MI Tapestry

Mackrell International
Women’s Group celebrate
International Women’s
Day by creating their own
tapestry of women who
made a difference in their
lifetime and beyond.

Laura Sundberg of
Zimmerman Kiser
Sutcliffe, Orlando, USA
introduces us to Maggie
Lena Walker
Maggie Lena Walker
Maggie Lena Walker played an important role in making Richmond the cradle of
black capitalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Walker is best known as
the first black woman bank president in the United States. She organized and led
the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank from its founding in 1903 to her death in 1934. The
bank was part of her vision for the Independent Order of St. Luke, a secret society
founded in the 1850s by a free woman of color. The IOSL and St. Luke Bank formed
the foundation of a financial powerhouse that, at its height in the 1920s, provided
financial services to 100,000 members and others in more than 20 states. Before the
Great Depression, the IOSL was arguably the largest employer of professional, whitecollar
black women in the country. Walker battled public misfortune and private pain
in a life lived in the public eye. In 2017, the city of Richmond dedicated a memorial
statue of Walker on Broad Street. Walker’s memory endures as a staunch crusader for
black economic and political rights, especially for black women.
Taken from “9 Women From American History You Should Know, According to
Historians” – Olivia V. Waxman, Time Magazine, March 6, 2020

Janet Russell of Scott
Venturo Rudakoff
LLP, Calgary, Canada
introduces us to Cindy
Blackstock
Cindy Blackstock
Cindy Blackstock, McGill University professor, PhD. In Social Work and activist for
indigenous children, led a campaign to obtain equal treatment for indigenous
children in the federal child welfare network in Canada for years. Her efforts led to a
successful result before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2016. The Canadian
Government appealed but has now reach a historic settlement in the past few weeks
which will see improved services and funding for indigenous child welfare as well as
damages for affected persons.
For more on her accomplishments: https://www.macleans.ca/society/cindyblackstock-a-relentless-champion-for-indigenous-childrens-rights/

Nichola Reece-Burton
of James Berry &
Associates Legal
Consultants, Dubai, UAE
introduces us to Mary
Prior Q.C.
Mary Prior Q.C.
Mary Prior QC is the daughter of a coal miner and a factory worker. Her family
struggled financially and she had free school meals and uniforms and was brought
up living on a council estate. No one in her family had A-levels and she had very
few books at home. The main aim of her life at 16 was to not get pregnant, simply
because so many of her friends had babies. They were wonderful people, but she
knew she didn’t have that capability. After school she worked two jobs whilst
studying law at a polytechnic, following which she worked as a clerk at a Magistrates’
Court. After six years they paid for her to qualify and she was incredibly fortunate to
gain a sponsored pupillage with the Crown Prosecution Service.
Six years later she took voluntary redundancy and, with a two-year-old, a one-yearold
and a baby, took the opportunity to apply to chambers. She received one offer in
a small set of chambers in Wolverhampton. Thirty years later she is a QC, a Recorder
in the Crown Court, a Tier 1 leading silk in the Legal 500 and, this year, she has the
honour of being awarded Woman of the Year in the Women in Law Awards.

Mary Prior Q.C.
A mother of five boys, Mary’s vision is one of social mobility, of encouraging and
supporting those from non-traditional backgrounds, be that by gender, wealth, race
or other, to know that they too are welcome and have a place at the Bar. Mary also
takes part in outreach work to schools and universities including participating in
shadowing programmes designed to increase understanding of the court system
and to encourage, inspire, enable and do whatever she can for the next generation
of lawyers. She is a Bar Council Social Mobility Advocate and Chair of the Midland
Circuit Social Mobility Programme, and recently became a Patron of Bringing [Dis]
Ability to the Bar.
In relation to her particular practice area, which often involves highly sensitive
criminal cases and being the voice of the downtrodden, she says: ‘For me what gives
me joy is permitting vulnerable people to be heard, it is a difficult role, but I have so
much joy from it.’
Taken from “A conversation with Recorder Mary Prior QC” – Courts and Tribunals
Judiciary News 21 May 2021; “Making it count: Mary Prior QC” - Counsel Magazine 3
June 2021

Silvia Hernández of
Santiago Mediano
Abogados, Madrid,
Spain, introduces us to
Clara Campoamor
Clara Campoamor
Clara Campoamor, born in Madrid in 1888, was a Spanish lawyer, politician, writer,
and feminist at the beginning of 20th century.
She has been considered the mother of the Spanish feminist movement. She
worked to improve conditions for women and fought for the equality of women’s
rights.
She defended women’s suffrage, the equality of children born out of marriage,
and the abolition of prostitution, and also promoted the first divorce law in Spain.
In the 1931 general elections, she became one of the first three women elected
to the Spanish Congress, where she was part of the team of 21 members who
drafted the Constitution of the Spanish Republic, in which she defended the
establishment of non-discrimination on the basis of sex, the legal status of
illegitimate children, divorce and universal suffrage.
Clara Campoamor entered history as the main architect of the inclusion of
women’s suffrage in Spain, included in the Constitution approved in 1931, which

Clara Campoamor
in its article 36 established that “Citizens of either sex, over 23 years of age, shall
have the same electoral rights as determined by law”. Thanks to her, Spanish
women over 23 years old were able to vote for the first time in the general
elections of 1933.
She was also one of the first women to join the Madrid Bar Association and the
first woman to appear before the Supreme Court.
Clara also founded her own law firm and defended famous divorce cases.
The greatness of Clara Campoamor lies in the fact that, from her humble origins
and having been born in a male social environment, she became a brilliant lawyer
and recognized political leader. Her life has been remembered as that of a brave
and fighting woman, who did not hesitate to devote all her efforts to defend the
cause in which she fervently believed.
For more on her accomplishments:
www.salientwomen.com/2020/06/08/biography-of-clara-campoamor-spanishpolitician
Clara Campoamor - Wikipedia

Ulrike Dörrie of
SLB Law, Munich,
Germany introduces us
to Renate Künast
Renate Künast
Hateposts - Victory in the Battle of Right of Personality vs. Freedom of Expression
Renate Elly Künast is a German politician and lawyer. She has been a member of
the German Parliament (Bundestag) since 2002. She was Federal Minister of Food,
Agriculture and Consumer Protection from 2002 to 2005 and Chair of her party’s
parliamentary group „Bündnis 90/Die Grünen“ in the parliament from 2005 to
2013. From 2014 to January 2018, she was Chair of the parliament’s Legal Affairs
Committee.
In the political debate on how to deal with and combat false comments, so-called
fake news, especially in social networks such as Facebook, Künast was the first to
file a criminal complaint because of a false comment and continued to fight for
the protection of personality rights in the internet with legal means.
Copyright Laurence Chaperon
The Federal Constitutional Court, in a decision published at the beginning of
February 2022, has overturned the decisions of the Berlin Regional Court and
the Berlin Appelate Court (Kammergericht), insofar as they had been to Künast’s
disadvantage, and referred the case back to the Kammergericht for a new
decision. Az. 1 BvR 1073/20

Renate Künast
The courts of first instance had not weighed the matter correctly, the
Constitutional Court now criticised. Even if there is a reference to a public debate,
not everything is allowed. It explicitly points out that politicians do not have to
put up with everything. It cannot be expected that someone will commit himself
to state and society if he is not sufficiently protected. Since the courts of instance
had not placed themselves before Künast, her right of personality had been
violated.
Künast states: A good day for democracy. The Constitutional Court protects the
personal rights of those who engage. This means writing of legal history in the
digital age. Because this judgement will have an impact on social media and also
on future European law.
In case you are interested in more details ……
In 2019, Künast, supported by the non-governmental organisation HateAid,
sued Facebook for serious attacks against her by various Facebook users. The
lawsuit sought information about the identity of the users in question. The
Berlin Regional Court dismissed the lawsuit. The Regional Court then amended
its decision to the effect that in six of the 22 cases criminal insults were to be
assumed. The Berlin Appellate Court (Kammergericht Berlin), found that a further
six commentaries had a massive defamatory content.

Renate Künast
However the remaining ten statements although to be classified as serious
defamatory descriptions and disparagement (especially by taking advantage of
the anonymity on the internet showing a brutalisation and even a radicalisation
of social discourse)in the opinion of the court did not cross the threshold to the
criminal offence of insult according to § 185 of the German Criminal Code had
not been crossed.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renate_Künast
https://www.renate-kuenast.de/
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/kuenast-klage-101.html

Lourdes Sánchez Ridge
of Pietragallo Gordon
Alfano Bosick & Raspanti
LLP, Pittsburgh, USA
introduces us to Janet
Reno, 78th Attorney
General of the United
States
Janet Reno
Janet Reno was the first woman to serve as United States Attorney General. She
was appointed by President Bill Clinton and served from 1993 until 2001. During
her tenure she faced many challenges and political controversies. Despite the
controversies, Ms. Reno maintained her dignity, professionalism, and sense
of ethics without succumbing to political pressures. Only one year after she
was appointed, Ms. Reno nominated an independent special prosecutor to
investigate the very same president who appointed her, President Clinton, in the
Whitewater investigation.
Prior to being appointed, Ms. Reno was the first woman to serve as Miami-Dade
County State Attorney from 1978 until 2003. During the 1980 Miami, Florida
was facing a dangerous drug war and crime was rampant. Ms. Reno, through
her tough, yet compassionate, stance on crime, managed to return Miami-Dade
County to a peaceful city. She instituted a drug court, which has been replicated
around the country and developed policies protecting women from domestic
violence. She did this and more while inculcating ethics into her prosecutors.

Binah Yeung
of Cairncross &
Hempelmann P.S.,
Seattle, USA introduces
us to Gretta Wong
Grant
Gretta Wong Grant
In autumn 1946, Gretta Jean Wong was called to the bar in Toronto. Chinese
immigrants first began to arrive in Canada in 1858, but it wasn’t until nearly a
hundred years later were any admitted to practice law. Shortly after Kew Dock Yip
(who was involved in repealing the Chinese Immigration Act) was called to the
bar, Gretta Wong Grant became the first Chinese Canadian woman to become a
qualified lawyer in Canada. She did so during a time of racial violence and anti-
Chinese sentiment in the country.
Wong was born on July 31, 1921 to father Lem Wong, who immigrated to Canada
in 1896, and mother Toye Chin, who landed in 1911. The family ran a successful
restaurant in London, Ontario, for many years. She was the former Regional
Director of the Ontario Legal Aid Plan and the former Chair of the City of London’s
Race Relations Committee. Grant was also the past President of Chinese Canadian
National Council, London Chapter.
“Never feel that you’re going to have any discrimination,” she advises younger
Chinese Canadians during an interview with Road to Justice. “You never worry,

Gretta Wong Grant
you just go ahead and do your best, and as my father said, then you add a little
extra.”
Sources:
http://www.roadtojustice.ca/first-lawyers/gretta-wong-grant
https://www.asiancanadianwiki.org/w/Gretta_Wong_Grant
https://www.constancebackhouse.ca/fileadmin/publicationlist/
GrettaWongGrant.pdf

Alison Green of
Mackrell. Solicitors
London England
introduces us to Brenda
Hale, Baroness Hale of
Richmond
Brenda Hale, Baroness Hale of Richmond
Baroness Hale has been a pioneer throughout her career, from becoming the
first, and only, woman to be Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, to rising to the top of the
British judiciary as President of the Supreme Court – becoming the third person,
and first woman, to serve in this prestigious role.
With a background in the Family Law Courts – being one of the key people
behind the Children Act 1989 – Baroness Hale has overseen some landmark
decisions including ruling that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s proroguing of
parliament over Brexit was unlawful.
She continues to champion for inclusivity in the world of law and the judiciary,
previously calling for a more balanced gender representation within the UK’s
highest court and swifter progress promoting those from minority ethnic
backgrounds, and with “less privileged lives”.

Jacqueline Teo of
Wee Swee Teow LLP,
Singapore introduces us
to Elizabeth Choy
Elizabeth Choy
Elizabeth Choy, war heroine, politician and teacher. She is best known as a war
heroine during the Japanese occupation in Singapore where she had risked her
life smuggling food and medicine supplies to British prisoners of war. She also
became the first and only woman member of the Legislative Council in 1949 and
was the founder of the Singapore School for the Blind.
For more on her accomplishments: Elizabeth Choy - Singapore Women’s Hall of
Fame - https://www.swhf.sg/?s=choy

Milunka Savic
Sanela Trzin of Christodoulos G Vassiliades & Co.
LLC, Cyprus introduces us to Milunka Savic and
Mileva Maric
It was hard to choose between two women who inspired me. One standing for
courage and the other for wisdom. Depending what I am lacking or need at a
certain point in my life I am re-reading their biographies and gain my strength
and motivation from it.
Mileva Maric
They were first introduced to me by my father who I guess wanted to instill in
me from a young age and while we were going through the war that even as a
woman, I need to be courageous and that women can have this courage, even
at much more difficult times than what we were facing at the time in the 90s.
Indirectly, he also made sure that I develop a passion for history.
When it comes to wisdom his lesson was such that even if a woman is in the
shadow of a great man, in this case possibly the greatest minds of all or in a man’s
world she can excel and break barriers which are imposed either by the time in
which we live, the culture, environment or similar.

Milunka Savic
Milunka Savic
Courage for me is Milunka Savic – who possibly no one heard of or very few and
if, it would only be historians. She is to this date the most decorated woman in
warfare.
Born - 28 June 1892 in Kingdom of Serbia
Awards:
• Order of the Star of Karađorđe
• Légion d’Honneur (twice)
• Russian Cross of St. George
• Miloš Obilić medal
• Croix de Guerre with gold palm
• British medal of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael
The “Serbian Mulan” – a heroine of the Balkan Wars and World War I, a sergeant
in the Second Regiment “Knjaz Mihailo“, had a life reminiscent of a movie script.
Milunka enlisted, under a male name, at one of the mobilization points in
Belgrade to go to the battlefield. She fought dressed as a man in the Balkan Wars
for almost a year, until she was wounded at the Battle of Bregalnica, when the
medical staff discovered her true gender.

Milunka Savic
After a very brief time of peace, World War I started and Milunka re-enlisted as
a volunteer. She was a member of the “Iron Regiment“ and a sergeant in the
elite Second Regiment of the Serbian Army “Knjaz Mihailo“. After the Battle of
Kolubara, where she also proved herself an excellent bomber, she was decorated
with two French Legions of Honour and a “Miloš Obilić“ medal and is the only
woman decorated with the French Croix du Guerre with the Golden Palm. As she
was a woman of immeasurable courage and military ability and, at the same time,
the woman with most decorations in the history of warfare, the French called
Milunka Savic “Serbian Joan of Arc“.
She was demobilised in 1919, and turned down an offer to move to France, where
she was eligible to collect a comfortable French army pension. Instead, she chose
to live in Belgrade and found work as a postal worker. In 1923, she married Veljko
Gligorijević, whom she met in Mostar, and divorced immediately after the birth
of their daughter Milena. She also adopted three other daughters. In the interwar
period, Milunka was largely forgotten by the general public. She worked several
menial jobs up to 1927, after which she had steady employment as a cleaning
lady in the State Mortgage Bank. Eight years later, she was promoted to cleaning
the offices of the general manager.
During the German occupation of Serbia in World War II, Milunka refused

Milunka Savic
to attend a banquet organised by Milan Nedić, which was to be attended
by German generals and officers. She was arrested and taken to Banjica
concentration camp, where she was imprisoned for ten months.
In 1945, she was given a state pension, and continued to live in her house
in Belgrade’s Voždovac neighbourhood. By the late 1950s her daughter was
hospitalized, and she was living in a crumbling house in Voždovac with her
three adopted children: Milka, a forgotten child from the railway station in
Stalac; Radmila-Višnja; and Zorka, a fatherless girl from Dalmatia. Later, when
she attended the jubilee celebrations wearing her military medals, other military
officers spoke with her and heard of her courageous actions. News spread and
at last she gained recognition. In 1972, public pressure and a newspaper article
highlighting her difficult housing and financial situation led to her being given a
small apartment by the Belgrade City Assembly.
She died in Belgrade on October 5 1973, aged 85, and was buried in Belgrade
New Cemetery.

Mileva Maric
Mileva Maric
Wisdom stands for - Mileva Maric, first wife of Albert Einstein
Born in 1875 in Titel, Vojvodina, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and
now a province of Serbia, Marić endured a shaky road as a girl wishing to study
physics because education beyond four years of elementary school was reserved
for men only. Seeing her potential, her father, Milos, sent her across the border
where girls had the same educational rights as boys. Milos petitioned for Marić to
be accepted into the all-male Royal Classical Gymnasium. She was accepted and
became one of the first women to sit in a high school physics class alongside her
male peers. At the time, physics had not produced many female names.
Eventually, she made it to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich where she was,
quite unsurprisingly, the only woman in her class. Her presence at the university
was unusual. In fact, it was here that she met her future husband, Einstein.
She would have had to have been extraordinarily talented to overcome the
restrictions on the admission of women. She and Einstein became close
friends quite soon. In October Marić went to Heidelberg to study at Heidelberg

Mileva Maric
University for the winter semester 1897/98, attending physics and mathematics
lectures as an auditor. She rejoined the Zurich Polytechnic in April 1898.
Marić’s academic career was disrupted in 1901 when she became pregnant by
Einstein.
The question whether (and if so, to what extent) Marić contributed to Albert
Einstein’s early work, and to the Annus Mirabilis Papers in particular, is a subject
of debate. Many historians of physics argue that she made no significant scientific
contribution, while others suggest that she was a supportive companion in science
and may have helped him materially in his research, and there is also a possibility of
them developing the scientific concepts together when they were still students.
In 2005, Marić was honoured in Zürich by the ETH and the Gesellschaft zu
Fraumünster. A memorial plaque was unveiled on her former residence in Zürich,
the house Huttenstrasse 62, in her memory. In the same year a bust was placed in
her high-school town, Sremska Mitrovica. Another bust is located on the campus
of the University of Novi Sad. A high school in her birthplace of Titel is named
after her. Sixty years after her death, a memorial plate was placed on the house of
the former clinic in Zürich where she died. In June 2009 a memorial gravestone
was dedicated to her at the Nordheim-Cemetery in Zürich where she rests.

Ann Zucker of
Carmody Torrance
Sandak & Hennessey
LLP, Connecticut, USA
introduces us to Sandra
Day O’Connor
Sandra Day O’Connor
In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor joined the US Supreme Court as an appointee of
President Ronald Regan. She was the first female court justice.
Justice O’Connor grew up on her family’s Texas ranch, the Lazy B, and that
upbringing helped her develop the grit and practicality required for her
remarkable achievements She excelled at academics and graduated as the
president of her senior class at Stanford University, and third in her class at
Stanford law school. Despite difficulty in finding jobs as a lawyer early in her
career, she became a state legislator and state appellate court judge.
O’Connor served on the Supreme Court for nearly 25 years retiring in 2006 with a
reputation for being an independent legal thinker.

Elaine Lister of Mackrell
HQ introduces us to
Anne Williams - Mother,
and Activist
Anne Williams
Anne Williams was a mother of three, living in Formby, UK and working part-time in a
newsagents. Following the Hillsborough Football Stadium Disaster of 1989, in which
97 Liverpool Football Club fans died, and 766 were injured whilst attending a semifinal
football match in Sheffield, she became a prominent campaigner for justice for
the victims. Her son Kevin Williams, aged 15, was one of the 97 who died.
The Hillsborough Football Stadium Disaster occurred at a time when there had been
an element of football hooliganism within the sport - one measure introduced was to
construct caged stands called ‘pens’ for viewing where the fans could not access the
pitch, or other stands. On the day of the match a number of factors led to hundreds
of fans being allowed to enter just two pens in a very short space of time. Within
minutes, the fans at the front the pens, who had nowhere to escape to, were being
crushed to death. The disaster unfolded in front of the fans and national TV audiences.
In the days and years following the disaster the press and authorities were swift
to apportion part of the blame onto the Liverpool football fans. An initial inquiry
into the incident in 1991 resulted in a verdict of accidental death for the 97 victims.
Families rejected the findings, and fought to have the case re-opened. In 1997 it was
concluded that there was no justification for a new inquiry.

Anne Williams
Anne Williams continued to fight hard for a further 16 years for a second inquiry.
She levelled several legal attacks at the first Hillsborough inquest, questioning the
credibility of its findings. She formed a pressure group “Hope For Hillsborough”,
subsequently merging it into the “Hillsborough Justice Campaign”, eventually
becoming chair of the latter. Sadly, Anne died of cancer in 2013, but the campaign for
justice continued.
Judith Moritz, a journalist for the BBC, said that although Williams had no legal
training, to talk to her, one would have thought that she had trained for years.
28 years after the disaster, the second coroner’s inquests were finally held in 2016
and ruled that the supporters were unlawfully killed due to grossly negligent failures
by police and ambulance services to fulfil their duty of care. The inquests also found
that the design of the stadium contributed to the crush, and that supporters were not
to blame for the dangerous condition. In June 2017, six people were charged with
offences including manslaughter by gross negligence, misconduct in public office and
perverting the course of justice for their actions during and after the disaster.
Had Anne Williams remained silent in her grief it is questionable if the truth would
have ever emerged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Williams_(activist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster

Fiona Aura of Igeria
& Ngugi Advocates,
Nairobi, Kenya
introduces us to
Mekatilili Wa Menza
Mekatilili Wa Menza
As a Widow in patrilineal society in the 1800’s, this activist managed to mobilize
the Giriama People and fight for socio-cultural rights.
Mekatilili was a leader concerned with the erosion of the Giriama culture
through working with for the colonial administrators of the time. She believed
Westernisation left her people desolate and void.
She used her platform to gain large audience through her performance of
the kifudu dance: a dance that was reserved for funeral ceremonies. Mekatilili
performed it constantly from town to town, attracting a large following that
followed her wherever she went. She then performed ceremonies (with the help
of the traditional medicine man Wanje wa Mwadori Kola) where men and women
vowed never to cooperate with the colonial authorities in any way or form
This resistance of colonial influence later led to her arrest and exile to Nyanza,
miles away from her home and later on the confiscation of large tracts of land by
the colonialists.

Mekatilili Wa Menza
Her bravery in the face of such adversity, is a true inspiration. Especially in today’s
world where we are all on a worldwide stage and constantly bombarded by
opinions and influences. Staying true to one’s roots is more important than ever.
During Kenya’s 1980 feminist movement activists considered Menza to be a
symbol for the movement, as she was the first recorded Kenyan woman to
participate in a fight for social change
More on our Icon of choice:
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/mekatilili-wa-menza-the-story-of-thegiriama-wonder-woman/uQJiyBBzmBOAKg

Danielle Smith -
Women’s Initiative
Manager, and Maria
Ferro - Global Practice
Leader, both of Baker
Donelson, Nashville,
USA introduce us to
Linda Klein
Linda Klein
Linda Klein is a shareholder in the Atlanta office of the law firm of Baker Donelson
practicing in the Firm’s Construction and Business Litigation Groups.
As a former president of the American Bar Association (ABA), the largest
voluntary association of lawyers in the world, Klein’s leadership has made a
significant impact on the legal field.
Klein focused on many initiatives during her term, including improving Access
to Justice for veterans. She spearheaded the new ABA Veterans’ Legal Services
Initiative, which created comprehensive online resources to address veterans’
unique legal needs, and worked with law schools and bar associations to make
legal services available using new and under-employed lawyers, and with VA
medical facilities to promote legal check-ups for veterans.
As ABA president, she also represented the organization internationally by
traveling to Poland and Croatia and other more Western countries to discuss the
importance of the Rule of Law.
In addition to her leadership in the ABA, Klein was also elected the first woman

Linda Klein
president of the State Bar of Georgia in 1997. During her term as president of
the State Bar, she devised and executed the plan to benefit indigent victims of
domestic violence through the state’s first legislative appropriation for legal
services. Upon personally receiving many calls from low-income women seeking
help, she began a multi-pronged strategy which led to state funding for legal
services for victims of domestic violence. Every year since, the legislature has
appropriated the money
Her list of awards and honours is long and includes being named a 2014
Champion of Justice by Georgia Legal Services Program, for her service to GLSP
and its mission of providing access to justice and avenues out of poverty for lowincome
people all over Georgia.
For more on Linda’s accomplishments, you can visit her bio at https://www.
bakerdonelson.com/Linda-A-Klein