Board member honored with Pinnacle Award

The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and its Women’s Network will honor Suffolk University Law School Professor Renée Landers with a 2010 Pinnacle Award.

The Pinnacle Awards recognize the accomplishments of women in the Greater Boston business community, and Landers will be presented the award for Excellence in Arts & Education during a Jan. 22, 2010, luncheon ceremony at the Westin Copley Place.

Big Sister Association would like to congratulate Landers on this well-deserved award.  She currently sits on Big Sister's Advisory Board, and is a former Board of Directors Chair and long-time supporter or the organization.

In addition to her tireless support of Greater Boston's girls, Landers, who teaches health law, constitutional law and administrative law at Suffolk, is a past president of the Boston Bar Association, the first woman of color and the first law professor to serve in that role.

She has been a member of the SuffolkLawSchool faculty since 2002 and is Faculty Director of the school’s Health and Biomedical Law Concentration.

“I am honored to join the ranks of the wonderful women acknowledged over the years by the Chamber and Women’s Network, and I would like to offer my heartfelt congratulations to all the women chosen for Pinnacle Awards this year,” said Landers.   “I am honored to be in their company.”

Landers is the author of an article on the potential for Massachusetts health care reform initiatives to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care and was a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance Study Panel on what Medicare can do to eliminate health care disparities.  With the Center for Advanced Legal Studies at SuffolkUniversityLawSchool, she has chaired conferences on administrative law, patient safety, health care disparities and health reform.  In January 2009, she co-chaired the Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Social Insurance on Social Insurance, Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth. 

Landers, with James B. Rebitzer and Lowell J. Taylor, has published an article and two book chapters on work hours in the legal profession and the impact on promotion and retention of lawyers.  She also has written about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program, same-sex marriage, and the status of women and people of color in the legal profession.  

She serves as vice chair of the Massachusetts Commission on Judicial Conduct and has served on the Supreme Judicial Court Committee to Study Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Courts and the Supreme Judicial Court Gender Bias Study Committee. She has served on the Council of the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association and on the Section’s Nominating Committee and as Membership chair. 

Before joining the LawSchool faculty, Landers was with the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray. She previously had served as deputy general counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as deputy assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice. Before entering government service, Landers taught at BostonCollegeLawSchool. She had served as a law clerk to former Chief Justice Edward F. Hennessey of the Supreme Judicial Court. Before attending law school, she served as Massachusetts deputy secretary of state in charge of the Commercial Bureau and the Public Records Bureau.

Landers has been active in many community and public service organizations, including the Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, The Commonwealth Institute, and the boards of the Massachusetts Health Care Security Trust and the ShadyHillSchool. She is a former president of the Harvard Board of Overseers.  She currently serves on the Board of Directors at WGBH, the Board of Overseers for the DartmouthMedicalSchool, and the Board of Trustees at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and the BethIsraelDeaconessMedicalCenter.

She has received awards from RadcliffeCollege, BostonCollegeLawSchool, the Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, the Boston Bar Association and the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus.

Other 2010 Pinnacle Award recipients are Mary Richardson of WCVB-TV's Chronicle; Fredi Shonkoff, senior vice president of Corporate Relations for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Inc.; Lyndia Downie, president and executive director of the Pine Street Inn; Beth Tucker, president of KNF&T Staffing Resources; Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray; Professor Sharon Inouye, MD, MPH, Harvard Medical School; and Catholic Charities President Tiziana Dearing.