’re going to walk together, and we’re going to leave that
office together. Nobody goes solo.” And that’s what we did, and it turned
out fine. But it was a scary time.
One time I went on the waterfront to interview some of the black
longshoremen, and the head of the Local challenged me. He told me I had
no authority to be there.
I reached back to my memory of my Aunt Carolyn in Philadelphia
who had taken me to some housing discrimination demonstrations and had
said to me that you should never look afraid. You should look brave and
feel brave and know that the law is on your side. And that’s how I felt
when this man confronted me. I told him that I represented the United
States government and that I was entitled to interview these witnesses. I
asked him to stand down, and after some back and forth he eventually did.
It taught me a lot about people and a little bit about myself too.
MS. STEWARD: You interviewed these people, so tell me how this wrapped up in the end.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I think we made some changes. I don’t know that this is really fixed, even
today. I think discrimination of this sort is extremely difficult to untangle.
34
I felt good that I was able to move the ball further. I don’t know whether I
moved it all the way.
MS. STEWARD: This was your first experience as an attorney at the EEOC?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes.
MS. STEWARD: I imagine it was such a life-changing experience. What other cases had a
strong impact on you during that time?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Another case I brought was a race and gender case against a paper
company in Memphis, and it was clear discrimination. Before Title VII
was effective, there were literally black jobs and white jobs, women jobs
and men jobs. Under the Civil Rights Act, this was a pretty clear-cut case,
and the race case was very straightforward.
The gender case was a little bit more complicated because of the
way the company had implemented changes after the Civil Rights Act was
amended to include gender. The company had rated jobs as “light,”
“medium,” and “heavy,” and then rated the employees the same way. The
women would go to the company doctor, and the doctor would ask them if
they wanted him to rate them as “heavy.” And they’d say no, so the
doctor would rate them as “light.” Then the jobs were rated, and of course
the lowest-paying jobs were the “light” jobs, and the highest paying jobs
were the “heavy” jobs.
So, once again, I decided to go and see for myself what the plant
looked like. I asked to see the machine tender job, which was one of the
highest paid jobs. The machine tender was sitting on top of a very high
35
stool. There was a big red button in front of him, and if there was a
problem on the line, his job was to press the button. I thought to myself
that clearly the system needed to be modified, and the “light,” “medium,”
and “heavy” ratings didn’t necessarily mean what we had thought they did.
They were such brave people, the African American and the
women complainants with whom I met in this case. They were
extraordinary individuals. I think in this case we were able to make
changes, the law was able to be implemented effectively, and it was very
satisfying.
MS. STEWARD: Can you tell me about your work with Beatrice Rosenberg?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: One other side note about the manufacturing case I mentioned was that at
the EEOC, the head of the Appellate Division was Beatrice Rosenberg.
She had come from the Department of Justice where she had been the
Deputy Chief of the Criminal Appellate Division. The EEOC had newly
received enforcement authority, so her role at the EEOC was a new
position. For the trial division, Bea Rosenberg was asked to review all our
briefs that addressed procedural issues so that there could be consistency
across the circuits.
In my case there was a summary judgment motion that was headed
to the Sixth Circuit, so Bea reviewed my brief. This was a moment of true
fear for me to bring my little baby brief upstairs to the Appellate Division
to present it to Bea Rosenberg.
36
You’ve heard all about Bea. She had those big scissors and her
stapler and her big messy scrawl. She literally cut my brief up, put it back
together, wrote on it, and said to me, about certain arguments, “Don’t
make that argument, it’s silly.” She was very sharp, but clear, and, of
course, she made my brief sing. It was a true honor to have her be part of
my education.
One more story about Bea: a few of us went to watch Bea argue
one of the EEOC cases before the D.C. Circuit, and she was treated with
such respect by the judges. She was a very gifted lawyer. Bea Rosenberg
was one of my heroes. She was smart and principled and taught lawyers
what was important about being a lawyer, especially a government lawyer.
Bea passed away in 1989, and I was then at the D.C. Bar, and
Chuck Ruff was the Bar president. He had worked for Bea at Justice. He
and I decided that we needed to figure out a way to honor her. She was so
special. So we came up with the Beatrice Rosenberg Award, which the
D.C. Bar presents to an individual who has been in government service
long-term and who follows some of the principles that Bea embodied as
her legacy. It was a wonderful moment for me to have a way to keep her
memory alive.
MS. STEWARD: How long were you at the EEOC?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I was there for about three-plus years. I was there until 1975.
37
MS. STEWARD: So you went from GW Law School, where you started working on the
Women in the Law courses, and then you went over to the EEOC. What
other activities did you engage in?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Judy Lichtman was then the executive director of what was then the
Women’s Legal Defense Fund, now the National Partnership for Women
and Families. Judy and I wound up teaching the first Women in the Law
course at Antioch Law School. I had been active in successfully getting
that course started at GW when I was a student there, and it was a treat to
be able then to teach the class. And, of course, teaching with Judy
Lichtman was very special. She’s an extraordinary lawyer and a friend,
and it felt very good to be able to pass that information along to the next
generation of law students.
MS. STEWARD: You were expanding the impact of what you all created at GW back when
you were a law student.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Right.
MS. STEWARD: When you look back on your career, your years at the EEOC, what’s your
impression of that time of your life? What are the lessons you learned
professionally and personally?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I really saw first-hand how damaging workplace discrimination can be in
so many different types of industries, and I was so impressed, as I
mentioned, with the complaining witnesses I interviewed. They were
extraordinary people who had tough lives and tough jobs and yet they had
the strength to speak out.
38
The impact of discrimination stayed with me. Especially in my job
at the D.C. Bar where I had management responsibilities, I really strove to
look for diversity, to consider individuals’ diversity, because I think that
makes the workplace better. I strove to do that both with the staff and with
volunteers. I think my early experience at the EEOC really made an
impression on me about the importance of diversity and fairness.
MS. STEWARD: Thank you, Katherine.
39
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine Mazzaferri. The interview took place on
Sunday, October 13, 2024. This is the fifth chapter
MS. STEWARD: Good afternoon, Katherine. Let’s pick up where we left off. Why don’t
you tell us about your time at the League of Women Voters.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I began at the League in October of 1975 and was there until July of 1978.
The League of Women Voters Education Fund, or LWVEF, is the
educational arm of the League of Women Voters of the United States. The
LWVEF had a small litigation department, which primarily handled voting
rights cases. When I arrived at the litigation department, Trudy Levy, an
attorney, was already on the staff. Trudy was an expert in election law,
which was great since I was a novice in that area of the law.
We worked with state and local leagues, primarily in election and
citizen participation cases. We helped them fund some cases. During my
time there, we funded and supervised twenty-five cases in state and federal
courts in voting rights, campaign finance, and sunshine laws. Although the
leagues were involved in other areas, such as natural resources,
international relations and social policy, their primary focus was election
laws.
MS. STEWARD: Tell us a little bit more about the League itself. How big was your team?
Where did the funding come from? Tell us a little about the people who
were there.
40
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There were just four of us on the LWV’s litigation team. As I mentioned,
Trudy was the other attorney, and we had a secretary and a law student.
We were funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation. Esther Schachter,
who was our Ford Foundation officer, was very supportive of our work.
Initially, Joanne Hayes was the liaison from the League Board to
the Litigation Department. Later, Dot Ridings became our liaison. Both of
them were strong, smart, incredibly effective women. It was really a
wonderful experience for me to get to know them. We called them the
“League Ladies.” They were such amazing women. and the work they did
as volunteers was truly impressive.
MS. STEWARD: What kinds of cases did you handle when you were at the League?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I had been active on the Employment Counseling Committee of the
Woman’s Legal Defense Fund, and WLDF found lawyers to handle
certain types of cases. WLDF had been hearing about women having
difficulty getting jobs in the construction area, so Judith Lichtman, who
was executive director of the WLDF, reached out to me about this. We
decided that the LWVEF Litigation Department and WLDF would
convene a national meeting on the issue of women in the construction
industry.
We asked whether the Ford Foundation would extend our grant,
which had been directed to voting rights, to fund this meeting and
ultimately to fund the litigation which was an outcome of this meeting.
41
The Ford Foundation agreed to provide additional funding for this
meeting.
We called together people from San Francisco, Seattle and
Tacoma, and Washington D.C. to brainstorm about what was happening
with women in construction. An Executive Order 11246, which prohibited
racial discrimination and required affirmative action by federal
contractors, had been amended by Executive Order 11375 to include
women. We convened the meeting to talk about what else could be done.
MS. STEWARD: What was the issue? You have an executive order, but what was the
problem you all were addressing?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The issue was that although the executive order required affirmative
action by federal contractors for women and minorities, it wasn’t being
enforced.
Joan Graff, who was a lawyer from Equal Rights Advocates in San
Francisco, came to the meeting. Joan is a dynamic attorney. She’s still
working. She’s also a dear, lifelong friend.
Joan and I both had backgrounds in Title VII, and we had both
worked at the EEOC. We realized that Title VII wasn’t enough. We
needed the Executive Order 11246, which required affirmative action, to
be enforced. So, we convened this meeting together. From our
brainstorming at the meeting, we concluded that we needed to bring a
mandamus action against the Department of Labor for its failure to
enforce the executive order.
42
MS. STEWARD: When was the meeting, and who was there?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The meeting was in late 1975. Judith Lichtman and Joan were there, and
there were other participants from San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, and
Washington, D.C. I believe that some lawyers from the Center for Law
and Social Policy also attended. It really was just a brainstorming meeting,
and, as I said, the conclusion was that we needed to bring a mandamus
action.
MS. STEWARD: Can you walk us through what happened after that meeting?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Sure. I asked Judith Lichtman if the Women’s Legal Defense Fund would
be of counsel in the lawsuit, and she agreed. There was another lawyer
looking into the issue. At the beginning, two cases were filed, and later we
consolidated them.
In addition, the Department of Labor was seeking comment on
proposed regulations to implement E.O. 11246, so we decided to file
comments on proposed regulations. The Center for Law and Social Policy
was very helpful in preparing those comments. The League of Women
Voters of the United States, which could lobby, and the Center for Law
and Social Policy filed a petition which we helped draft, seeking goals and
timetables in federally funded affirmative action and in apprenticeship
programs.
We filed the lawsuit, Advocates for Women v. Usery, on May 14,
1976. In March of 1977, Joan and I went to the Women and the Law
conference that was being held in Madison, Wisconsin. We went because
43
Karen Clauss, who was the newly minted Solicitor of Labor, was
speaking.
We listened to her presentation, and we waited for her afterwards.
We told her who we were and asked her whether she thought the Secretary
of Labor, then F. Ray Marshall, might be interested in speaking with us;
she said she’d ask him. So, I sent letters with a proposed agenda to
Karen Clauss, and we had a meeting that included the Secretary of Labor
and also Alexis Herman, who was head of the Women’s Bureau. Several
of our plaintiffs also came with us. They told graphic stories about how
difficult it was for them to get jobs, and once on the job, working in
construction. The Secretary of Labor appeared moved by all of this.
Lois Schiffer from the Center for Law and Social Policy also
attended that meeting. She was very helpful, and she sent a detailed
follow-up letter to the Secretary about all the issues that we had talked
about.
MS. STEWARD: After that meeting, what did you all decide to do?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: We had filed suit, and we were trying to gather information about the
experience of women in construction. We learned about a gentleman by
the name of John Heneghan, who was the Director of the Office of Civil
Rights for the Maritime Administration at the Department of Commerce.
He was responsible for enforcing the very same Executive Order 11246, as
amended, for shipbuilders. John Heneghan is one of my heroes.
44
Mr. Heneghan had found that women were interested in these jobs,
that women going through apprenticeship programs could do these jobs,
and that women were very reliable, effective, responsible, talented
workers for the shipbuilders. So, we had a life experience case that
showed us that if the government would enforce the law, women could
perform these jobs and they were great employees. Learning about
Mr. Heneghan’s work made us realize that we were on the right track.
MS. STEWARD: Can you, tell us why John Heneghan is one of your heroes? Tell us more
about him.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I didn’t know everything about him when I was working with him on this
case. When he passed away in 2007, I came upon his obituary, and I
learned that he had been on the initial task force in 1965 that helped set up
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, so early on, he was
interested in equal employment issues. In 1966, he was the deputy
regional director of EEOC in Atlanta.
Two years later, he moved to the Maritime Administration in
Washington, D.C. Over the next ten years, according to his obituary, he
increased the shipyard employment of women in blue collar jobs from
.2 percent to 5.4 percent and for skilled black workers from 14.6 percent to
25.6 percent.
You can see why he is a hero of mine. How remarkable. One man
seeing what the law is and enforcing it was effective in changing the
employment lives of all those women and men in the maritime industry.
45
MS. STEWARD: So now here you are in the construction industry, and you have an
executive order, the same one that Mr. Heneghan had, and the biggest
problems were the regulations. What was your approach to getting
regulations implemented?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Even as we filed the lawsuit, we needed to have those regulations. We
filed comments on proposed regulations, and we followed up. We had
another meeting with the Secretary of Labor. We just kept the pressure on
to help the government do what it had to do to make this work. And later,
as I mentioned, there had been another case that was filed. We
consolidated those two cases.
Ultimately, the regulations for goals and timetables for federal
contractors were published in final form in April of 1978. The contractor
regulations were published in April of 1978, and the apprenticeship
regulations were published in May of 1978. So, we were successful in
getting those much-needed regulations adopted.
MS. STEWARD: During your advocacy for this, you also were public with this advocacy.
Tell us about your time on the MacNeil/Lehrer Report.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Right. Cynthia Goodrich Kuhn, who was part of the small PR department
at the League, snagged an interview for me on the MacNeil/Lehrer Report.
Cynthia later became the communications director for the D.C. Bar, where
she was a great hire for me.
In August of 1977, Robin MacNeil interviewed me and a
construction representative on the PBS show. PBS at that point was on
46
9
th Avenue in New York City, which was just down the street from my
Aunt Florence, so I stayed with her, and she walked me over to the
interview. It was lots of fun.
It was my first time ever doing a television interview, and I was
very restrained. After the interview, the union rep and I had a heated
exchange. Robin MacNeil asked me afterwards why I hadn’t done that on
the air, and I said that it was because I thought in this moment it was
important for women to be restrained and not be strident. I don’t know
whether that was the right approach, but that was the approach that I took.
The interview helped publicize the case, and I was happy to do that.
MS. STEWARD: Ultimately you all did get the regulations published.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: We did. The regulations were published. Unfortunately, both Trudy and I
were leaving the League in July of 1978, but Marcia Greenberger and
Margy Kohn at the Center for Law and Social Policy picked up where we
left off, and the consent decree was finalized. We had been in negotiations
before Trudy and I left, but they wrapped it up on December 5, 1978. So,
the litigation was ended, there was a consent decree, and there were rules
in place. I felt like, at the end of the day, we had moved the needle
somewhat.
These cases and these issues are detailed in a book by Carrie
Baker. It’s called The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment. It
talks about the work that we did, but it also points out how much more
work there is to be done.
47
MS. STEWARD: You mentioned the construction industry, but you also worked in other
areas. Can you talk about some of those?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There was another case that the Ford Foundation helped fund as well.
Trudy and I participated as local counsel in Owens v. Brown, which was
filed by the ACLU as lead counsel. Sue Ross was at the ACLU at the time.
Owens v. Brown was filed in November of 1976. It was a class
action on behalf of past, present and future women in the U.S. Navy
challenging the constitutionality of a law prohibiting the assignment of
women to sea duty aboard Navy vessels, except hospital ships and
transports. There was a hearing on March 15, 1978. There were cross
motions for summary judgment. On July 27, 1978, U.S. District Judge
John Sirica certified the class action, and he granted the plaintiffs’ motion
for summary judgment.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, when you look back at your time at the League of Women
Voters Education Fund, you discussed two very pivotal industries on
which you had an impact. What are the lessons that you take from your
time there?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The lessons are that if you see a problem, you have to figure out how to
address it, and there is not always a straight line. Sometimes it takes a lot
of different approaches and a lot of different players to find the solution. I
think that in the women in construction cases, for example, dealing with
the regulations, handling the underlying lawsuit, and identifying other
players who could be constructive was important.
48
The other lesson was that personal relationships that I already had
led to meaningful collaborations. For example, I again tapped Sandra and
Daryl Bem, the psychologists whom I mentioned I had worked with when
I was at the EEOC. I asked them to do a study asking if the law were
enforced and there was affirmative action, whether women would be more
likely to apply for construction jobs. Not surprisingly, their research
showed that women would. And of course, John Heneghan’s real life
experience showed that with affirmative action women applied in greater
numbers.
There were many relationships in my work at the League where I
collaborated with individuals I knew from the Women’s Legal Defense
Fund. The WLDF brought us the women in construction case and was a
partner throughout. And Sue Ross, who was at the ACLU, asked us to
become involved in the Navy case. The relationships that I had established
over time were important to the work that I did at the League.
MS. STEWARD: We talked about the construction industry, and previously we talked about
your work at the docks. The bravery of these women cannot be
overlooked. Can you talk about the experiences that these women and
minorities were going through at this time and why you all ended up
taking on those cases?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: With women in the construction industry, first, women had a very hard
time even getting into apprenticeship programs, and once they were in
them, they were harassed. It was physically dangerous for them to be in
49
those jobs. So, I think they had to confront significant barriers to get the
jobs in the first place, but then they had to overcome the incredible
harassment and physical threats once they were in the jobs.
In fact, one of the things that John Heneghan recommended to the
contractors was that they hire a group of women, not just one woman,
because having a group of women to support each other was helpful, from
his perspective, in making the work experience more palatable for the
women. What he described was the fact that as women became more
prevalent in the workplace, men accepted them more. I think he found the
same to be true for minorities.
The black longshoremen I worked with while at EEOC faced very
similar barriers and challenges. The bravery of the individuals I met in the
course of both of those cases was incredibly impressive and awe inspiring.
50
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine Mazzaferri. The interview took place on
Sunday, July 16, 2023. This is the sixth chapter.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, tell us about your start at the Federal Trade Commission.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Good morning, Annamaria. I started at the FTC in July of 1978. I was the
Assistant Director for Advertising Practices. This job was my introduction
to the legislative process of the United States. I really had no experience
before that. I supervised several administrative investigations about
deceptive advertising practices, but one of my primary responsibilities was
to oversee the Children’s Advertising Rulemaking. The proposed rule had
been put out for comment before I got to the FTC.
MS. STEWARD: What was this rule about?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The proposed rule sought a ban on all advertising that was directed to
children who were too young to understand the content. It would propose
to ban advertising directed to kids for food products that pose a serious
dental health risk. It also would require that television advertising for
sugared food products that were not included in this ban but that were
directed to audiences with a significant proportion of older children be
balanced by nutritional or health disclosures funded by the advertisers. So
it was a pretty broad proposal to address the FTC’s concerns about
advertising to children or directed to children.
MS. STEWARD: How was the rule received?
51
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There were several industries that were impacted, and there was a lot of
opposition. Some consumer groups were in favor of it, but as an example
of the opposition, the three national advertising industry groups brought a
lawsuit in federal district court to ask that the Chairman of the FTC,
Michael Pertschuk, be recused from considering the Children’s
Advertising Rulemaking. They believed he had already expressed his
personal views about what the outcome should be.
MS. STEWARD: It is interesting that the advertising industry groups brought it and not the
actual industries.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Right. This again was my first exposure to an aspect of the legislative
process that when there is money involved, it really brings to the fore the
industries that are potentially impacted. So, there must be a lot of money
in advertising, and those industries did not want to see their advertising
impacted by a regulation of the Federal Trade Commission.
MS. STEWARD: Did they succeed in getting Chairman Pertschuk recused from the case?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: They did. On November 3, 1978, U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell
blocked Chairman Pertschuk from further consideration of the Children’s
Advertising Proceeding.
MS. STEWARD: So clearly this was a hot issue.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: It was a very hot issue. There was a lot of interest on Capitol Hill about
what the FTC was doing, and as I said, there was this challenge in federal
district court as well.
52
MS. STEWARD: So, you get this case when you first arrive. It lands in your lap. What did
you have to do? I’m going forward because now you have a chairman
recused from it so you’re leading this rulemaking?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: That’s right. I oversaw the presentation of about thirty expert witnesses.
We prepared memoranda on some complex legal issues, and we held
hearings both in San Francisco and in Washington, D.C. There was a lot of
scientific and expert testimony about the impact on children of various
types of television ads. It was a very interesting substantive investigation.
MS. STEWARD: We mentioned the advertising industry and presumably the cereal making
and food industry. What other industries were involved?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There really was a broad range of industries that were impacted
potentially, cereal and candy manufacturers, toy companies, and as we’ve
talked about, the national advertising groups. The different groups went to
Congress, and Congress let the FTC funding lapse in early May of 1980.
The agency was briefly shut down because of the pressure on the Hill
from the industries.
MS. STEWARD: So there’s also another FTC act that was happening at the same time as
this was going on for you.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Right. In 1980, the Congress adopted the FTC Improvements Act of 1980.
This legislation amended the FTC Act to prohibit the FTC from issuing
any rule pertaining to children’s advertising under the fairness doctrine.
There were some other doctrines the agency could use, but not the fairness
53
doctrine. Congress added a provision that would allow a two-chamber
legislative veto of FTC regulations.
MS. STEWARD: So, this is not your first time in a hot issue. I mean you had dealt with
many challenging situations coming from the EEOC, so what was your
reaction to this? A case you’re working on has now resulted in the entire
agency being shut down, so what did you do next?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There were a lot of complicated and conflicting concerns. First of all, in
my personal view, the agency had a strong position on the need to regulate
advertising to children. It was clear to me that the advertising was
purposely being directed to kids because the advertisers knew that this was
a successful way to encourage families to purchase certain types of
products. But we began to worry that the remedies available to the FTC
might not be the right remedies on this issue and also that it was damaging
to the agency itself. It was a tough time.
MS. STEWARD: So at this point you didn’t have any other choice but to negotiate with the
industries because you were being disempowered by the Congress.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Right. We struggled with what to do and very reluctantly decided to
recommend that we figure out a way to come to a compromise with the
industries and close down the investigation.
MS. STEWARD: And is that what happened?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. It took some time, and there were a lot of conversations, but the staff
thought we should compromise. We had many conversations about what
54
the next steps could be. Ultimately the investigation ended in October of
1981.
MS. STEWARD: So this was a learning experience for you. What other key things happened
for you during that time at the Federal Trade Commission?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Al Kramer was the very hard-driving director of the Bureau of Consumer
Protection. He gave me the opportunity to be part of a Senior Executive
Service, SES, training program that included an assignment that was
outside of the FTC. It was a really eye-opening and wonderful experience
for me. It was the first time I’d had any management training experience,
and I was very grateful to Al for having considered me for that
opportunity. It was an 18-month candidate SES development program that
included a three-month developmental assignment in the summer of 1980.
MS. STEWARD: Where was your developmental assignment?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I was the director of the regulatory analysis project at the United States
Regulatory Council.
MS. STEWARD: What did you all do for the United States Regulatory Council?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The purpose of the project was to assess the progress of regulatory
analysis in government. We developed a survey instrument, surveyed ten
agencies, and issued a report that summarized our findings and offered
recommendations. It was published in June of 1981.
MS. STEWARD: After you had this case involving advertising for children and then you
went to this SES training program, what happened for you next at the
Federal Trade Commission?
55
MS. MAZZAFERRI: In September of 1980, I officially became part of the Senior Executive
Service, and I took on the role of the Assistant Director for Product
Reliability.
MS. STEWARD: Now you’re in a leadership position, so what did you do as the Assistant
Director for Product Reliability?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I managed several investigations, and one of the key ones that I oversaw
was the rulemaking on the Used Car Rule. This was my next lesson in the
legislative process.
MS. STEWARD: I can imagine that the Used Car Rule was probably another hot button
issue, so can you tell us about that proposed rule and the impact it had on
the industry and on the agency?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The rulemaking proposal had been put out for comment before I took on
this new role, and I needed a strong leader to manage this important
initiative. I hired Susan Liss to head up the investigation. She was very
capable and very savvy. As it turned out, this was a long and convoluted
role, but Susan was up to that task.
In May of 1980, the Commission had tentatively adopted a
Proposed Rule about the Sale of Used Motor Vehicles, and in August of
1980 the Commission had published the Used Car Rule in the Federal
Register. But in April of 1981, the Commission rejected the staff proposal,
which would have encouraged dealers to inspect vehicles, and instead
modified the rule to focus on the disclosure of warranty information.
56
MS. STEWARD: That clearly undermined a big aspect of the proposed rule, so what
happened next? You have this proposed rule, you get a modified proposal,
and was that modified proposal accepted?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: In August of 1981, the Commission adopted and published in the Federal
Register the Proposed Trade Regulation Rulemaking Pertaining to Used
Cars. Later that month, the National Automobile Dealers Association filed
suit in federal court to block the used car rule, and in September of 1981,
consistent with that earlier amendment to the FTC Act, the FTC sent the
used car rule to the House and Senate Commerce Committees.
MS. STEWARD: So, this is another example of when the affected industry had a lot of
power over the proposed rule coming from the Federal Trade
Commission. What happened in this case?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: In May of 1982, the House and Senate vetoed the FTC’s Used Car Rule.
That was the only time that this legislative veto that was established in
1980 was used. Consumer groups challenged the constitutionality of the
legislative veto.
I left the FTC in June of 1982, but this used car saga wasn’t over.
On July 6, 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the D.C. Circuit’s
decision that the legislative veto provision was unconstitutional. So, there
was a resolution about disclosing information to consumers about used
cars. It wasn’t as robust as what the staff had proposed, but there is a
sticker called the “Buyer’s Guide” that can be found on used cars today. It
discloses whether there’s a warranty on the car and if so, what systems are
57
covered and what percentage of the costs for repairs the dealer will cover.
It wasn’t what the staff had proposed, but it was more than what we had
before.
MS. STEWARD: Do you want to add anything more about your experience with the Federal
Trade Commission?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There was one thing I thought was interesting. As I mentioned, we held
many hearings on the Used Car Rule. Some of the dealers testified that
they thought disclosing what was wrong with a used automobile was a
good practice and that they did that because they found that it was good
for business. Families would return to them to buy other cars for their
children or their grandchildren. I thought it was interesting that what we
were proposing was not at all far-fetched. It was consistent with how these
dealers were handling their businesses. It was always interesting that there
were different points of view about all these investigations and projects.
MS. STEWARD: As always when we talk about these chapters of your life, what were the
lessons learned from your experience at the Federal Trade Commission?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Lots of interesting lessons. As I mentioned, I got a fundamental
understanding of how the legislative process works. When I was at EEOC
I was the beneficiary of the fact that there were some wonderful statutes
that I could work to implement, but at the FTC, it was in some ways the
opposite. The statutes there were being challenged in a way that made it
difficult to implement some of the underlying purposes. So, it was an
experience to know that there’s always a process. It’s important to look at
58
all the options, and sometimes the option you think is the best one may
have to be modified to get something out of the effort that you are
undertaking.
MS. STEWARD: You left the Federal Trade Commission in June of 1982. Why did you
decide to leave and where did you go next?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: With the change in the Administration, it was clear that the focus of the
federal government would change. I knew the FTC would have a less
consumer-oriented focus.
I began to look around. I had served on the board of the
Washington Council of Lawyers in the late 1970s and had done some
mediation training in 1982, so I was looking to other types of
opportunities.
I decided to look for an opportunity at the D.C. Bar. I had served
on a steering committee of the Labor Law Section from 1974 to 1975, and
I also was on the nominations committee of the Administrative Law
Section of the Bar in 1980. I had some exposure to the Bar from that
perspective. The D.C. Bar executive director job seemed like something
that could combine some of the skills that I had learned from my
experience in other positions.
MS. STEWARD: Thank you, Katherine. This ends our Federal Trade Commission chapter.
59
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine Mazzaferri. The interview took place on
Wednesday, August 16, 2023. This is the seventh chapter.
MS. STEWARD: Let’s talk about the Bar’s work with the Superior Court and the D.C.
Court of Appeals on the multi-door and appellate advocacy programs.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Very early on when I came to the Bar, I was introduced to Linda
Finkelstein, later Linda Ferren. I don’t recall how we were introduced, but
Judge Gladys Kessler was then a Superior Court judge, and I knew her
from my days at the Women’s Legal Defense Fund. She probably
introduced me to both Linda Finkelstein and Chief Judge Carl Moultrie of
the Superior Court. The Chief Judge, Judge Kessler, and Linda Finkelstein
were an incredibly formidable team, very much engaged in creating a
Multi-door Dispute Resolution Courthouse. The concept was first created
by Frank Sanders, a lawyer at Harvard Law School, who had written about
this.
An ABA special committee on dispute resolution chose three sites
to initiate the multi-door concept, and our very own D.C. Superior Court
was one of them.
When Linda Finkelstein and Judge Kessler approached me about
whether the Bar would play a role, I was very interested. I thought it was a
great opportunity for the Bar. We established a Special Committee on
Alternative Dispute Resolution. Sidney Sachs was the chair, and we
recruited volunteers. We helped the Superior Court with fundraising,
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recruited volunteers and publicized the program. Then later in May of
1987 when Paul Friedman, now senior judge on the U.S. District Court,
was President of the Bar, the Bar participated in the very first of what’s
called “Settlement Week.” The idea was that lawyers performed as
magistrates to hear cases and resolve them. It was a real win-win for the
litigants, for the court, and for the lawyers.
From my perspective, the multi-door concept was an interesting
model for how one can examine a difficult issue and come up with a
creative solution. In this case, the difficult problem was backlog, and the
solution was adding volunteers to the mix to help reduce the backlog,
making the entire system move better and more quickly. It was a model
for me on how to study a tough issue and develop ways of addressing it.
Linda and Judge Kessler published an article in the Catholic University
Law Review called The Evolution of a Multi-Door Courthouse. It
documents the thorough and meticulous work of that Superior Court team
in really making this happen.
Linda Ferren went on to become the Court Executive of the D.C.
Superior Court and later the Circuit Executive of the D.C. Circuit. In her
role as the D.C. Circuit Executive, she facilitated the federal court’s
assistance in a D.C. Bar CLE course on appellate advocacy. At least one
of the judges of that court participated in the training. It was an excellent
opportunity for our members. Of course, after her circuit executive role,
Linda became the first and long-time executive director of the Historical
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Society of the D.C. Circuit. We collaborated over the years on many
projects of mutual bench/bar interest. Everything that Linda touched was
carefully thought through and well-implemented. I was very fortunate to
have her as a colleague for all those years, and she became a lifelong
friend in the balance.
MS. STEWARD: Let’s discuss the Programs Division of the D.C. Bar. Katherine, when you
started as CEO, can you tell us about the programs that were in place at
that time and how they grew?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There was no formal Programs Division when I came. There were
programs. We had a small CLE program. We had what we called
“Divisions” that later became “Sections” and now “Communities”. We
had a legal ethics hotline, staffed part-time by a lawyer. We had a
voluntary fee arbitration program staffed by a volunteer. Actually, that
was really it. So, the issue for each of those small programs was how to
keep them going. The ethics staff person could be funded by Bar dues
because it was related to ethics and discipline, but the other programs had
to be self-sufficient.
I became Executive Director in June of 1982, and some time in
1983, I realized that the small revolving fund that the D.C. Court of
Appeals had established for the CLE program was about to run out. We
brainstormed about how to fund and run our small, but important, CLE
Program. A CLE committee member who was active at the Georgetown
University Law Center reached out to ask if Georgetown would be willing
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to run the Bar’s CLE Program. Georgetown agreed. Larry Center, who
was the director of that program, brought our three Bar staff people from
our CLE program over to his offices, and they literally ran the program
under Larry’s direction for a number of years. I was extremely grateful to
Georgetown and Larry for being willing to take this on.
MS. STEWARD: The program later transitioned from Georgetown and partnered with the
George Washington University Law School. Can you tell us about that
partnership.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. At the end of the day, we really wanted to be able to run our own
program. Although we were grateful to Georgetown, we wanted to be able
to focus on the specific needs of our members, especially the smaller firms
and solo lawyers. I approached GW, which was my alma mater. Jack
Friedenthal was the Dean. We asked him if he’d be willing to put some
money aside for our CLE Program, and I was thrilled that GW was willing
to step up. GW gave us $50,000, and we used it to figure out how to run
an efficient and effective program that met the specific needs of our
members.
Ultimately, with a very talented staff leader, we succeeded in our
vision. After Cynthia Hill came to the Bar staff as the first Assistant
Executive Director for Programs, she hired Mary Fran Edwards as the
CLE manager. With a very strong CLE Committee, they developed the
tools to run a CLE program that was independent and was able to be selfsupporting. I was very grateful to GW for that money to get us started.
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MS. STEWARD: You’re starting a Programs Division without any money and without any
staff really at that time, so can you talk to us about the very beginning of
that program and how you ended up with an AED for the Programs
Division?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: In 1989 Chuck Ruff was the Bar president. Chuck and I had talked about
the concept of creating a position of Assistant Executive Director for
Programs for the following fiscal year because he could see that it would
be beneficial to have an additional staff leader for these important
programs. He called me on a weekend. I remember I was in the garden,
and I heard the phone ring. I ran to get it, and it was Chuck. He said to me
“Mazzaferri,” as Chuck called me, “I’ve looked at the budget, and I think
we can bring that assistant executive director job to the Bar earlier than we
had thought. What do you think?” Oh my, I was so thrilled, so I said
absolutely.
So that very fiscal year, we began the Programs Division, which
initially consisted of Sections (now Communities), CLE, legal ethics, and
fee arbitration, which later evolved. It was really an extraordinary assist to
have a professional run that Division.
Cynthia was somebody with whom I hadn’t worked previously.
She actually had worked for Maureen Thornton Syracuse, who had
succeeded me at the League of Women Voters Education Fund. Early in
1990, Cynthia had approached me for advice about exploring
opportunities in the D.C. legal community after many years working in the
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national public policy arena. While advising her on other possibilities, I
told her that I didn’t have anything at that point, but I might in the future.
So, after the AED job became available, I reached out to Cynthia and
asked her if she would apply, and she, among others, did. The rest, as they
say, is history. Cynthia is so talented and creative, and she hired a very
strong staff. It really enabled the Programs Division to thrive, succeed and
be amazing.
MS. STEWARD: When you hired Cynthia, the first and only Assistant Executive Director
for Programs during your tenure, what was the CLE Program like at that
point?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: We were just beginning with GW, and she hired Mary Fran Edwards, who
was very talented, as the CLE manager. Before Mary Fran came on board,
CLE committee member Susan Moss, who was at the Department of
Justice Legal Education Institute, helped Cynthia and the staff with the
MCLE accreditation process. The GW seed money helped us, as I say, get
started, but at the end of the day, the staff figured out how to make the
Program self-sufficient going forward.
MS. STEWARD: In addition to the CLE Program, there were several other programs that
were, as you mentioned, in place at the time. Can you talk to us about the
early versions of the Lawyer Assistance Program as well as the Clients’
Security Fund? Let’s start with the Lawyer Assistance Program.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There wasn’t a staffed program initially. There was a committee of
volunteers who were interested in the nexus between alcoholism and
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discipline, and they wanted to help colleagues who found themselves in
that position.
It took several conversations with our disciplinary system to see if
there was concurrence that there was a relationship between drug abuse
and alcoholism, and discipline. At the end of the day, the disciplinary
system concurred that there was such a relationship. This development in
turn enabled our general counsel to give us an opinion stating that we
could use Bar dues money for the Lawyer Assistance Program.
So, in October of 1985, I hired the first director of that program,
Suzanne Makepeace, who was an amazing woman. She knew her
business, and she was able to put together a very good program that still
exists at the Bar today. I’m very proud of that. It took conversations and an
effort, but I thought it was important for members to have a place where
they could have confidential conversations with a professional to sort out
what they needed and to help them heal and be good lawyers.
MS. STEWARD: One of the key traits of that program is that lawyers volunteered to
participate in the Lawyer Assistance Program and share their stories with
other lawyers.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: They did. We had a committee of volunteers who were very talented. They
were willing to share their stories and talk to other lawyers and to judges
about their situations, and I think it encouraged other lawyers who were in
crisis to come forward. So, for me, it’s a program that’s a win-win for the
member, the profession and the public.
66
MS. STEWARD: This is another example of how you created a community within the D.C.
Bar of reaching out to everyone, our most vulnerable lawyers as well as
our small and solo firm practitioners. I bring them up in the context of the
programs that you were able to build that were focused on really helping
those lawyers at that time, but let’s jump to the Clients’ Security Fund.
When you came on, what was going on with the Clients’ Security Fund?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The Clients’ Security Fund was one of the few programs that we could fund
with Bar dues under the 1980 member referendum. It is an important
program. It reimburses clients who’ve been injured and damaged by lawyers
who are members of our Bar. This program initially wasn’t staffed at all by
the D.C. Bar. It was run by volunteers. I approached the chair of the Clients’
Security Fund and asked him whether he could use some assistance to
organize files, help with meetings, just keep track of all the various details.
He readily agreed. So, I had someone from my staff work part time to help
the Clients’ Security Fund.
We had a very large claim, I believe in the mid 1980’s, of over
$200,000, and the trustees believed it was a claim they had to pay. The
claim involved a lawyer, a bank employee and fraud. The complaining
witness had lost more than $200,000.
Philip Lacovara was our general counsel at that point. Philip
brought a lawsuit against the bank that was involved and was able to
recoup the money, so we were able to reimburse the Bar. However, it was
a wake-up call for all of us that, while the Clients’ Security Fund was
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essential for the Bar to stand up when an attorney had let clients down, we
couldn’t afford to pay many claims of this size.
We asked Marty Minsker, who was an active member of the Bar,
to chair a committee to look at how to address this question. His
committee recommended, and later the Board of Governors adopted a rule
that payments of claims would be capped at $75,000. That way, we could
pay a significant amount if there was a significant harm, but we wouldn’t
put the Bar’s budget in jeopardy.
MS. STEWARD: In addition to that study and the resulting cap, there was another study
about the Clients’ Security Fund. Can you discuss the CSF study
committee chaired by Geoff Klineberg?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. In 2012 there was a report of the second committee, as you say,
chaired by Geoff Klineberg. The challenge at budget time was to try to
figure out how to be sure we had enough money for the Clients’ Security
Fund but also to ensure the Bar’s budget was sound. It was a wonderful
committee that included a legal service provider, a financial expert who
had served on the Board, and a number of lawyers. The committee
recommended kind of a complicated concept that involved a floating
number for the Clients’ Security Fund from $500,000 to $1.2 million with
a target range of $750,000 to $1,000,000 just to be sure that we had
enough money in the fund. The committee recommended that we budget
each year about $250,000. If we needed more funding, we could ask for
more, but if we had enough, we didn’t have to use it all. We wound up
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with a sensible approach to be sure that clients could be well served while
protecting the Bar’s fiscal health.
MS. STEWARD: In addition to these two committees, there was a practice management
advisory service, or at that point, the lawyer practice assistance committee,
which was also there to aid lawyers at that time. Can you talk about that
service?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: That was established in 1995, and it was a program to help lawyers,
primarily small firm and individual lawyers, solo practitioners, learn how
to run their law offices. Lawyers go to law school to learn the law, but this
program helped lawyers learn how to manage their businesses. We
thought it was essential because there were more small firm lawyers than
large firm lawyers with complaints filed in the disciplinary system. We
thought that a lawyer practice assistance program would help mitigate
that, and I think we were right about that.
In addition, in 1995, fee arbitration became mandatory for lawyers
as a result of the work of the Bar’s Disciplinary System Review
Committee. That committee was chaired by Rob Weiner, who was active
in the Bar, and Barry Cohen, who was active in the disciplinary system.
Accepting the recommendation of the committee and the Board of
Governors, the D.C. Court of Appeals approved a rule change to require
that fee arbitration be mandatory for lawyers when requested by their
clients.
69
MS. STEWARD: I feel like there’s a theme here throughout your life, and it involves
consumer protection and community. Here through the Clients’ Security
Trust Fund and the fee arbitration service, you’re very focused on
consumer protection of people who have used legal services. I wanted to
highlight that thread throughout your career.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. I felt like it was important for the Bar to look after the public with
pro bono service and with the Clients’ Security Fund and also look after
our lawyers, our most vulnerable lawyers, whether it was primarily small
firm lawyers, but not always. With the Lawyer Assistance Program, there
were large-firm lawyers, government lawyers, and judges who used that
program. I thought it was important to have the Bar create opportunities
for lawyers to be the very best that they could be. We provided services
that kept them out of trouble and helped them be strong. I am proud that I
was able to play an important role in those efforts.
MS. STEWARD: Which also explains the creation of the mandatory course. Can you tell us
about the impetus for that?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: That was an interesting story. We had a special committee look at
whether anything should be done about the fact that overwhelming
numbers of attorneys were being admitted to the D.C. Bar by waiving in
instead of by passing the D.C. bar exam. Because we always studied
things, we studied this issue. The special committee recommended to the
Board that the passing score requirement on the multi-state bar exam
should be raised.
70
During the Board’s discussion of the recommendation, someone on
the Board asked whether a higher score on the multi-state bar exam was
what really mattered to us or was it that our new attorneys should know
about our ethics rules and our local rules. What’s really important to us,
was the issue. And the Board concluded that providing new members with
information about our ethics rules and procedures was more important.
There was a lot of excitement about concluding what really
mattered to the Board. So, the Board asked the CLE Committee to develop
a concept for a mandatory course for new admittees, to develop a
curriculum, and to figure out how to administer the course. The CLE
committee submitted a proposal to the Board of Governors, and the Board
recommended that the D.C. Court of Appeals adopt a rule creating the
mandatory course.
The Court of Appeals adopted the rule in February of 1994 to take
effect for all attorneys admitted after July 1, 1994, giving us time to figure
out the details. In May of 1994 the Board of Governors adopted bylaws for
the course and extended the requirements to cover other lawyers; the
Board later amended the bylaws to cover additional categories of lawyers.
From my perspective, it really was a success story about conversations and
thoughtful leadership by Board members, and I felt like the Court agreed
with us.
MS. STEWARD: You also had in addition, or as part of it, a new admittees curriculum
subcommittee within the D.C. Bar. Can you talk about that?
71
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Ron Schechter, who was then a member of the CLE Committee, chaired a
subcommittee that overhauled the course curriculum. Then-Chief Judge
Annice Wagner assigned Judges John Terry and John Steadman to be
sounding boards for the subcommittee because the Court was very
invested in achieving success for the course too. One of the conclusions
was that a Court of Appeals judge should be present at all course sessions
to welcome new members, to introduce the course, and to set a tone for the
Court’s expectations of D.C. Bar members. I think the curriculum
overhaul and the judges’ active participation made the course very
successful.
MS. STEWARD: Thank you, Katherine. Do you want to touch on anything else related to
the programs that we’ve discussed so far?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I think I’m good.
72
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine Mazzaferri. The interview took place on
Tuesday, August 29, 2023. This is the eighth chapter.
MS. STEWARD: We are on the Leadership Development and Leadership Academy part of
Katherine Mazzaferri’s oral history. Katherine, tell me about the creation
of one of the signature programs of the Bar, the Leadership Development
Committee.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Before Kim Keenan became president in 2009-2010, she mentioned that
she was interested in leadership, and I was so excited because Cynthia Hill
and I had been talking about leadership for a long time. Along with Lalla
Shishkevish, then-CLE director, we had gathered information about
leadership institutes that other bars were doing. We had done some
leadership training for the Bar staff already, so we were primed to take this
leap for Bar members. We were hopeful that after talking to the Board of
Governors, we could actually have a leadership academy, but first things
first.
In November of 2009 we created a task force to study how the Bar
should approach leadership, how we could promote leadership. That task
force recommended a standing committee on leadership, and I knew that
would be key for continuity — to have a committee that would always be
there keeping an eye on this important issue.
That committee not only would develop the leadership academy,
but it also would identify ways to recruit volunteers, to train the Board, to
73
train committee members and to work with Section leaders (now
Communities leaders), because everybody benefits from understanding
about leadership. You don’t train as a lawyer and instantly know how to
be a leader.
In June of each year, we held a meeting of the past presidents to
talk to them about what the Bar was doing and to ask their input. That was
one of John Payton’s ideas. I believe it was at a meeting in 2009 that one
of our past presidents, Philip Lacovara, asked me, innocently, whether
there was anything he could do for the Bar, and I knew there was! I asked
him if he would be chair of the Leadership Development Task Force.
Philip had been a general counsel of the Bar, and he had been a past
president, so he knew the Bar well. I knew that he was a superb and
admired lawyer and having him in that role was to me just the icing on the
cake.
We asked Eileen Sobeck to be vice chair. Eileen had been chair of
the Sections Council, had been on the Board, and was a government
lawyer. I thought it was important to have a government lawyer in the
leadership of that task force because I believed it would say to our many
government lawyer members that we valued them and that they too could
benefit from training and leadership opportunities.
So, the Board created a Leadership Development Committee in
June of 2010, and the initial appointments happened in July. Philip was the
first chair, Eileen was the vice chair, and the committee submitted its
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report to the Board in 2012. The committee developed plans for a
leadership academy to identify and train leaders. Committee members
developed orientation modules and templates for members of the Bar’s
committees and for Section leaders, kind of the whole range of issues. So
that was our first round.
MS. STEWARD: After the task force was created and the committee was launched, what
happened next?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The very first meeting of the potential leaders subcommittee of the
Leadership Development Committee was held on May 18, 2011. It was a
daunting task to decide what to teach, to create a curriculum, to find
faculty, and to decide how to recruit people to participate in the academy.
As the chair of the subcommittee, Annamaria Steward was up to the task.
She had a wonderful staff person from the Programs Division, Rebecca
Gilliam, who, in addition to being an attorney, had a background in
education. Rebecca and Annamaria made a terrific team.
We decided to build a requirement into the Leadership Academy
for pro bono service because pro bono is fundamentally important to the
D.C Bar. On the Saturday morning of the training, each Leadership
Academy class member was expected to participate in the Pro Bono
Center’s Advice and Referral Clinic. This reflected good leadership by our
new potential leaders in providing pro bono service.
One of the most exciting meetings for me during this long process
was the meeting at which we reviewed potential leaders for the very first
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academy class. Annamaria was at her best. She had reviewed the
applications carefully. I almost felt like she knew all these people. She
described them in such detail and depth and analyzed their potential. The
other members of the subcommittee, of course, also were well prepared,
but she led this meeting. The result of the subcommittee’s diligent work
was a class that represented a very good cross section of our membership.
The table was set, and on March 1, 2013, the first class of the Leadership
Academy was launched.
It was wonderful to have as Bar president that year Tom
Williamson, one of our very fine leaders. He opened that first session of
the Academy. Of course, Kim Keenan was the luncheon speaker to the
first class, which was so fitting. And for many years, Jim Sandman,
another of our stellar past Bar presidents, gave a very eloquent
presentation on the importance of civility in the legal profession. It was a
very important, inspiring, and overwhelmingly popular component of the
Leadership Academy.
Annamaria also was one of the speakers for that first class. I had
finally recruited her to be on the Board of Governors. She had been
secretary of the Bar in 2005, but when I asked her after that service to run
for the Board, she said she wasn’t ready yet. She wanted to get some more
experience. So, she became president of the Bar Association of D.C. in
2010. I kept calling her, and, finally, she ran for, and was serving on the
Board when the Leadership Academy was launched.
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MS. STEWARD: In addition to the Leadership Academy as an annual program, there also
was the Judicial and Bar Conference. Can you talk about the continuing
relationship that the Bar had with the judiciary?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Before 2002, the Bar held an annual winter convention, and the D.C.
Court of Appeals, as required by statute, convened a Judicial Conference
in June of every year. At the request of the Court, the judiciary and the Bar
began holding a joint Judicial and Bar Conference beginning in 2002,
which also marked the Bar’s 30th anniversary. The theme of this first
J&B, as we called it, was Law, Liberty, and Justice after September 11. In
what became a really dynamic collaboration, this joint conference was
held in even-numbered years through 2012, with the stand-alone
conferences continuing in odd numbered years. But in 2013, the timing of
the joint conferences changed to odd numbered years after the D.C. Court
of Appeals obtained a legislative amendment eliminating the requirement
that judicial conferences be conducted annually.
We were really very fortunate to have such a close relationship
with our court, the D.C. Court of Appeals. Those judges worked hard.
They worked with the Bar on all sorts of projects. We made
recommendations for rule changes. We had this joint conference. We
consulted with the Court about all sorts of issues. I always felt that we
were very lucky, very special. When I talked with colleagues around the
country about their relationships with their courts, it was clear that ours
was very different. Ours was very collaborative and productive. Let me
77
put it that way: I think it was a real plus for the Bar and the membership
and I hope for the Courts.
MS. STEWARD: In addition to these relationships that were created with various arms of
the legal profession in the District of Columbia, you were also successful
in getting the new headquarters for the D.C. Bar. Can you talk about the
process for getting the Bar headquarters and why you and the Bar
leadership decided it was important?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: When I came to the Bar in 1982, the Bar was in the Woodward building
on 15th Street NW. Because we needed more space and a different kind of
space, we moved several times. Actually, three different times, to L Street
Northwest, to H Street Northwest, and then to K Street Northwest. And
each time we made improvements I thought about the type of space we
had and the use we made of it.
But when we made the move in 2009 to K Street, I was surprised
by how the market had changed. It was a less friendly market for tenants.
The building owners and managements in those days were providing less
money for buildouts, and we were at the end of our dues ceiling, so we
didn’t have a lot of headroom to pay for buildouts. We were able to get a
line of credit with our bank and we managed to make it all work.
But after that move to K Street, I vowed that I never wanted the
Bar to be in that situation again where we didn’t have quite enough money
to do all the important things we needed to do with our space. So, I asked
78
the Bar’s Finance Committee, and then the Board of Governors, to set
aside a building fund of about $500,000 each year.
At that point I wasn’t clear in my own head what use we would
make of that money, but I thought it was important to have a fund,
whether we were going to lease a new space in some number of years or
whether we were going to purchase. I wasn’t sure, but I did know that
having the security of funding for whatever purpose the Board decided
was necessary was an important step.
So, we did that. We set aside that money beginning in 2009. And
then in March of 2014, the staff began to explore whether it made sense to
own a building. At that point, Victor Velasquez was the Assistant
Executive Director for Administration and Finance. He was a central
player on the business side of the Bar’s purchasing land and constructing a
building. We gathered relevant consultants, and we consulted with the
Finance Committee. The Bar could potentially save millions of dollars for
the future by purchasing.
Board members had many, many good questions about this
potential action. They considered the issues over several meetings in 2015.
We had three presidents involved in the building project. First, Brigid
Benitez, then Tim Webster, and then Annamaria Steward. All of them
played active roles in the Bar’s undertaking to purchase land and to
construct a building.
MS. STEWARD: All right. That ends this session.
79
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine Mazzaferri. The interview took place on
Sunday, November 17, 2024. This is the ninth chapter.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, can you talk to us about the D.C. Bar’s involvement in pro
bono service and how you got that started?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes, Annamaria. When I came to the D.C. Bar in 1982, the pro bono
program, later called the Pro Bono Center, was then called the Public
Service Activities Program. Because of a referendum of the membership
in 1980, the Bar couldn’t use dues to support many of its programs,
including the Public Service Program.
In 1982, the Bar had a checkoff on its dues statement that we used
to support both the D.C. Bar Foundation and the Public Service Program.
But in 1983 when I saw how little money we had raised from the checkoff,
I was worried about the future of our program, and I hired a fundraiser
who continued working with us for many years afterward. The concept
was that the Bar’s Pro Bono Program would seek funds from individual
members through the checkoff, and the D.C. Bar Foundation would seek
funding from law firms.
In addition, in 1985, the Bar Board filed a petition to the D.C.
Court of Appeals to create the Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts
(IOLTA) program. The funds from that program would go to the
Foundation so the Foundation would have a couple of sources of funds.
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Later, in 1988, we decided to incorporate the pro bono program. It
became the Public Services Activities Corporation (PSAC), a 501(c)(3), so
that contributions could be tax-deductible.
MS. STEWARD: How did the PSAC get started?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Public Services Activities had been part of the Bar from the very
beginning, but in 1990, Sally Determan, who was then the Bar president,
asked Stephen Pollak, who was chairing the Pro Bono Committee, to look
at how we were conducting pro bono. We hadn’t looked at it for a long
time, and Sally was concerned that we weren’t making as good use of our
resources as we could.
So, Steve Pollak, who is one of my heroes, chaired a committee
that did exhaustive research not only on what we were doing but also on
what kinds of programs existed around the country. Specifically, we
looked at programs in San Francisco and in Boston. We really borrowed
from other programs, asking their directors what they liked about their
programs, and what they would change or improve if they could. Steve
and his committee also interviewed legal services providers in Washington
D.C. to understand their strengths and needs. After a thorough study,
Steve and his committee made significant and far-reaching
recommendations to the Bar Board about totally revamping our pro bono
program.
During this effort, we decided that the lawyer referral service
component of pro bono wasn’t the best way to spend our limited funds.
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We also realized that to do pro bono in a focused way, we needed to
prioritize encouraging and mobilizing more volunteers. So, one of the key
recommendations of Steve Pollak’s committee was that we should use our
limited staff to create a “multiplier effect” by training and working with
volunteers to deliver legal services. Volunteers would be a tremendous
asset to the Bar, and we needed our expert legal staff and the staff of the
legal service providers to help the volunteers do this pro bono work well.
The Board adopted the committee’s recommendation that the Bar,
together with the Superior Court, study specific areas of unmet legal
needs. The goal was to figure out better ways to address certain types of
cases so that the matters would be more efficiently handled, the public,
including unrepresented litigants, would be better served, and the court
would have good resources to do its job. It would be a win-win all around.
That committee report was really a blueprint for the next decades of how
we handled pro bono. And I admired Steve’s thorough engagement in the
issues and creativity in seeking solutions.
MS. STEWARD: The Pro Bono Program was heading in the right direction. You had
fundraising going. You had new initiatives and studies happening. You
had big firm lawyers involved in service. What were some of the
challenges that were happening at that time?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: In 1992, the District of Columbia Council imposed a license fee for
lawyers, in addition to fees for other kinds of professionals. Some of our
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members thought the Bar was imposing this license fee, and 5,000 of our
members switched to inactive status.
In addition to the impact on the Bar itself, there was a tremendous
reduction in contributions to our pro bono program. As a result, in
September of that year, I had to ask the Board to authorize a reduction in
force for the pro bono program because we couldn’t pay for all of the
staff. It was a very hard moment for us because we were going in the right
direction, but suddenly we had to make a switch.
MS. STEWARD: At that time, you also hired a new director of the Pro Bono Program. Can
you talk about Maureen Thornton Syracuse?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. I hired Maureen in 1992. She had staffed one of our task forces that
I’ll talk about, the Family Law Task Force, and had also worked with our
PSA Review Committee that Steve chaired, so we knew her, and she knew
us. She had a legal services background, and she really was one of the
architects of many of the pro bono efforts. She remained at the Pro Bono
Program until her retirement in 2011. She was a tremendous resource for
the Bar.
MS. STEWARD: She was there for twenty years?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Right.
MS. STEWARD: Let’s talk about some of the clinics that were established under her watch.
The first one was the Pro Se Divorce Clinic. Can you talk about why you
all felt the need for that clinic in the District of Columbia?
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MS. MAZZAFERRI: Consistent with the PSAC Review Committee’s recommendation, the Pro
Bono Program looked at an area of the law where the Bar could be helpful
in addressing unmet legal needs in partnership with the court. In the
family court of the Superior Court, there was a need to help pro se litigants
in divorce cases and to try to find some pro bono assistance for an
increasing volume of custody cases. The Family Law Task Force, cochaired by two expert family lawyers, Rita Bank and Linda Singer, was
created in September of 1992. Its work was completed in 1993 when the
Pro Se Divorce Clinic was established as a result of the task force’s
recommendation.
Members of the Bar’s Family Law section helped train and mentor
volunteers in that clinic, and they helped implement the pro se program.
They made information available through videos and a kiosk at the
courthouse. It was really a very expert task force that provided a real
service to the court and to the public.
As Maureen explained it to me, the family law bar was small and
was enthusiastic about creating vehicles for helping large numbers of pro
se litigants in simpler cases and engaging other volunteer lawyers in
providing services. The demand was way too big to handle, so they were
happy to train and mentor instead, the multiplier effect principle again.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, was this the first time that the D.C. Bar had worked so
integrally with the court to provide resources for residents of the District
of Columbia?
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MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes. And it was an excellent model.
MS. STEWARD: Let’s talk about the Law Firm Pro Bono Clinic. How was that started? I
know it later was renamed as the Advocacy and Justice Clinic, but can you
talk about the history of that clinic?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: That’s right. The challenge was to engage large law firms in our pro bono
program. Many of their lawyers had never handled cases in the Superior
Court, so the pro bono staff screened cases. Most cases were referred to us
by legal services providers, who, of course, were experts in the field. We
sent screened case files to the firms and did briefings at their offices
before their clinic nights. We asked firms to commit to two clinic nights
per year and agree to represent up to 15 clients from each clinic night.
On the days of the clinics, we’d have the teams of lawyers from the
firms come to the D.C. Bar headquarters, and we’d have areas set up for
them to interview potential clients. The legal services providers and our
staff were available to assist the lawyers from the firms at the clinics and
throughout their representation. By the way, Joan Strand, who was a
clinical professor at GWU Law School and later a D.C. Bar president, was
the subcommittee chair who helped design this concept.
So, the Pro Bono Program helped assure that the providers could
refer cases they couldn’t handle. The providers helped guide the law firm
lawyers, and sometimes they established long-term relationships.
During the same period, the ABA Pro Bono Project was launching
The Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge, later administered by the Pro Bono
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Institute. The Challenge asked large firms to donate 3 percent or 5 percent
of their billable hours to pro bono, with half of their hours devoted to lowincome client cases. Our clinic provided the firms with the solution to
address that challenge.
MS. STEWARD: How many firms signed up that first year?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: We wanted to recruit thirteen, and I think we had eighteen firms sign up
the first year. There was a tremendous generosity of spirit among the
members and the firms. It was quite remarkable.
MS. STEWARD: What other clinics did you create for the residents of the District?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: A Pro Bono Bankruptcy Clinic was created in 1994. The Advice and
Referral Clinic was created later, in part in response to cuts in Legal
Services Corporation funding. That clinic had our volunteers going out to
neighborhoods, which we thought was very important. One of the clinics
was in the Shaw neighborhood where Bread for the City had its
headquarters. The other was in Anacostia, initially at a Whitman-Walker
office, and later at Bread for the City’s Anacostia location. The first clinic
started in 1997, and the second started in the year 2000.
The monthly Saturday morning walk-in clinics at two locations at
the same time were remarkable. Members of D.C. Bar Sections (since
renamed as Communities) with the needed expertise volunteered, as did
many government lawyers. The voluntary bar associations were active,
and the Bar’s Board of Governors participated once a year.
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Then-Attorney General Janet Reno also volunteered at the
Anacostia site on her last Saturday in office. It was quite a wonderful
moment.
MS. STEWARD: You mentioned that Janet Reno, a U.S. Attorney General, actually
volunteered at the Anacostia site for the Advice and Referral Clinic. Can
you talk about government lawyer involvement in these clinics?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: We had a lot of government lawyers volunteering, and specifically in
1996, the Department of Justice joined our Law Firm Pro Bono Clinic.
There was a presidential executive order authorizing pro bono by
government lawyers to be coordinated by the Department of Justice. An
opinion from the Office of Government Ethics provided guidance, and the
new policy was announced at the D.C. Bar’s winter conference by thendeputy attorney general and former Bar president Jamie Gorelick. Janet
Reno spoke at the annual dinner that year.
Our Law Firm Pro Bono Clinic was the first pro bono opportunity
the DOJ approved for government lawyer participation under the new
policy. In any event, having the authority for government lawyers to do
pro bono was key because they became one of the largest groups of
lawyers volunteering at our Advice and Referral Clinic, as more and more
federal agencies established programs. At the clinic, there were expert
lawyers there to assist them, enabling them to provide a real service to the
public. It was a win-win for all of us.
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MS. STEWARD: Katherine, we have been talking about clinics. We started with the Pro Seplus Divorce Clinic and then the Law Firm Pro Bono Clinic, the Pro Bono
Bankruptcy Clinic, and the Advice and Referral Clinic. These clinics were
the outgrowth of task forces. Can you talk about how these task forces
created these clinics, and maybe use the Landlord Tenant Task Force as an
example?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The Landlord Tenant Task Force, co-chaired by Phyllis Thompson and
Caryl Bernstein, issued a report in 1998. This was again one of those
studies that the PSAC Review Committee had envisioned. It documented
how tenants really lacked representation and recommended reforms,
including access to lawyers in the courthouse and a way to make an array
of legal services available to tenants.
Once we had this report in the queue, we needed to figure out how
it would be implemented. So, when George Jones became Bar president in
2002, Maureen Syracuse and I approached him about making the
implementation of that very important study a reality. He wanted to take
that on, and he had the brilliant idea of asking Kim Keenan, who later
became a Bar president, to be chair. This was not her area of expertise, but
she understood the court, she understood process, and she understood how
to get constructive results.
The report of that Implementation Committee was issued in 2003.
Because of that committee, and this was a really stunning effort, the
Landlord Tenant Resource Center was created in 2004. It began as a pilot
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with Arnold & Porter committing to staff the resource center with
volunteers for six months, to help figure out logistics and identify
questions that tenants might be asking and how to prepare volunteers.
Then other firms signed up. Jim Sandman, then-managing partner of
Arnold & Porter, was among the first volunteers and he became a regular
volunteer at that clinic.
MS. STEWARD: This is just another example of the level of trust between the court and the
Bar because this report came out in 2003, and the very next year, the
Landlord Tenant Resource Center was created. I think we can’t overemphasize the quick turnaround on the studies that were coming out of the
Bar during this time.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: It was really impressive. The volunteers were excited about it, and I think
the court welcomed it. I have to say that I would sometimes take some of
our new leaders to the Landlord Tenant Resource Center to observe. It
always gave me such pride when the presiding judge in that court would
refer tenants just down the hall to the Landlord Tenant Resource Center,
which I knew was staffed by our pro bono staff together with volunteers
we had recruited. It made me very proud of the D.C. Bar.
MS. STEWARD: There was another task force that you all did. You did a task force for
family law, so you had done one before the clinic was created and then
you did another one. Can you talk about why you all felt the need for
another task force at that time?
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MS. MAZZAFERRI: Rita Bank and Meg McKinney co-chaired the second Family Law Task
Force, which was created at a time when the caseload of the Family Court
and the presence of pro se litigants with complex cases were straining
existing resources. The Task Force recommended reforms in case
processing and steps to facilitate limited scope representation, really to
increase the availability of representation at critical stages. So, we had a
very active task force working with the court to improve the entire process
for the court and for litigants.
MS. STEWARD: Can you explain to us the Community Economic Development program
and why it was created?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: We had heard from firms that they had many lawyers who were not
litigators but were very interested in doing pro bono, using their existing
skills and expertise. They potentially were a tremendous asset for the
public. So, after several years of research and planning by a CED
subcommittee of the Pro Bono Committee led by Shirley Higuchi and
fundraising to add expert legal staff to support the project, we created the
Community Economic Development Program in 1998.
At the time, the District of Columbia was in dire financial shape,
with a control board in place. The burden for providing social and other
services was falling on the nonprofit community. Consistent with the Pro
Bono Program’s mission to provide pro bono services to the low-income
community, we shaped our project to provide corporate and transactional
legal services to nonprofits and small businesses serving their needs.
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We asked firms to do for their CED project nonprofit clients what
they did for their corporate clients – develop long-term relationships and
handle their corporate needs as they emerged. For small businesses, the
project offered periodic clinics where business owners or would-be
entrepreneurs could receive advice and brief services on specific legal
problems. Over time the project developed a robust training program for
local nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and nonprofit board
members.
There were both nonprofit organizations and small businesses in
the District that needed the help of lawyers to run their organizations, and
we had very talented business lawyers in firms looking to offer their
services pro bono. We screened nonprofit clients carefully, to provide
legal help to organizations that would have a real impact in the
community. It was a wonderful match.
Jim Jones and Beverly Wilbourne were the first co-chairs of that
committee. They were an impressive team, and they helped bring a whole
new cadre of firms and lawyers into our pro bono fold. The CED Project
really was an expansion of the vision of the original PSAC Review
Committee, but very much based on the principles the PSAC Committee
had articulated. At the time, it was rare for a bar-sponsored pro bono
program to include a transactional project. It’s outside the typical pro bono
focus on litigation and serving individuals.
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Moreover, we couldn’t just say we would represent nonprofits. We
had to create a framework for focusing on organizations serving the
District’s low-income communities to be true to our mission and charter,
and we had figure out how the “multiplier effect” could be achieved by
asking big firms to take on long term partnerships, generating lots of legal
work from one placement.
Adding to the complexity was the question of how to fund this new
project. We couldn’t get started without funding for a staff attorney with
relevant expertise. A $10,000 donation from the Corporation Section (later
Community) provided us the credibility to ask the Meyer Foundation for
funding because we could say the lawyers were already supporting us. The
fact that we were able to create a brand-new program at a time when so
much else was going on is a tribute to Maureen’s serious dedication to
serving the public and creating opportunities for our members to provide
pro bono service.
MS. STEWARD: Another study you all did in the 1990s was the Bar Foundation study. Tell
us about that.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Andrew Marks was the Bar president in 1998, when we created the Bar
Foundation Study Committee. The Foundation was the sister organization
that did so many important things, but we hadn’t looked at it in the way
that we had looked at our own pro bono program. In fact, the Foundation
hadn’t been studied since its creation in 1977.
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This study committee was chaired by Philip Lacovara, and Steve
Pollak once again stepped up to volunteer by chairing one of the major
subcommittees. The purpose of the study was to develop a plan for
improving funding of the Bar Foundation and how it operated. We needed
a strong foundation to complement the Bar’s pro bono program and all the
many legal services providers that the Foundation funded. We had studied
the pro bono program and improved its funding, and now we needed to be
sure that the Foundation also had a strong source of funding and structure.
The study committee’s report outlined ways to improve the
Foundation’s fundraising including targeting and increasing IOLTA
funding.
The study committee also recommended expanding the
Foundation’s board, which previously had been limited to past D.C. Bar
presidents, and increasing the role of its advisory committee. At the end of
the day the D.C. Bar Foundation became the largest funder of legal
services in the District of Columbia.
MS. STEWARD: For those who don’t know, can you explain the difference between the
D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center and the D.C. Bar Foundation and their
relationships to the D.C. Bar?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The D.C. Bar Board appoints the board of the D.C. Bar Foundation, which
is a sister organization to the Pro Bono Center. In a nutshell, the Pro Bono
Center provides pro bono services to the public and works closely with
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legal services providers to provide that service, while the Bar Foundation
provides funding to legal services organizations.
MS. STEWARD: In addition to the relationship with the funding of legal service providers
and the creation of services that benefit the residents of the District of
Columbia, the D.C. Bar became active in using technology to help provide
legal services across the country. Can you talk about probono.net and
lawhelp.org and how the Bar was involved in them?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: This all began with probono.net, which was started in New York City as
an on-line support for pro bono lawyers. Some of the firms in the District
of Columbia knew about it and wanted it here. Working with the
Consortium of Legal Services Providers, our pro bono staff agreed to take
the coordinating role as various programs contributed content and the
probono.net/dc website was rolled out. The Bar Foundation covered the
fee to probono.net.
In 2003, with a technology grant from the Legal Services
Corporation, the Pro Bono Program began working with the
Neighborhood Legal Services Program to create a companion website
called Lawhelp.org aimed at the general public. This was in collaboration
with the Consortium of Legal Services Providers, the Bar Foundation, and
the public libraries. LawHelp.org/dc was launched in 2005 to help provide
legal information, access to legal services providers, and interactive
pleadings and forms.
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MS. STEWARD: We’ve been talking about the various clinics that were created in the
1990s. Additional clinics were created also in the 2000s. Can you talk
about some of those clinics?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: In 2004, we expanded the Pro Bono Advice and Referral Clinic to provide
a clinic in Spanish. D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Vanessa Ruiz and past
Bar president Brigid Benitez had launched a quarterly advice and referral
clinic with Spanish-speaking volunteers at the Carlos Rosario School.
Over time, we were able to increase the languages to include Amharic,
French, and some other languages because as immigration began to
change, we needed to address the different members of the public who
were coming to our clinics. Then in 2011 we changed the name to the
Immigration Clinic, to reflect the reality that immigration issues were
most of the questions posed.
MS. STEWARD: During his term as Bar president, John Cruden was active in getting
government lawyers involved in pro bono service. We originally talked
about Janet Reno and the expansion of government lawyers and the rule
that was created from that experience, but it continued in 2005. Can you
explain to us what was happening at that time?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: John really wanted to use his term to get more government lawyers
involved in pro bono. I would call him a man with a mission. On his first
day in office, he wrote to the general counsels of all the federal agencies
asking them to launch pro bono programs for their attorneys or to expand
any existing programs.
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He asked Maureen Syracuse, our pro bono director, to work
together with Laura Klein, who was the Department of Justice’s federal
government pro bono manager. As Maureen tells it, John initiated a
meeting with the general counsel of the Department of Defense and the
general counsels of the Armed Services. John opened the meeting, setting
the stage, so to speak. Laura explained the authority of government
lawyers to do pro bono work and Maureen explained our Pro Bono
Program. They later worked with these agencies and others to help them
set up their programs.
John really opened the doors to government lawyers becoming one
of the largest groups of volunteers we had at the Pro Bono Program. As
time went on, we were able to declare that the Department of Justice was
the largest law firm in the Advocacy and Justice Clinic. That’s quite a
remarkable accomplishment.
MS. STEWARD: Thank you, John Cruden. In addition to government lawyers’ involvement
in the Advocacy and Justice Clinic, there were numerous centers that
sprang up to benefit the residents of the District of Columbia. Can you just
give us an overview or even name what these clinics were?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: In 2006, there was a Probate Resource Center. In 2007, there was a Tax
Sale Resource Center. In 2008, there was a Consumer Law Resource
Center. Our Superior Court welcomed pro bono help for unrepresented
litigants in each of these centers.
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MS. STEWARD: The Access to Justice Commission was created around this time, correct?
Can you talk about what that was and the role the D.C. Bar played in that
Commission?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The ATJ Commission was created by a court order in 2005, resulting from
a proposal by the Consortium of Legal Services Providers. There was a lot
of discussion to flesh out its mission. The D.C. Bar supported wholly the
creation of this Commission. Peter Edelman was chair of this
Commission. The ATJ obtained public funding for legal services in 2006,
the first time it sought it, and that funding continued and expanded. The
District of Columbia went from the very last to the first in per capita stateor local-level public funding for legal services in 2006. This achievement
was directly related to the efforts of the ATJ Commission and Peter
Edelman in particular.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, we’ve talked about the numerous clinics and resource centers
that came out of the D.C. Bar in collaboration with the courts. But funding
these centers and making sure that resources were available was tricky.
Can you talk about the different ways that the Bar worked to come up with
financial resources for these projects?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: In 1993 when Mark Tuohey was the Bar’s president-elect and
Jamie Gorelick was the outgoing Bar president, Jamie pulled together
some of the past presidents to consider creating the very first Pro Bono
Presidents’ Reception. Some of us recall Jamie saying that she didn’t want
our pro bono program to fail on her watch, so what she did was create a
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Presidents’ Reception in Mark’s name. Mark wrote to 400 of his closest
friends, and the annual Presidents’ Reception was born. It was really a
wonderful way to raise money and to bring together all the players who
were so active in our pro bono efforts.
We also had several of what we called Pro Bono Breakfasts.
Rob Weiner was the Bar president for the first one in 1995. He asked the
four chief judges of the D.C. Court of Appeals, the D.C. Superior Court,
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the U.S. District Court
to join him in calling together the managing partners of the 50 largest
firms in Washington D.C. for a briefing on the state of legal services in the
District. Invitations were non-transferable, and the Bar’s conference room
was crowded with managing partners.
There had been dramatic cuts in legal services funding. The firms
were asked to make specific commitments of new pro bono resources and
to report those commitments to the Bar, so the Bar could report the results
to the chief judges. The firms were given a menu of suggested
commitments, sending one or more of their lawyers on a rotating basis to a
legal service provider for six months at a time, joining or increasing their
commitment to the Advocacy and Justice Clinic, creating a clinic in
partnership with a legal services provider, or establishing a fellowship.
As a result of the careful planning, execution, and follow-up, there
was a real ramping up of pro bono partnerships in the District. It was
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wonderful for the leadership of the courts, the Bar and the firms to come
together for this shared purpose.
There was a second breakfast in 2002. After research and planning
with Bar presidents John Nields and John Payton during their terms, Bar
president George Jones convened the meeting. Pro bono hours in large
firms were flagging in the tough economy around the burst of the dot-com
bubble in 2001, so the focus was on asking firms to commit to specific
steps to increase their pro bono hours, and to report on their results
annually to the D.C. Bar. The framework was drawn from the Law Firm
Challenge, with the permission of the Pro Bono Institute. It was named the
Pro Bono Initiative.
A third breakfast was held in 2007 while Jim Sandman was the Bar
president. The goal of this breakfast was to expand the firms invited to be
part of the Pro Bono Initiative to the next 25 in size. I believe this got us
down to firms with around 50 lawyers – which was the Pro Bono
Initiative’s cutoff for joining the Law Firm Challenge. He pushed firms to
expand their pro bono services, and speakers gave concrete examples of
what worked and the benefits to a firm and its lawyers. Again, the followup was critical. So, we had a lot of opportunities to work with the leaders
of our profession to address pro bono.
MS. STEWARD: This growth of the Pro Bono Program occurred under Maureen Thornton
Syracuse as its executive director. She was with you for twenty years. Can
you comment on her service?
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MS. MAZZAFERRI: Maureen’s work was nothing short of masterful. She had a knack for
finding volunteers and motivating both staff and volunteers. She
recognized legal needs, and established excellent relationships with the
law firms, legal service providers and the courts. All of this enabled us to
design, offer and sustain a remarkable array of pro bono services.
MS STEWARD: In 2011 you got a new executive director. Can you talk about who became
executive director in 2011 and some of the initiatives that occurred at that
time?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Sure. In 2011 Monika Kalra Varma became executive director of the
Pro Bono Program. She initiated and completed its first strategic plan in
over twenty years. The strategic plan was designed to ensure that the
resources and efforts were really going to serve the greatest needs and fill
the gaps in the District.
This was a significant effort, engaging 1,000 stakeholders across
the District, including law firms, solo practitioners, government agencies,
the legal services community, and the courts to share where the greatest
needs were and where there might no longer be significant needs, as well
as to identify where the Pro Bono Program was uniquely positioned to
make a difference. It really fine-tuned the programming to ensure the
greatest impact possible. It also resulted in changing the name from the
Pro Bono Program to the Pro Bono Center.
MS. STEWARD: We talked about the creation of the Access to Justice Commission by court
order in 2005, but in 2013, the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center was actively
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involved with the Commission. Can you talk about the work that occurred
at that point?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Monika came to us as a human rights attorney, so she was eager to help
address the crisis in evictions in the District of Columbia. She understood
how fundamental housing is for families in poverty. Jim Sandman, chair
of the Pro Bono Committee at the time, and Peter Edelman, who chaired
the Access to Justice Commission, worked with Monika and
Jess Rosenbaum, the executive director of the Commission, to create the
Right to Housing Initiative.
Monika’s human rights lens was critical because it shaped how the
initiative’s work was structured. It wasn’t just serving a need for housing,
which is obviously very important, but it also addressed the systems that
created the lack of housing. This initiative engaged clients and potential
clients to get a deeper understanding of the barriers to housing in the
District and brought together the legal services community to implement
the program.
The focus was on providing counsel to tenants facing eviction from
subsidized or public housing; revamping the broken shelter and
emergency housing system; preserving existing affordable housing and
increasing production of affordable housing; and litigating to enforce fair
housing laws and advocating for policy changes. A key goal was to reduce
evictions dramatically by increasing access to pro bono representation for
very vulnerable tenants living in subsidized housing. Monika was
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instrumental in recruiting several of the major law firms that committed to
taking cases in the housing area. It brought our community together in a
way that was very effective.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, when you look at the contributions of the D.C. Bar from your
tenure from 1982 through 2017, what Pro Bono Center accomplishments
are you most proud of?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: That’s a tough question, but in general, I would say the work that we did
with the D.C. Superior Court to identify ways to improve justice for the
public and the work of the court. We were able to engage in so many
studies with the court that resulted in changes that helped the public and
the court.
I am very proud about the creation of the Landlord Tenant
Resource Center, as a physical space at the courthouse where the presiding
judge in the Landlord Tenant Court could send litigants, and the follow-on
effort of the Right to Housing Initiative that built on that work. It was
significant that we were helping individuals keep their housing, which is
such a basic need. These were remarkable collaborative efforts which in
the long run helps the public in the District of Columbia.
MS. STEWARD: Thank you, Katherine.
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Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of The Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Annamaria Steward, and the
interviewee is CEO Emeritus of the D.C. Bar Katherine Mazzaferri. The interview took place on
Monday, September 4, 2023. This is the tenth chapter.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, the D.C. Bar has been active not only with the courts but also
with the voluntary bars. Can you talk about how that relationship began
and developed?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Yes, Annamaria. In 1984 Marna Tucker was President, and she was the
Bar’s first woman president. She had the idea of establishing a monthly
meeting with the presidents of the voluntary bar associations because she
recognized how important those players were to the D.C. Bar. It became a
wonderful institution.
Each month, the Bar leadership, the President, President-elect, and
I, met with presidents of the voluntary bars. We briefed them about what
was happening with the D.C. Bar. They would tell us what they were
doing, including events for which they needed help from each other or
from the D.C. Bar. For me, it was a great source of recruitment because I
enjoyed watching people and observing how lawyers interacted, how
thoughtful they were, what ideas they had. By participating in those
monthly meetings of the voluntary bar leaders, I added to my list of
potential volunteers for the D.C. Bar. So, I’m grateful to Marna for having
had that idea and implementing it.
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MS. STEWARD: Katherine, let’s talk about the referenda because they really had an impact
on the D.C. Bar. Can you talk about what they were and how they
impacted your ability as a leader?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There were two member referenda in the 1970s, one in 1976, and one in
1979, that restricted the public statements that could be made in the name
of the Bar. They required that the Bar ask the membership for permission
to make public statements.
The next referendum was in 1980. It restricted the use of Bar dues
to admissions, which the Bar didn’t administer; membership; discipline;
and the Clients’ Security Fund. The Bar sought and received clarification
from the D.C. Court of Appeals confirming that we were permitted to use
dues funds to communicate with members. But the 1980 referendum
results meant that many of the programs that the Bar already had when I
became Executive Director, Pro Bono, CLE, Divisions (later Sections and
then Communities), couldn’t be supported with dues.
In 1988 there was an interest in trying to see whether the members
were open to revisiting the restrictions on dues funding, and the answer
was they were not, so we left it at that.
The reality was that these restrictions were difficult, but because
the D.C. Bar is a mandatory bar, I didn’t think they were unreasonable, and
we made efforts to work within them. I think we were creative and were
able to be productive despite those limitations.
104
MS. STEWARD: Actually, based on what happened with the California Bar, they actually
saved the D.C. Bar from some of that litigation.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: That’s right. We always operated within the boundaries set by the
referenda on how we could use our dues money and what statements we
could make on behalf of the Bar. So, I think in some ways, the restrictions
that we lived by protected the organization.
MS. STEWARD: One of the most remarkable aspects of the headquarters buildings has
always been the picture wall of the past presidents. Where did that idea
come from?
MS. MAZZAFERRI:In 1986, Fred Abramson, who then was the Bar’s President, said that
Barrett Prettyman, our very first President, had suggested that pictures be
taken of all the presidents so that they could be remembered, and of course
we did that. We thought it was a wonderful idea, great for Barrett to
propose and for Fred to make it happen.
And then when Chuck Ruff passed away at the end of 2000, the
management team, the staff leaders, got together to talk about how we’d
like to honor our past presidents. We had honored Fred Abramson by
naming the President’s Award after him, but we realized we needed a way
to honor the presidents as a group. In February of 2002 we recommended
to the Board of Governors that one of the rooms in the H Street building
be called the Presidents’ Room and that all of the presidents’ pictures be
displayed in the room. The Board adopted that recommendation, of
course.
105
When we moved to K Street, we had a similar Presidents’ Room
with all the pictures arrayed around the room. I loved being in that room
because I could remember many of the presidents. Most of them I knew,
and I could remember Board and committee meetings we had with each of
them. And when we held meetings of the past presidents annually in June,
we had them in that room. It was special being in that room with many of
the past presidents, with their pictures arrayed around us, and with them
being so engaged in debating, listening, and contributing again to the work
of the D.C. Bar.
MS. STEWARD: One of the national crises that hit this country was 9/11. Can you talk
about how you as a leader handled that with the D.C. Bar staff?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: John Payton was President. It was a Tuesday, and we had a Board meeting
scheduled for that afternoon. When the World Trade towers were hit, John
called me, and he asked me what I wanted to do. But then when the
Pentagon was hit, I called John and I said we needed to cancel the Board
meeting. I needed to get the staff home, and he agreed. We had watched
the towers go down while we were in the conference room on the sixth
floor of the H Street building.
I put out the word that we were closing the office, but not
everybody was listening to voicemail or checking email, so I walked
around to the entire staff to make sure everybody knew that we were
closing right away, and that people needed to go home. Some staff weren’t
sure how they would get home, and I told them to come with me. We
106
walked over to Connecticut Avenue, walked to Woodley Park, and from
there took the Metro. I was comfortable enough with walking that distance
to get on to the Metro.
The next day John Payton called me and asked me what I was
planning to do. September 12th was an odd day to come back into the
District, not knowing what could happen. I told John I had invited the
staff, whoever was there, to the Board room, and we were going to have
pizza for lunch. John said he’d be there, and he was.
We had a gathering that reminded me of my old Quaker Meeting
days. We just sat around the Board room table and staff members who
were moved to speak about how they felt, did so. People spoke about what
they had experienced on the 11th and their fears about the future. We just
talked. It was kind of like being in a family at that moment, and I was very
touched that John chose to be with us on September 12, 2001.
MS. STEWARD: Throughout your leadership of the D.C. Bar, you have been focused on
recognizing leaders throughout the profession. Can you talk about the
awards that were created?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I mentioned earlier the Beatrice Rosenberg Award that Chuck Ruff and I
came up with because we each at different times had worked with Bea. So
that award was established in 1990, and the first awardee was William
Bryson.
Shortly afterward, the Brennan and Marshall awards were created.
It was actually past-president Dan Rezneck who proposed the Brennan
107
Award, and Cynthia Hill suggested to me that we have a partner award for
Justice Marshall. The first awards were presented to Justice Brennan and
to the late-Justice Marshall’s family at the Bar’s winter convention in
1993. As it turns out, although he was not in good health, Justice Brennan
attended. The Bar had been told that he wouldn’t be speaking, but he
surprised all of us with a very moving speech. He remembered other lions
of the judiciary, including the late Judge David Bazelon, who had been
chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
After the initial presentations to the justices, the first recipients at
the Bar’s June 1993 annual meeting were William Taylor for the Marshall
Award and Elaine Jones for the Brennan Award. In subsequent years, we
convened meetings of past Brennan and Marshall Award recipients to
recommend candidates for future selection.
As I mentioned earlier, the Fred Abramson Award had been the
President’s Award, but we named it after Fred after his passing in June of
1991.
MS. STEWARD: Diversity in the legal profession has always been very important to you,
and this award pairing of Justices Brennan and Marshall illustrates that.
Can you talk about other initiatives that you’ve been focused on
throughout your tenure?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: There was a Minorities in the Legal Profession Conference. It was
established in 1992 by James Robertson, who was Bar president in 1991-
1992. It was a joint effort of the D.C. Bar, APABA, Gay Law, GWAC, the
108
Hispanic Bar Association, the Washington Bar Association, and the
Women’s Bar of D.C. Many of the area law schools, and some law firms
and in-house corporate counsel offices also participated. Vernon Jordan
chaired that conference. George Jones, who later became one of our Bar
presidents, was the secretary, and Cynthia Hill and her staff assistant, Julie
Norbury, worked very closely with George in staffing the conference.
Minorities Conference initiatives included a benchmark survey of
law firms’ recruitment and hiring practices; a review of in-house corporate
counsel positions; and a model statement on firms’ commitments to
improve their recruitment and hiring efforts.
Also, in 1997 the Bar hosted a day-long Summit on Women in the
Legal Profession.
Another important committee, the Sexual Orientation Committee,
was appointed by Bar President Rob Weiner. This committee was cochaired by past president David Isbell and Martha McQuade, a past
president of the Women’s Bar. The committee issued its report and
recommendations in March of 1999.
MS. STEWARD: In addition to diversity, civility in the legal profession and recognition of
various communities have always been very important to you. Can you
talk about the civility community and then the civility committee and
other committees that were created in furtherance of the D.C. Bar?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The Civility Committee was established in November of 1993, and it
concluded in 1996. Past President Andrew Marks, who was a big
109
proponent of civility, and Joanne Doddy Fort were the co-chairs. The
committee itself included Bar members and members of the judiciary. We
developed a brochure that we distributed among Bar members and to the
bench It was an effort that I was very proud of because I thought it was
important for lawyers to practice civility in the work that we did.
We also had a number of strategic planning committees. The first
committee was chaired by Amy Bess and Jim Jones. Based on the
committee’s recommendations, the Board of Governors adopted a
strategic plan in 2009. It really set the Bar on a path for a strategy. The
second strategic planning committee, chaired by one of our past
presidents, Kim Keenan, was convened in 2014. Its recommended plan
was approved by the Board in 2015, and it was a foundation for the Bar
until 2020.
There were many other important studies and committees led by
leaders of the Bar who devoted many, many hours in furtherance of
activities of the D.C. Bar.
MS. STEWARD: You worked very hard to make sure that past presidents remained
involved with the D.C. Bar, and leaders of the voluntary bar associations
also were actively involved. The strategic planning committee is just
another illustration of your forward-looking, your focus on planning for a
future of the D.C. Bar because in addition to the building fund that you
created, you also set up the strategic plans so the Bar could be prepared in
five to ten years for where it was going. Along with that, during your
110
tenure the sections were re-envisioned. Can you talk about that
experience?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: The recommendations to create a committee to look at the sections began
in March of 2017. There had been a ten-year decline in Sections
membership, and President Tim Webster charged the Leadership
Development Committee to study the governance structure of our
Sections. He also charged the Sections Council to conduct a survey of
Sections members’ needs and interests.
Past President Brigid Benitez had succeeded Philip Lacovara as
chair of the Leadership Development Committee. The Leadership
Development Committee formed an ad hoc committee on sections
governance, chaired by Laura Possessky, a past Sections Council chair.
Among the members of the ad hoc committee were past presidents
Kim Keenan and Darrell Mottley, who also were former Sections Council
chairs. The ad hoc committee conducted exhaustive research and
interviewed members and leaders in the Sections to develop
recommendations.
The Leadership Development Committee ultimately recommended
re-envisioning and rebranding the Sections as D.C. Bar Communities, with
a stronger value package for members, a simplified governance model and
greater administrative efficiency. I think it was a successful effort to
reinvigorate Sections into Communities because they are a very important
part of the D.C. Bar.
111
MS. STEWARD: The role of volunteers throughout your leadership tenure was so
important, and people really took that responsibility very seriously. One of
these roles was as general counsel of the D.C. Bar. Can you talk about
how you were able to get actively practicing attorneys to volunteer to
serve as general counsel of the D.C. Bar?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: You’re right. I was so honored to have individuals willing to perform that
service, which was so important for the Board. When I came to the Bar,
there was a volunteer general counsel, Charles Cutler, so I had that model
to start off my career there. I later recruited fourteen additional individuals
to be general counsel. Most of them served for two years, although Tim
Webster served for six years. Five of the general counsels went on to
become Bar presidents. They got to know the Bar and decided to lead the
Bar.
It wasn’t just that the general counsels themselves volunteered.
They also volunteered their firms. The general counsels would recruit
individuals from their law firms if they needed particular issues studied
and researched, and their firms gave very generously of their time to
support these individuals’ service as general counsels. I was very grateful
to each of them for their many, many hours spent assisting the D.C. Bar.
MS. STEWARD: After 35 years, you decided to retire as CEO of the D.C. Bar. Why?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I had done much of what I wanted to do, and I thought I would leave the
rest for others to take on.
112
I’d like to note that we had many non-lawyer professionals with
valuable expertise, both on the Board and on certain committees. I must
say that I was impressed with how the volunteers, both lawyers and nonlawyers, devoted countless hours to addressing policy issues for the Bar.
They made an incredible commitment of time and energy to the
organization. The Bar staff members were equally dedicated. They were
creative and thoughtful, and they cared about the institution. And we were
lucky to have members of the D.C. and federal judiciary who were
partners with the Bar in various projects. We were really fortunate.
And as I mentioned, individual presidents began initiatives that
were creative and furthered the work of the Bar. It was my honor really to
carry on those initiatives.
MS. STEWARD: In recognition of your service and your ability to grow the D.C. Bar
tenfold throughout your 35 years, the Bar created a fund in your name.
Can you talk a little about that?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Well pro bono was near and dear to my heart and in January of 2017, the
Board of Directors of the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center, which had the same
membership as the Board of Governors of the D.C. Bar, approved the
establishment of the Katherine Mazzaferri Emerging Legal Needs Fund. It
is a restricted fund to be used for the purposes of furthering new initiatives
in pro bono.
113
I was so touched. I didn’t know anything about this beforehand.
Tim Webster called me over to a meeting in his office one evening, and I
had no idea what was going to happen.
The purpose of the fund was to enable the Pro Bono Center to meet
new or expanding needs for legal services. When it was announced, the
fund already had accumulated $100,000. I was very moved by that effort
and excited about the possibilities that the Pro Bono Center would have
funds available to initiate new programs.
MS. STEWARD: In addition to this wonderful fund that was created in your name, the
Katherine Mazzaferri Emerging Legal Needs Fund, you were also honored
by being named CEO emeritus of the D.C. Bar. Can you talk about that?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: At the Board meeting in June 2017, the Board adopted a Resolution,
which touched me deeply, to create a position called CEO Emeritus in my
name. It was in recognition of the work that I had done with the Bar for
many years and in pro bono, lawyer assistance, attorney-client relations,
legal ethics, CLE, and other programs and initiatives, in addition to
helping the Bar move to its permanent headquarters. I was very moved to
have been given that title and it’s an honor to hold it today.
MS. STEWARD: When you look back on your 35 years as CEO of the D.C. Bar, what are
your greatest takeaways?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: My greatest takeaway is really the sense of community among the Bar
leaders and the judiciary. I can remember my first meeting, my interview
really, with Jake Stein and Stephen Pollak, for the position of then
114
Executive Director of the D.C. Bar. I remember how they outlined the
difficulties the Bar had been through, and that they wanted to be sure I
knew what I would be getting into and whether I was up for the task. I told
them that I was.
But over time, it was a collaboration with all the presidents and the
chief judges of the appellate and trial courts. I worked especially closely
with Chief Judge Annice Wagner and later Chief Judge Eric Washington
of the D.C. Court of Appeals. I was really honored to be part of the story.
The story really is about service to the public, to the members, to the
judiciary, to figure out ways to accomplish what needed to be done in a
manner that was cost effective but productive for the organization. It was a
privilege really to have worked with so many volunteers and such a
dedicated staff, and I was honored to have played that role for 35 years.
MS. STEWARD: When you look over your career in the law, what do you want people to
remember about you?
MS. MAZZAFERRI: I always cared about the rights of individuals and diversity, and I was
proud that we had a diverse leadership in the Bar, both Board and staff,
and, of course, committees. Some of that really stemmed from my early
training in a Quaker school and some of the lessons learned from my
family who exposed me to civil rights issues. My early time at EEOC
taught me a lot about discrimination, what it looked like and how to avoid
it. So, I think my interest in diversity in leadership for the Bar and my
115
excitement about establishing the Leadership Development Committee
really stemmed from my early experiences and my early training.
And on a substantive level, the work of creating the Programs
Division with the fee arbitration program, the legal ethics program, the
rules of professional conduct program, the lawyer assistance program, the
practice management service, CLE and re-envisioning of the sections all
were outgrowths of conversations and creative ideas from volunteers and
the staff. It was exciting to be able to make them real.
And, of course, the Pro Bono Center was always a work in
progress from the start of that committee that Sally Determan appointed,
chaired by Stephen Pollak. It really set a standard for me about how to go
about studying tough issues and putting everything on the table and then
figuring out the best plan forward.
MS. STEWARD: Katherine, we thank you for sharing your oral history with us. This
concludes the oral history of Katherine Mazzaferri, known as the CEO
Emeritus of the D.C. Bar.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: Thank you, Annamaria.
116
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
This is a postscript to the oral history of Katherine Mazzaferri.
MS. STEWARD: We have spoken about your work life, and we haven’t touched much on
the rest of your life. Now that you are retired and have time for you, tell us
how you spend your time.
MS. MAZZAFERRI: While I was working at the D.C. Bar, my daughter was born. She’s now
full grown and is a social worker, a psychotherapist. She’s a very sensitive
and talented therapist, and I could not be more proud of her. During my
retirement, it’s been a great joy to be able to spend more time with her.
While I was working, I kept some activities going. For example,
when I moved from Philadelphia to New York and then to Washington
D.C., I took with me the fine cello my mother had bought for me when I
was 13. I played it periodically while I was working. But in retirement, I
found an opportunity to get back to it in a wonderful way and to have a
terrific teacher, which makes it very special. My mother always would say
that music feeds the soul. I agree.
I’ve also been studying Italian for many years. But for the past
twenty or so, I have studied with a very talented teacher at the Italian
Cultural Institute. I have a group of classmates with whom I’ve been on
this journey, which has made it a wonderful experience.
Travelling, especially to Italy, is always a high point in my life. I
never tire of learning about the art and culture of the homeland of three of
117
my grandparents. And being able to visit some former neighbors and now
close friends in Rome is a gift.
Over the years as I became active in a Unitarian Universalist
congregation in Bethesda, Maryland, I had a chance to take on some
leadership roles. This experience was intriguing because I was both a
student and a proponent of leadership training at the D.C. Bar. My role in
the religious community enabled me to figure out how some of those
leadership skills worked in practice. The congregation also has been a
source of true friendships. That’s been a plus for me.
Recently I began to attend a storytelling class with another gifted
teacher who is an accomplished actress. It’s been a very fun experience.
And having brunch and dinners with my extended family and
friends is a pleasure, especially if we can be in the garden. Speaking of the
garden, although my mother was a serious gardener, I never thought I’d
become one. But as I mentioned earlier, gardening has given me an
opportunity to practice my creative talents. Even in this activity, I have a
teacher, a skilled horticulturist who advises on plants and design.
So, learning and expanding my world has been an integral part of
life for me while I was working, but even more so in my retirement.
Acknowledgements
There are a number of thank-you’s that I would like to offer. First, I want to thank Annamaria
Steward for always being at the ready to conduct an interview and for being so thorough in the
process.
Next, I want to thank Cynthia Hill who has been my sounding board and editor throughout. It
felt like an extension of our work at the D.C. Bar. I am grateful for her time and friendship.
I also want to thank some of my long-ago colleagues and friends for being willing to reminisce
about the past. Sue Ross, Nancy Stanley, Judy Potter, Judith Lichtman, Trudy Levy, Joan
Messing Graff, and Monika Kalra Varma were all key in refreshing my present recollection. I
offer a special thanks to Maureen Thornton Syracuse who provided some of the nuances and
details that I otherwise would have missed.
Then there are the late Steve Pollak, the first chair, and Linda Ferren, the first executive director,
of the D.C. Circuit Historical Society, both of whom encouraged me (repeatedly) to sit for the
oral history. Finally, I appreciate the work of Sandy Freedman, who so diligently transcribed and
finalized the manuscript.
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
r’- �
1
i inasmuch as the �vorkforce is divided along craft lines. The blue.collar
i workforce is concentrated in the metal trades, such as welder, boilermaker, !! machinist, s�eet metal worker, and pipe fitte;. It also employs electril! ci ans , riggers , crane opera to rs , painters, truck drive rs , carpenters, and
:! the 1 i ke. The industry has been noted for its high turnover with a heavy
;!
Ii loss of \’lorkers to the higher-paying building construction industry.
11 )!
·1 !,
;:
4. In many communities union organization in the shipyard is
i
• the same as the union organization in the building trades. In Pascao0·!la,
Mississippi, as on the West Coast, the same local unions represent
:: the shipyard workers as well as the building construction workers. One
• difference between the two industries is that a shipyard is normally
‘a more hazardous work place than a normal construction site because of
moving overhead cranes, rail and truck movements, etc. Frequently ship­
;i
;
i yard workers will find themselves working in very cramped spaces \’Ji th
: poor ventilation – a situation not usually found at construction sites.
: Shipyard workers are subject to the same vagaries of the weather as are
i construction workers.
5. My early dealings with discrimination in the industry were
I
i limited to racial and ethnic discr·11nination. Under the Executivf: Order
we did not have the authority to deal with sex discrimination until 1968.
Between the period 1968 thru December 1971 the rules and regulations
of the Department of Labor under which we operated did not explicitly
( state that goals and timetables should be obtained by sex. In this early
i
l period prior to December 1971 we had very few complaints from women with
I respect to blue collar employment opportunities in the industry.
6. In this early period management res� ted the idea of bringing
women into the shi pbuil ding industry. There was concern about the expense
1 of building or renovating toilet and locker facilities. Concern was also I expressed about the heavy phys i ca 1 nature of the wo.rk and the physique
I of women. There also was concern about the uncertain numbers of women
! that would apply if facilities were available.
Ii
··1
-2-
� �
ii 7. Nationally, there were 221 women employed in the blue collar
ii occupations in the 1 ndus try 1 n 1971 . This represented . 3% of the b 1 ue
:; collar workers in the industry. In early 1972 we began requiring the
!!contractors under our jurisdiction to have goals and timetables for women in
!!
::all blue collar occupations. This r�quirement was based on amended Office f,
i•
i of Federal Contract Compliance regulations that applied the same standards ,I
,:
1
: for goals and timetables to women as was required for racial/ethnic groups.
:· By early 1976 there were 4,223 women in the blue collar occupations account-
•
• ing for 4.7% of all these positions. The earlier concerns of industry proved
to be ungrounded once women were actively recruited. An interesting side
::effect of introducing women in the workforce was a decrease in turnover.
“This has been a perennial problem in the industry and women have been more
• stable workers in shipyard occupations.
fi
t;
• 8. When we first approached contractors for goals and timetables
:i in shipyard jobs v-,e had no guidelines as to setting numbers. As a rough
·rule-of-thumb we chose a figure of 50% of the participation rate of women
in the labor market as a goal for beginning jobs. Thus in a labor market
that had 40% female participation we suggested a goal of 20% for entry
I
level jobs. No goals wefe set for advanced blue collar jobs. O�ce a
certain number of women had been employed, we established goals for their
promotion into the advanced blue collar jobs.
9. Initially there was concern on the part of management with
respect to the novelty of women in these non-traditional jobs. We E 1couraged
management to bring in a large number of women at a time to diffuse the
novelty and decrease the tensions that would apply to isolated women.
Hiring women in large numbers did prove to be a successful technique.
10. One of the larger, more dramatic increases in female participation took place in the Ingalls Pascagoula yard where the number of
blue collar women increased from 89 in 1971 to 2,128 in 1977 and yet
prior to 1971 there were no complaints of sex discrimination nor female
1 applicants fur the shipyard jobs. One phenomenon that we have noted ls
!
I that as more women ar� employed a snow-ball effect is observed in the applicant
1l .:!
I
)
-3-
I
I
Appendix 3
6/29/2021 DC Bar – D.C. Bar Past Presidents
https://www.dcbar.org/About/Who-We-Are/D-C-Bar-Past-Presidents 1/2
D.C. Bar Past Presidents
Year President
2019–20 Susan M. Hoffman
2018–19 Esther H. Lim
2017–18 Patrick McGlone
2016–17 Annamaria Steward
2015–16 Timothy K. Webster
2014–15 Brigida Benitez
2013–14 Andrea C. Ferster
2012–13 Thomas S. Williamson Jr.
2011–12 Darrell G. Mottley
2010–11 Ronald S. Flagg
2009–10 Kim M. Keenan
2008–09 Robert J. Spagnoletti
2007–08 Melvin White
2006–07 James J. Sandman
2005–06 John C. Cruden
2004–05 John “Jack” C. Keeney Jr.
2003–04 Shirley Ann Higuchi
2002–03 George W. Jones Jr.
2001–02 John Payton
2000–01 John W. Nields Jr.
1999–00 Joan H. Strand
1998–99 Andrew H. Marks
1997–98 Carolyn B. Lamm
1996–97 Myles V. Lynk
1995–96 Robert N. Weiner
1994–95 Pauline A. Schneider
1993–94 Mark H. Tuohey III
1992–93 Jamie S. Gorelick
1991–92 James Robertson
1990–91 Sara-Ann Determan
1989–90 Charles F.C. Ruff
1988–89 Philip Allen Lacovara
1987–88 Robert E. Jordan III
Appendix 4
6/29/2021 DC Bar – D.C. Bar Past Presidents
https://www.dcbar.org/About/Who-We-Are/D-C-Bar-Past-Presidents 2/2
1986–87 Paul L. Friedman
1985–86 Frederick B. Abramson
1984–85 Marna S. Tucker
1983–84 David B. Isbell
1982–83 Jacob A. Stein
1981–82 James J. Bierbower
1980–81 Stephen J. Pollak
1979–80 John H. Pickering
1978–79 Robert L. Weinberg
1977–78 Louis F. Oberdorfer
1976–77 Charles R. Work
1975–76 Daniel A. Rezneck
1974–75 John W. Douglas
1973–74 Charles T. Duncan
1972–73 E. Barrett Prettyman Jr.
District of Columbia Bar General Counsels 1981-2020*
Charles Cutler 1981 – 1983
John Olson 1983-1985
Philip A. Lacovara 1985- 1987
Andrew H. Marks 1987-1989
Judith Richards Hope 1989-1991
Joanne Doddy Fort 1991-1992
Robert N. Weiner 1992-1994
George W. Jones 1994-1996
Rita M. Bank 1997-1998
Antonia B. Ianniello 1998- 2000
John C. Yang 2001-2002
Nathalie F.P. Gilfoyle 2002-2004
Timothy K. Webster 2004-2010
Paul Hemmersbaugh 2010-2015
Marlon Q. Paz 2015-2020
*These individuals served as uncompensated general counsels and provided exceptional service
to the D.C. Bar.
Appendix 5
A-1
Oral History of Katherine Mazzaferri
Index
9/11, 105
ABA, 59, 84
Abramson, Fred, 104, 107
Access to Justice Commission (ATJ), 96, 99-100
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), 47-48
Aquino, Florence (aunt), 6-7, 15-16, 22, 46
Aquino, Michael (Michele) (maternal grandfather), 1
Armed Services, 95
Arnold & Porter, 88
AT&T (case), 22-25
Baker, Carrie, 46
Bank, Rita, 83, 89
Bazelon, Judge David, 107
Beatrice Rosenberg Award, 35, 106
See also Rosenberg, Beatrice
Bem, Drs. Sandra and Daryl, 23-25, 48
Benitez, Brigid, 78, 94, 110
Bernstein, Caryl, 87
Bess, Amy, 109
Blount, Ada, 30
Branson, Ann (Quaker school principal), 8
Brennan, William, 107
William Brennan Award, 106-107
Bureau of Consumer Protection, 54
Bryson, William, 106
California Bar, 104
Carlos Rosaro School, 94
Carolyn (aunt), 5-7, 33
Catholic University Law Review, 60
Center for Law and Social Policy, 42-43, 46
Center, Larry, 62
Civil Rights Act, 34
Clauss, Karen, 43
CLE Program, 61-62, 64
Clients’ Security Fund, 64, 66-67, 69, 103
Cohen, Barry, 68
Consortium of Legal Services Providers, 93
Copus, David, 23
A-2
Cutler, Charles, 111
Dan (uncle), 5
D.C. Bar, 1, 11, 36, 38, 45, 58, 61, 66-71, 77, 79, 83, 85-86, 88, 92-93, 96, 98, 101-117
Advice and Referral Clinic, 74, 86-88, 95
Board (of Governors), 67-70, 72-75, 78-82, 85, 92, 104-105, 109, 111-113
CED (Community Economic Development) Project, 89-90
Civility Committee, 108-109
CLE (Continuing Legal Education) Committee, 61-62, 64, 70
Disciplinary System Review Committee, 65, 68
Family Law Task Force, 82
Foundation and the Public Service Program, 79-80
Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA) program, 79, 92
Judicial and Bar Conference, 76
Landlord Tenant Task Force/Resource Center, 87-88, 101
Law Firm Pro Bono Clinic, (renamed as the Advocacy and Justice Clinic), 84, 95, 97
Leadership Development Committee, 72-74, 110, 115
Minorities in the Legal Profession Conference, 107-108
Pro Bono Center (previously pro bono program and later Public Service Activities Program), 79,
92, 99, 101, 112-113, 115
Pro Bono Bankruptcy Clinic, 85, 87
Pro Se Divorce Clinic, 82-88, 87, 89
Right to Housing Initiative, 100-101
Technology to help provide legal services, 93
Women in the Legal Profession Summit, 108
Department of Commerce, 43
Determan, Sally, 80, 115
diversity, 8, 38, 107-108, 114
Dorian, Linda Colvard
co-chair Women’ Rights Committe, 19
East, Catherine, 23
Eastman, Hope, 21
Edelman, Peter, 96, 100
Edwards, Mary Fran, 62, 64
EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), 20, 22-28, 30-31, 34-38, 41, 44, 48-49, 53,
57, 114
intern, 22
Trial Division, 28
Ferren, Linda, 59-61, 118
Finkelstein, Linda, see Ferren, Linda
Florence (aunt), See Aquino, Florence
Ford Foundation, 40-41, 47
Fort, Joanne Doddy, 109
Friedenthal, Jack, 62
A-3
Friedman, Paul, 60
FTC (Federal Trade Commission), 50-54, 56-58
Improvements Act of 1980, 52
Georgetown University Law Center, 61
Gesell, Gerhard, 51
Gilliam, Rebecca, 74
Gitt, Cindy, 21
Gorelick, Jamie, 86, 96
Graff, Joan, 41
Grandmother Mazzaferri (see also Kaplan, Roberta), 1-5
Greenberger, Marcia, 46
Harvey, Alexander, 28-29, 31-32
Hayes, Joanne, 40
Heneghan, John, 43-45, 48-49
Herman, Alexis, 43
Higuchi, Shirley, 89
Hill, Cynthia, 62-64, 72, 107-108, 118
Isbell, David, 108
Jones, Elaine, 107
Jones, George, 87, 98, 108
Jones, Jim, 90, 109
Jordan, Vernon, 108
Kaplan, Rebecca (maternal grandmother), 1-5
Katherine Mazzaferri Emerging Legal Needs Fund, 112-113
Keenan, Kim, 72, 75, 87, 109-110
Kennedy (John) assassination, 13
Kessler, Gladys, 20-22, 59-60
Klineberg, Geoff, 67
Kohn, Margy, 46
Komisar, Lucy, 21
Kramer, Al, 54
Kramer, Robert, 20, 22, 26
Kuhn, Cynthia Goodrich, 45
Lacovara, Philip, 66, 73, 92, 110
Lawyer Assistance Program, 64-65, 69, 113, 115
Levy, Trudy, 39-40; 46-47, 118
Lichtman, Judith (Judy), 22, 37, 40-42, 118
Liss, Susan, 55
Longshoremen (case), 28-30, 32-33, 49
MacNeil, Robin, 45-46
A-4
MacNeil/Lehrer Report (television news), 45-46
Makepeace, Suzanne, 65
Marks, Andrew, 91, 108
Marshall, F. Ray, 43
Marshall, Thurgood, 107-08
Thurgood Marshall Award, 106107-
Martin Luther King.assassination, 13
Mazzaferri , Joseph (father), 4
Mazzaferri, Katherine – Personal
birth Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1
cello, 5, 12-14, 116
experience at law school as minority, 17
father’s death, 11
George Washington Law School (previously National Law Center), 17-20, 25-26, 37, 62
Guadalajara, Mexico studying Spanish, 14
Mobilization for Youth, 16-17
New School of Music, 12
New York University (NYU), 6, 12, 14, 16-17, 19, 20
Latin American Literature, 14
Quaker elementary school, 8, 106, 114
Unitarian Universalist congregation, 117
Vietnam War and demonstrations, 18
Women’s Rights Committee, 19, 26
Mazzaferri, Katherine – Professional
AT&T (case), 22-25
Children’s Advertising Rulemaking, 50-51
DC Bar
CEO Emeritus, 113, 115
Executive Director, 58, 61
Leadership Development Committee, 72
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. See EEOC
Federal Trade Commission, 50-54, 56-58
Assistant Director for Product Reliability, 55
Katherine Mazzaferri Emerging Legal Needs Fund, 114
League of Women Voters, 39, 42
Education Fund (LWVEF), 39, 47, 63
United States Regulatory Council, 54
Used Car Rule, 55-57
Washington Council of Lawyers Board, 58
Women in the Law course at Antioch Law School, 37
Women’s Legal Defense Fund (now National Partnership for Women and Families), 21, 33, 37,
42, 48, 59
Employment Counseling Committee, 40
Mazzaferri, Rose (mother), 4
A-5
Mazzaferri, Valerie (sister), 5, 7, 12
Mazzaferri, Domenico (paternal grandfather), 1
McKinney, Meg, 89
McQuade, Martha, 108
Meyer Foundation, 91
Minsker, Marty, 67
Mormando, Angela (paternal great grandmother), 1
Moss, Susan, 64
Mottley, Darrell, 110
Moultrie, Carl, 59
Multi-door concept, 59-60
National Organization for Women (NOW), 20-21
Norbury, Julie, 108
Owens v. Brown (case), 47
Payton, John, 73, 98, 105-106
Pertschuk, Michael, 51
Pollak, Stephen, 80-81, 92, 113, 115, 118
Possessky, Laura, 110
Potter, Judy, 21, 24, 118
Prettyman, Barrett, 104
Race and gender, 22, 34
Reno, Janet, 86, 94
Rezneck, Dan, 106-107
Ridings, Dot, 40
Robertson, James, 107
Romano, Amelia, 7
Rosenbaum, Jess, 100
Rosenberg, Beatrice (Bea), 35-36
Beatrice Rosenberg Award, 36, 106
Ross, Sue, 20-23, 47-48, 118
Ruff, Chuck, 36, 63, 104, 106
Sanders, Frank, 59
Sandman, Jim, 75, 88, 98, 100
Schachter, Esther, 40
Schechter, Ron, 71
Schiffer, Lois, 43
Shishkevish, Lalla, 72
Singer, Linda, 84
Sirica, John, 47
Sobeck, Eileen, 73
Stanley, Nancy, 20-21, 118
Steadman, John, 71
A-6
Stein, Jake, 113-114
Steward, Annamaria, 74-75, 78
Stockford, Marjorie
author The Bell Women, 25
Strand, Joan, 84
Superior Court of the District of Columbia, 59-60, 81, 83-84, 95, 97, 101
Supreme Court of the United States, 28, 56
Syracuse, Maureen, 63, 82-83, 87, 91, 95, 98-99, 118
Taylor, William, 107
Terry, John, 71
The Advocate (Georgetown University school newspaper, 26
The Evolution of a Multi-Door Courthouse
by Linda Finkelstein and Gladys Kessler, 60
Thompson, Phyllis, 87
Title VII, 26, 34, 41
Tucker, Marna, 102
Tuohey, Mark, 96
United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, 36, 56, 97, 107
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 28
United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 35
Varma, Monika Kalra, 99-100, 118
Velasquez, Victor, 78
Venturi, Rocco (paternal great grandfather), 1
Venturi, Antoinette (paternal grandmother), 1
Wagner, Annice, 71, 114
Washington, Eric, 114
Webster, Tim, 78, 110-111, 113
Weiner, Rob, 68, 97, 108
Wilbourne, Beverly, 90
Williamson, Tom, 75
WLDF (Women’s Legal Defense Fund), 21, 40, 48
Women’s Bar Association, 108
Oral History of Katherine A. Mazzaferri, Esq.
Cases
Equal Empl. Opp. Comm. v. American Tel. & Tel. Co., 365 F. Supp. 1105 (E.D. Pa. 1973), 22
Owens v. Brown, 455 F. Supp. 291 (D.D.C. 1978), 47
Equal Empl. Opp. Comm. v. Int’l Longshoremen’s Ass’n and Locals 829 and 858, 1975 WL 162 (D.
Md. Feb. 14, 1975), 28
Advocates for Women, et al. v. Usery, et al., Civ. Action 76-0862 (D.D.C.), 43
Statutes
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub. L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964), 34
FTC Improvements Act of 1980, Pub. L. 96–252, 94 Stat. 374, May 28, 1980, 52
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Katherine A. Mazzaferri
mazzaferri@verizon.net
202-834-3201
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
The District of Columbia Bar, Washington D.C. – June 1982 – May 2017:
Chief Executive Officer (March 2010-May 2017)
Executive Director (June 1982-March 2010)
Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Consumer Protection – June 1978 – June 1982:
Assistant Director for Advertising Practices (February 1982 – June 1982)
Assistant Director for Product Reliability (September 1980 – February 1982)
Deputy Assistant Director for Advertising Practices (July 1978 – September 1980)
League of Women Voters Education Fund, Litigation Department – October 1975 – July 1978: Director
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Office of General Counsel – June 1972 – September 1975:
Trial Attorney
OTHER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
River Road Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Member, Governance Task Force: (2010-2014)
Member, Endowment Committee: (2007-2010) (Chair, 2009-2010)
Co-chair, Name Evaluation Working Group: (2006-2007)
Member, Board of Trustees: (2003-2005) (Co-Chair 2004-2005)
Women’s Legal Defense Fund (now the National Partnership for Women and Families)
Member, Board of Directors (1971- 1975; 1976-1979) (President 1972-1973)
AWARDS AND HONORS
BADC Honorable Annice M. Wagner Pioneer Award – 2023
District of Columbia Bar, Chief Executive Officer Emeritus: 2017 – present
BADC Lawyer of the Year Award – 2016
EDUCATION
The National Law Center – George Washington University Law School (J.D.)
New York University (B.A.)
Annamaria Steward
Biographical Sketch
Annamaria Steward has dedicated her career to strengthening the legal profession and
serving the Washington, D.C. community. Her professional experience spans the judiciary,
private practice, legal education, corporate law, and nonprofit leadership, and she has
simultaneously devoted thousands of volunteer hours to local and national professional
and community organizations.
Annamaria is the inaugural Executive Director of The National Black Lawyers Top 100 and
Top 40 Under 40. She also serves as General Counsel of BoardSource. Her prior
leadership roles include General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer of Agilian, LLC;
Director of Leadership and Strategic Development at the D.C. Bar; Associate Dean of
Students at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law;
Associate Attorney at Jack H. Olender & Associates, P.C.; and long-term law clerk to the
Chief Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals. Across these roles, she has consistently
advanced the interests of the legal profession, law students, injured community members,
and residents of the District of Columbia.
Annamaria has held leadership positions in numerous legal organizations. After being
elected to every position within the 150-year-old Bar Association of the District of
Columbia (BADC), she became its first African American female President. She is the
third person ever elected as President of both the BADC and the D.C. Bar, the largest
unified bar in the country. As the 45th President of the D.C. Bar, who served during
Katherine Mazzaferri’s last year as CEO, Annamaria notably volunteered at every one of the
D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center’s Advice and Referral Clinics at Bread for the
City and shepherded the final construction of the new D.C. Bar headquarters.
Annamaria’s additional volunteer service includes serving as Vice President of
D.C. Refers; D.C. District Enrollment Director for Dartmouth College; Secretary and later
Board member of the D.C. Bar; Chair of the D.C. Bar Potential Leaders SubCommittee (which designed the D.C. Bar John Payton Leadership Academy); Member of
the Maryland Bar Admissions Task Force; and Chair of the BADC Young Lawyers Section.
Annamaria also created and hosted a twice-weekly DCTV television program for two years,
highlighting attorneys and their contributions to the legal and broader communities.
She currently serves on the boards of the Appleseed Network Foundation; The Barristers;
The Historical Society of the D.C. Circuit; and the BADC.
Annamaria is a graduate of Dartmouth College, where she designed her unanimously
approved undergraduate major titled International Environmental Policy & Policy
Formation, and spent semesters in Lyon, France and Nairobi, Kenya. She is also a
graduate of The George Washington University Law School.
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