Professor Afsharipour Discusses Corporate DEI in Berkeley Webinar

On July 10, Professor Afra Afsharipour participated in the webinar “Corporate DEI in the Time of Polarization.” 

Presented by the Berkeley Center for Law and Business, the webinar addressed the increasing risks public and private companies face as new stakeholders challenge current diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The event explored strategies to mitigate legal risks while enhancing workplace diversity and inclusion, and ways to manage diverse stakeholder perspectives effectively.

Law.com wrote about the webinar, quoting Afsharipour, who noted that mentorship opportunities remain limited to favored employees at many organizations.

Afsharipour urged companies to implement retention and promotion policies more democratically, “rather than what we've seen, which is a senior manager takes their favorite kind of junior person under their wing, and then promotes them in ways that might perpetuate the kind of implicit biases that we already have."

Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law Afra Afsharipour’s areas of research include corporate law and governance, mergers and acquisitions, transactional law, and the legal profession. From 2018-2024, she served as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Her scholarship has appeared in the Columbia Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and UC Davis Law Review, among other leading publications.