Reimagining Togetherness During the Pandemic

On September 9, I celebrated my 18th anniversary with my firm, Porzio Bromberg & Newman PC. I love my firm. I joined Porzio as a second-year associate, was promoted to counsel while on maternity leave in 2007, and then to partner after my second maternity leave in 2011. As women struggle to stay in our beloved profession, I have been blessed to grow up in an organization that embraces innovation and flexibility to foster a highly engaged workplace community—all working together to serve our clients.

Sure, we make substantial investments in technology and skills training to allow our people to meet client needs around the clock, untethered to our office buildings. We also make substantial investments in our people to foster a culture of inclusion, integrity, collegiality, and respect. And so our people spend time together—apart from client work—celebrating at monthly socials and holiday parties, engaging in diversity and inclusion roundtables, preparing meals at homeless shelters, and playing games at family picnics. Our people invest in one another, too, which has always made the Porzio team feel like a family. We share and support each other through the most significant parts of our lives: weddings, births, graduations, illness, and the passing of loved ones. We work hard, we laugh hard, and we share a ton of great food (and then diet)—all of it, together.

And then COVID-19 hit, and we were forced to reimagine togetherness.