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Brooklyn Bar Association Foundation Dinner will honor past female presidents

November 20, 2017 By Rob Abruzzese, Legal Editor Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Aimee Richter and Brooklyn Bar Association immediate past President Hon. Frank Seddio pose with Mayor Bill de Blasio at the foundation’s 2016 Annual Dinner. Eagle file photos by Rob Abruzzese
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The Brooklyn Bar Association (BBA) Foundation’s Annual Dinner is coming up on Monday, Dec. 4 at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge in Downtown Brooklyn. This year’s honorees include Hon. Rachel Adams and Hon. Bernard Graham.

The BBA Foundation will also be giving out the inaugural Vivian H. Agress Trailblazer Award, named after the first female president in BBA’s history, which will be given out annually to female trailblazers within the Brooklyn legal community.

“The dinner celebrates two things — it celebrates the Brooklyn Bar and the legal community at large, the bench and the bar and everything that we try to do for the community at large,” said BBA President Aimee Richter. “We also celebrate the work that the foundation does.”

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The inaugural recipients will be the past female presidents of BBA: Hon. Miriam Cyrulnik, Hon. Nancy T. Sunshine, RoseAnn C. Branda, Diana J. Szochet, Andrea E. Bonina and Rebecca Rose Woodland. Family members of the late Vivian Agress and the late Lynn R. Terrelonge will be on hand to accept the award on their behalf.

“The idea we had in creating the award was to celebrate trailblazers in the community — people with new ideas, people who were the first to do something, people who think outside of the box,” Richter said.

Richter, who is BBA’s ninth female president, explained that while the bar association is certainly more inclusive than ever before, she couldn’t help but think back to the earliest female presidents in the association’s history and how hard it must have been for them.

“I remember when I joined the board in 1996 that it was a bit of a men’s club,” Richter said. “The complexion has changed very much since and it’s something we’re very proud of. It definitely could not have been easy for Vivian and the other women who led the group back then, so we thought it was appropriate to honor them as a group.”

The dinner is hosted each year by the BBA Foundation, the charitable arm of BBA. The dinner is the foundation’s main source of revenue that it uses for things like the Hon. Theodore T. Jones Memorial Scholarship, the 100 Year Association Scholarship, public education programs and the Brooklyn Legal Pipeline, a mentorship program designed to prepare high school and college students for the legal profession. It also uses the money to maintain its law library and other services regularly used by BBA members.

Recently, BBA used some of its foundation money in an unconventional way. In conjunction with the Puerto Rican Bar Association of New York, BBA donated money to the Puerto Rican Bar Association in Puerto Rico to use for a new generator when they didn’t have power.

BBA also recently partnered with the Office of Court Administration to host a program about elder law abuse, which was organized by Anthony Lamberti and Judge Deborah A. Kaplan. More than 120 people attended.

“This is our biggest way to raise money for the foundation,” Richter said. “After the dinner we sit down, look at the numbers and make a budget for all of these programs and ways we can give back. The more successful our dinner is the more we can give.”

Richter is hoping for a successful dinner this year because she already has plans for a big start in 2018.

“The bar association was such a big part of my early career and we want to have a successful dinner so that we can continue some of the programs that have made this a successful association,” Richter said. “Hopefully that we can continue to expand and attract new members, particularly younger people. We want them to feel included and to have them understand that a bar association is a living, breathing entity and everything they do will contribute to the future.”

 


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