Kim Koopersmith’s Rise to Chairperson Profiled by Bloomberg

Kim Koopersmith, Akin Gump’s new chairperson and the first woman to fill that role in the firm’s history, was recently profiled by Bloomberg.  She previously had served as the firm’s U.S. managing partner for five years.

Koopersmith described how she began at the firm nearly 20 years ago working a reduced week in order to be able to raise her young daughters, noting “[O]ver the course of my career I found ways to distinguish my value and I think even when I was working part time, that had its own attribute of distinguishing value because the firm was anxious to see a reduced work arrangement that was successful.”  (Among the initiatives that she has spearheaded at Akin Gump is the Reduced Workload Policy, which allows attorneys to work significantly reduced schedules to fulfill parenting and family care responsibilities while remaining eligible for partnership and counsel promotion.)

She also discusses how senior members of Akin Gump saw in her the ability to lead the firm years before that even became a possibility, and how that recognition, as well as the influence of her family in her upbringing, brought her to the position she occupies today.