ABB Board of Directors

Board member Martha Baker is an independent consultant and founder of Equity in Education & Employment, which provides program design, advocacy and training to improve opportunities for women and girls. She continues to work with women and girls on the international, national, and local levels, in government, nonprofits, the private sector and the political arena. Ms. Baker was Executive Director/CEO of Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW), a nonprofit that promotes women's economic self-sufficiency through training, placement and advocacy for women in construction and other skilled blue collar trades. After creating a report entitled Vocational Education: Opportunities for Young Women, she was appointed to the New York City Department of Education Steering Committee to Restructure Career Technical Education.

Prior to leading NEW, Ms. Baker was Executive Director of the NYC Commission on the Status of Women under Mayor David Dinkins and Commission Chair Bella Abzug. She coordinated a yearlong citywide study of sexual harassment, culminating in the publication of The Prevention of Sexual Harassment in the Municipal Workplace and establishing a new procedure for reporting, investigating and resolving complaints. The Commission produced numerous documents, including What Can Be Done About Sexual Assault on College Campuses. Thereafter, Ms. Baker became Deputy Director of the NYS Workers' Compensation Board where she developed Safety in the Workplace, a program and procedures to enable the staff and public to interact in a hostile-free work environment.

Dina Baskt is Co-Founder, Co-President & Board Chair of A Better Balance. Prior to co-founding A Better Balance, Dina was an attorney with the NOW Legal Defense & Education fund (now Legal Momentum) where she engaged in litigation and conducted public policy advocacy on a wide range of women's issues including economic justice, child care and reproductive rights. Prior to Legal Momentum, Dina served as a litigation/employment associate with Kaye, Scholer LLP. In 2002, Dina served as the Deputy Issues Director for the Andrew Cuomo for Governor campaign. Dina is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan. Dina currently serves on the Board of the New York Women's Agenda and is a National Commissioner of the Anti-Defamation League.

Board member Eric Berger is a manager with Deloitte Consulting’s Human Capital practice. He advises Fortune 500 clients across multiple industries on leadership development, change management, talent strategies, corporate learning, strategic communications and risk management. He also leads the Parents’ Network for Deloitte Consulting’s New York City location. Prior to joining Deloitte, Eric served as Manager of the Kennedy School Negotiation Project at Harvard University, where he developed and conducted training programs on negotiation, leadership, mediation and conflict management for senior executives and public leaders in Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America and the Middle East. A former Director of External Training at the Harvard Mediation Program, Eric served as Ombudsperson at the Kennedy School of Government from 2001 to 2005. In addition to his role at Deloitte, Eric currently serves as Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches a course on negotiation and dispute resolution.  Eric holds Master degrees in Public Administration and Theological Studies from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Film from Queen’s University in Canada.

Board member Ariel Devine earned her BA from the University of Maryland, her 2nd Degree Diploma from the University of Nice, France and her JD, cum laude, from the George Washington University Law School. She practiced corporate and intellectual property law in private practice for 9 years at the firms of Pavia and Harcourt LLC and Philips Nizer LLP. For the past five years, she has worked as in-house Counsel for IBM. She serves on the NY Regional Board of the Anti-Defamation League and served for three years as the Deputy Chair of the ADL's International Affairs Committee. She is also a member of the Young Families Committee of the Jewish Community Center. She also served as a Big Sister, mentor and volunteer with the Grand Street Settlement organizing programs for underprivileged children and as an Executive Committee member of Dress for Success, Young Executives for Success Division, a philanthropic organization helping women in need re-enter the work force.  Ariel has also volunteered work for PS 75 Early Morning Reading Program, Dorot and the Downtown Boathouse. Ariel has a long-standing interest in women's issues which actually began in utero - her mother was one of the earliest members and organizers of the National Organization for Women and participated in countless NOW rallies while pregnant with Ariel, including one rally in which she was photographed the day before Ariel was born.

Board member Penn Dodson graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and received her JD from the University of California. Her speciality is labor law where she is the head of the New York office of Goldberg and Dohan, LLP. She represents clients  primarily in wage and hour disputes, as well as sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination.     She created a blog (gobellyfirst.blogspot.com) regarding pregnancy-related issues in the workplace, written in comprehensible layman’s terms but with the intent to highlight matters that tend to be important in legal cases. in 2007 she was the President of the National Employment Lawyers Association, Georgia Affiliate, and a founding member of the Georgia Association of Women Lawyers.

Board member Lisa Gilinsky joined A Better Balance last year, with many years of experience in law and politics. Lisa worked in Washington for the Clinton/Gore Presidential Reelection Campaign and then with two different non-profit organizations focusing on international development. After earning her law degree and working as an associate at Winston & Strawn in New York, Lisa served as New York Deputy Finance Director for the John Kerry for President Campaign where she ran the Lawyers Committee and was the New York Jewish Outreach Coordinator. Since the 2004 election, Lisa has practiced law in New York and has served as a consultant and freelance writer for several non-profit organizations. Lisa currently works part-time as Senior Vice President, Strategy and Communications for the Agenda Project, a political non-profit organization. Lisa received her J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law and her B.A. from the University of Michigan. She also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.  Lisa lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband Marshall and their two children.

Board member and co-founder Risa E. Kaufman is executive director of the Human Rights Institute (HRI) at Columbia Law School, where she is also a Lecturer-in-Law. At HRI, Risa works to develop and advance international human rights norms and strategies in the United States through research, advocacy, network building, and training. She also teaches a seminar on economic justice and human rights in the United States. Risa has extensive experience in public interest litigation, advocacy and legal education with a special focus on women’s rights, poverty law, and access to justice. She previously worked as Associate Counsel at the Community Service Society of New York, as a Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest and Constitutional Law at the law firm of Gibbons, P.C., and as a Skadden Fellow at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (now Legal Momentum). Prior to joining Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, Risa was an Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering at NYU School of Law and an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and Seton Hall Law School. She has published several articles on the issue of access to justice and poverty. Risa holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Snow Scholar, and clerked for Judge Ira DeMent of the U.S. District Court in Montgomery, Alabama. She holds a B.A. from Tulane University.

Board member Gary Phelan is Special Counsel to Cohen and Wolf, PC and works in the firm's Westport and Bridgeport, CT office.  Prior to joining Cohen and Wolf, he was a partner at New York City-based Outten & Golden, LLC, where he co-chaired the firm's Family Responsibilities Discrimination Practice Group.  He has litigated and negotiated individual claims involving discrimination based on age, disability, and family responsibilities, wrongful termination and employment contracts.  Prior to joining O&G he was a partner with Klebanoff & Phelan, P.C., in West Hartford, Connecticut, and Garrison, Phelan, Levin-Epstein, Chimes & Richardson in New Haven, Connecticut. He has been selected by peer review for The Best Lawyers in America* and was listed by Connecticut Magazine as one of the "Top Lawyers in Connecticut" in Labor and Employment Law.* He co-authored one of the leading treatises on disability law entitled Disability Discrimination in the Workplace, which is published by West Group. He has written and lectured on a wide range of employment-related topics and was an adjunct professor for several years at the Quinnipiac University School of Law. He was the President of the Connecticut Employment Lawyers Association and, was the co-chair of the disability rights committee for the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) and served on NELA's executive board. He is presently on the board of A Better Balance:  The Work & Family Legal Center and the advisory board for the Center For WorkLife Law.

Board member and co-founder Roslyn Powell is a teacher and program manager at the Academies @ Englewood, a public high school created in 2002. Roslyn's most recent legal position was with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, where she served as an associate counsel with the Center's Poverty Program. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Roslyn worked as a staff attorney at NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, where she focused on litigation and policy initiatives on child care and reproductive rights issues. Roslyn also worked as a litigation associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton and served as a law clerk for the Honorable Robert L. Carter of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Roslyn is a graduate of Stanford Law School (1993), Columbia University (M.P.A. 1986), and Brown University (B.A. 1983).