Honoree Profile: Nancy Stanley

Nancy Stanley focused primarily on women's rights issues during the first part of her legal career.While in law school, she persuaded the faculty to approve one of the first law-school courses in the nation on women's legal rights. After graduating, she became Bella Abzug's first legislative assistant for women's rights and women's legal issues.

In the early 70s she was a staff attorney at the EEOC, where she briefed and helped argue the precedent setting pregnancy rights case that ultimately went to the Supreme Court as Geduldig v Aiello. During these years she crafted the legal strategy that led to women's-rights challenges to license-renewal of affiliates of the WNBC and WABC networks.

She also became a partner in one of the first feminist law firms in the nation, Bellamy, Blank, Goodman, Kelly, Ross & Stanley, where she represented groups of women who brought class-action lawsuits alleging employment discrimination against NBC and other media outlets.

From 1989 to 2007 Stanley was chief mediator for the federal courts in the DC Circuit, where she mediated and/or coached volunteer mediators in hundreds of civil cases before either the U.S. District Court or the U.S.Court of Appeals.

Before assuming this position, she was a litigator for many years in private practice and a number of government agencies, including the Federal Communications Division and the Environment Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She taught and lectured extensively on mediation and dispute-resolution issues.

Stanley retired from the federal court system in 2007 and works today as an independent mediator.

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