In this week's episode of Unless: The Podcast, Hemma visits with Koby Langley, Division Vice President at the American Red Cross, a two-tour combat Veteran, and a Bronze Star recipient for meritorious service.

Join Koby and Hemma for a timely discussion about Koby’s passionate philosophy of social bridging. This practical concept is particularly important this year when we will have seen elections globally in 64 countries, and polarizing partisan politics can do more harm than good. As representatives from all parties call for healing and peaceful collaboration across party lines, Koby’s message that “Service Unites” couldn’t be more timely.

Highlights:

• Koby’s journey as a two-tour combat veteran and the lessons he learned

• How the American Red Cross moves volunteers and resources to have impact at scale

• The importance of ethical and moral leadership in corporate organizations and institutions

Resources:

Timestamps:

2:11 - Introducing Koby

5:45 - How do you get donors to step up?

16:26 - Taking the lessons learned from disasters into daily life

24:01 - The need for moral leadership

32:50 - The moment that made Koby realize he wanted to serve others

Biography

As a Division Vice President, Koby Langley provides oversight and leadership for all nine regions that constitute the Northeast Division. The Northeast Division delivers Red Cross services with a staff of 472 employees and 22,875 volunteers located in ninety-one facilities with a revenue target of ~$90M USD. The Northeast Division supports responding to more than fifteen disasters per day in a densely populated geography identified as one of FEMA’s most risk-prone regions with a population of 43 million. The Northeast Division also supports the nation’s blood supply while facilitating expanded use of Red Cross lifesaving training courses, including CPR, AED, and First Aid as well as providing critical services to our veteran and military families.

Koby previously served as the Senior Vice President of the International Services and Service to Armed forces departments at the American Red Cross for 7 years where he led global programs with a focus on the elimination of measles and rubella, international disaster preparedness, response, and recovery operations for communities in need while overseeing the worldwide support provided to the service members, veterans and their families.

Before joining the American Red Cross, Koby served as the Director of Wounded Warrior, Veteran, and Military Family Engagement at the White House and the Senior Advisor for Wounded Warrior, Veteran, and Military Family Initiatives for AmeriCorps, leading the largest expansion of grants for veterans and military families in agency history. In 2010, Koby was appointed to the Senior Executive Service at the Department of Defense, where he worked as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary and Senior Advisor for the Office of Wounded Warrior Care and Transition Policy. Koby assumed other roles such as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs, and appointee to the Presidential Review Team for the Department of Veteran Affairs. Koby served as the managing member of a litigation firm and worked as a veteran organizer for the successful congressional race of the first Iraq War veteran elected to Congress from 2006 to 2008.

During his military service, Koby was appointed the first in-theater foreign claims commissioner for Iraq. He developed and published the first Foreign Claims Act standard operating procedure in Iraq and paid the first civil reconstruction claims during combat operations.

Koby conducted over one hundred Foreign Claims Act and Laws of Armed Conflict missions/convoys in Iraq and served as an operational law attorney and prosecutor for the 82nd Airborne Division. He also served as litigation counsel for the Army, where he practiced with dozens of attorneys in the Department of Justice, assisting in the successful litigation of over 150 cases. He is published in numerous national news outlets and has conducted visiting correspondent interviews for Fox News and MSNBC.

Langley is a Harvard Law School-certified federal mediator, a two-tour combat Veteran, and a Bronze Star recipient for meritorious service.

In this episode, Hemma visits with Lisa Stevens Gilford co-chair of the Women for Harris campaign, a commercial litigation partner in the law firm Sidley Austin, lifelong champion of civil rights, community builder, advocate, activist, mentor, sponsor, and so much more. Hemma and Lisa explore the power of grassroots community building, leaning in on your existing talents to drive impact, and the fact that democracy demands our participation, and our vote is our voice.

Tune in for a moving account of Lisa’s origin story and how she has leveraged her event planning and fundraising skills to steer a phenomenal grassroots movement at a pivotal time in American history.

Highlights:

• The power of leaning into what you enjoy and what you are good at to drive impact

• A massive grassroots effort to participate in democracy

• What’s at stake in the upcoming US general election

Resources:

Women for Harris Walz - https://live.kamalaharris.com/women/en/home

Timestamps:

0:30 - Introducing Lisa Gilford

7:57 - How do we make pathways for women and minorities to become lawyers?

16:38 - Lisa's experience as an activist for ending apartheid and freeing Nelson Mandela

26:42 - Lisa's role in fundraising for the Harris-Walz campaign

35:43 - What's at stake in this election?

43:32 - Ethical decision making in corporate cultures

48:11 - What's next for Lisa, after the election?

Biography

Lisa Gilford is a leading complex civil litigator with a practice focused on class actions, multi-district litigation,products liability matters and large-scale commercial disputes. Lisa co-chairs Sidley’s Diversity Committee in Los Angeles. Prior to joining Sidley, Lisa was a partner with the AMLAW 50 Firms Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher & Flom and Alston & Bird, where she co-chaired the Products Liability practice.

Lisa’s numerous accolades include being named by the Los Angeles Daily Journal as one of its “Top 100 Lawyers” (2015–2020), “Top Women Lawyers” (2013–2019) and “Top Women Litigators” in California (2013–2018). The Los Angeles Business Journal named her to the “L.A. 500” (2019, 2020), as one of the city’s “Most Influential Women Attorneys” (2018–2020) and among the “Most Influential Minority Lawyers” (2019). The John M. Langston Bar Association of Los Angeles recognized Lisa as a Law Firm Partner Honoree at their 2019

Honoring Excellence in the Legal Profession awards. She was also recognized as the “Consumer Litigation Lawyer of 2018” by the Century City Bar Association and included in The Best Lawyers in America (2018–2021). In 2008, Lisa received the J. Michael Brown Award from DuPont for her personal commitment to diversity, recruiting, and mentoring in the legal profession.

Lisa is dedicated to causes advancing the status of Black women and girls and is a former President and current Emeritus Board Member of the National Association of Women Lawyers. Lisa is a former member of the Boards of the California Women’s Law Center and StepUp Women’s Network; a lifetime member of Women Lawyers of Los Angeles and Black WomenLawyers bar organizations; and counsel to the S.H.A.U.N. Foundation for Women and Girls and the Debbie Allen Dance Academy.

Lisa earned an LL.M. from Georgetown University (1995); a J.D. from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law (1993); and received a B.A. from Furman University (1990). Lisa lives in Lake Hollywood with her family, husband Andrew and children Isabel and Evan.

In this episode, Hemma visits with Jonathan Aronie, a partner and practice leader at the law firm Sheppard Mullin, and co-founder of the Active Bystander for Law Enforcement (ABLE) project with Georgetown University Law Center.

Tune in to hear about Jonathan’s tireless efforts to reimagine organisational integrity at scale in the context of law enforcement - using research-backed peer intervention techniques which have applications well beyond law enforcement.

Highlights:

• The origins of the Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE) Program
• Peer intervention as a teachable skill
• Proactive approaches to organizational integrity

Resources:

Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement Project

Jonathan Aronie on LinkedIn

Timestamps

1:10 - Introducing Jonathan Aronie

5:15 - What is a "pre-mortem", and why are they so important?

10:56 - Defining active bystandership

16:11 - How do we train people to be active bystanders?

21:54 - Jonathan's leukemia diagnosis

25:00 - The creation of ABLE

35:26 - Psychological inhibitors that lead to inaction

44:15 - ABLE's application in different communities

Jonathan's Biography

Jonathan Aronie is the Leader of Sheppard Mullin’s Governmental Practice, and the founding member of the firm's Organizational Integrity Group, a cross-disciplinary team of litigators, regulatory specialists, federal monitors, and ex-prosecutors with extensive experience helping organizations prevent and defend against challenges to their organizational integrity. As an outgrowth of his internal investigation practice, Jonathan was appointed in 2013 by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana as the Federal Monitor over the New Orleans Police Department. In that role, Jonathan leads a team of former police chiefs, internationally-known academics, and other professionals who collectively are responsible for reviewing, assessing, and reporting publicly on the NOPD’s compliance with a far-reaching federal Consent Decree. As a corollary to his work in New Orleans, Jonathan co-founded the Georgetown/Sheppard Mullin Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE) Project, for which he serves as the pro bono chairperson of the Project’s Board of Advisors. Jonathan received his BA in1990 from Brandeis University and his JD in 1993 from Duke University School of Law.