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Name: |
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Ms. Rhonda Joy McLea |
Month: |
March 2008 |
Schools: |
Yale Law School 1983
Aurora University, BA 1972 |
Organization: |
Time Inc |
Title: |
Associate General Counsel |
Rhonda Joy McLean is Associate General Counsel of Time Inc. (a Time Warner company) in New York, New York. She was promoted from the position of Assistant General Counsel to her current post in June, 2005. She conducts the legal review of and is responsible for regulatory compliance of all consumer marketing materials for the 40 magazines that Time Inc. publishes in the United States and Canada, including Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Real Simple, InStyle and Essence. She provides advice and counsel to more than 300 clients, handles promotion agreements, including electronic marketing matrixes, and also participates in the shaping of national and international advertising and data privacy protocols for Time Inc. She conducts consumer marketing internal review programs and regularly provides legal briefings for senior company executives.
Prior to joining Time in October 1999, Ms. McLean was the Assistant Regional Director of the Northeast Region of the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") for nine years. At the FTC, she prosecuted individuals and corporations throughout the United States that engaged in deceptive business practices or conduct that violated federal antitrust laws. She supervised thirty employees and created a law student internship program that recruited more than 150 law students from across the country. While at the FTC she received national awards for her work in educating traditionally underserved consumer communities about their rights under federal, state, and local consumer protection laws.
Ms. McLean received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1983. From November, 2004 to November, 2006, she served as chair of the Yale Law School Alumni Association, which has more than 10,000 members. In April, 2007 she initiated the Hon. Jane Matilda Bolin award at Yale Law School in association with the Yale chapter of the Black Law Students Association. Judge Bolin was the first African-American woman to graduate from Yale Law School (1931) and the first Black woman appointed as a judge in the State of New York. In March, 2007 Attorney McLean was named by The Network Journal as one of the "25 Influential Black Women in Business" and featured in the March issue of The Network Journal Black Professionals and Small Business Magazine. She also received the Ruth Whitehead Whaley Public Service Award at the 30th Anniversary Gala of the Association of Black Women Attorneys ("ABWA") in March, 2007. Ruth Whitehead Whaley was the first African-American woman admitted to the practice of law in New York (1925) and North Carolina (1933).
Ms. McLean has received numerous other awards, including the "Black Achievers in Industry" Award, bestowed upon her in March 2002 by the Harlem YMCA in recognition of her career accomplishments and community work, the "Woman of Power and Influence" Award, presented to her in June, 2003 by the New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women ("NOW") for her work with the New York Women's Foundation and mentoring more than 100 young women -- primarily law students and young lawyers -- during the previous ten years, and the "National Impact" Award, which she received from the Protestant Board of Guardians in November, 2004. In June, 2004 she was inducted into the Greater New York Chapter of the LINKS, Inc., a 70-year-old international community service organization comprised of African-American professional women. She is now Recording Secretary of this organization, as well as Chair of the Retreat Committee. In October, 2006 she received a Special Recognition Award from the Minority Law Student Leadership Summit in New York City when she gave the keynote address entitled "Optimize Your Opportunities."
Attorney McLean is currently co-chair of the board of directors of the New York Women's Foundation, which makes grants of more than $2.25 million each year to community-based organizations that enhance the lives of low-income women and girls in New York City. In March of 2004, Ms. McLean was appointed a director on the board of the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York ("BBB"), which resolves over 50,000 consumer complaints each year. She sits on the Nominating Committee of the BBB Board and recently completed a search for the new president of the organization. In November, 2006, she was invited by New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Lieutenant Governor David Paterson to serve on a transitional task force that identified candidates for senior posts at state agencies governing energy and the environment.
In October of 2003, Ms. McLean was one of three employees invited by Dick Parsons, CEO of Time Warner and Ann Moore, Chairman and CEO of Time Inc., to represent Time Inc. in the first Breakthrough Leadership Program for Time Warner executive women at Simmons College in Boston. She is a founding co-chair of the Time Warner Women's Network ("TWWN"), which launched in November, 2004 and now has over 1,000 members. She was featured in the spring, 2005 issue of KEYWORDS, the Time Warner employee newsletter that is sent to all 85,000 company employees worldwide, in a special edition that focused on leadership. Until December, 2006, she also co-chaired the Black Employees at Time ("BEAT"), one of four Time Inc. employee affinity organizations, and she continues to work with senior management on diverse business initiatives. A classically trained pianist and mezzo-soprano, Ms. McLean performs sacred music with chorales throughout metropolitan New York City. Ms. McLean is also featured in the February, 2008 issue of ESSENCE magazine.
A noted public speaker, Ms. McLean most recently participated on a panel in June, 2007 for PREP FOR PREP students about law as a career, and moderated a panel entitled "Negotiate Your Worth" in October, 2006 for the Corporate Counsel Women of Color Conference in New York, attended by over 600 members of the legal profession. In May, 2006, she participated in a panel sponsored by the New York Women's Foundation entitled "You Don't Have to be a Millionaire to be a Philanthropist" at Lehman Brothers in New York. In April, 2006 she moderated a panel at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York entitled "Avoiding a Promotion Commotion," which highlighted steps companies can take to minimize their risk of regulatory enforcement actions and private litigation regarding deceptive advertising claims. This program was attended by over 200 members of the legal profession and co-sponsored by the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission. Ms. Mclean also spoke at the Minority Corporate Counsel Conference in New York City in November, 2005, expounding on the importance of corporate networks and employee affinity groups as a diversity employment recruitment and retention strategy. She participated in a panel on antitrust corporate compliance programs at the 80th Annual National Bar Association Convention in Orlando, FLA in August, 2005. In July, 2005 she participated in a panel entitled "What It's Really Like to Practice Law as a Woman in New York City" at a program co-sponsored by the Women's Bar of New York and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. She was a guest panelist in June, 2005 at the Women Trailblazers Symposium in Dulles, VA expounding on the role of corporate women's networks. In June, 2005 she also took part in a panel entitled "The Business of Communications" before the Black Women's Economic Summit of the Executive Leadership Council in New York.
In addition to her law degree, Ms. McLean received a Master of Science degree in Adult Education and Leadership Development from North Carolina A& T State University in 1979. She received her B.A. in Criminology and Social Work from Aurora University in Aurora, Illinois in 1972.
Ms. McLean was born in Chicago, Illinois and reared in Smithfield, North Carolina. She resides in New York City with her life partner, William Craig.
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