HONOREE

Ashley Coleman

Assistant General Counsel, Litigation & Employment
Chipotle Mexican Grill
Chapman University, Fowler School of Law

Ashley Coleman currently serves as assistant general counsel of litigation & employment at Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., overseeing labor and employment compliance and litigation matters for nearly 100,000 employees. Since April 2019, she has managed Chipotle’s litigation, labor and employment compliance, governmental audits, agency charges, and claims management, among other duties.

Coleman has successfully managed her responsibilities despite Chipotle’s substantial employee growth, pandemic-related staffing and safety challenges, and the enormous task of moving all employment-related legal tasks in-house. She has gained the trust of everyone she works with including Chipotle’s executive leadership team, its people experience department, and its operations leaders in the field.

Coleman’s notable successes include: 1) moving labor and employment compliance and litigation management in-house at Chipotle, 2) leading the resolution of a sizable docket of complex, high-exposure class action litigation, 3) spearheading initiatives to improve Chipotle’s legal support and partnership with human resources for its local management teams, and 4) partnering with internal clients to implement industry-leading sick leave and other benefits throughout the pandemic.

She is also an advocate for her internal client and leads the charge to do more for Chipotle’s employees than the legal minimum. Her work on the Chipotle COVID-19 Task Force Team is substantive, having participated in leading efforts to grant assistance pay to eligible restaurant employees, providing unemployment benefits advice and assistance, and creating and implementing a paid leave program for employees impacted by COVID-19 that went above and beyond any legal requirements. Additionally, Coleman championed Chipotle’s Pledge to Drive Change, a company initiative to support the Black community, create a more equal society, and further Chipotle’s goals of diversity, equity and inclusion.

At just 39 years old, Coleman has emerged as a transformational leader who has driven institutional change and compliance through team building and improved collaboration between legal, human resources, operations, and other functions.

PUBLIC COMPANY: OVER 5000 EMPLOYEES FINALISTS

Elizabeth Eckhardt Atlee

Dep. GC, Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer
CBRE
USC Gould School of Law

Liz Atlee was determined to become a lawyer from an early age, supporting herself through undergrad at Yale and law school at USC Gould. She has been practicing for more than 25 years, first at Keesal, Young and Logan. She ultimately came to CBRE, where she was head of global litigation for five years before becoming chief ethics & compliance officer in 2019.

At CBRE, Atlee has led and managed attorneys globally, handling some of the company’s largest cases. She is responsible for the firm’s anti-corruption, anti-bribery and other financial integrity issues, investigations, data privacy, training, and ethical behavior. She leads a team of professionals globally through all of these issues, while acting as a trusted advisor to senior management. In collaboration with senior management, internal business people, and key external stakeholders, Atlee helps CBRE chart the course of business consistent with its values of respect, integrity, service and excellence.

Hadiss Sisson

Sr. Director, Sr. Attorney–Product, Marketing, Lead Attorney–Global eCommerce and Small Business
Dun & Bradstreet
Southwestern Law School

Hadiss Sisson is not your typical in-house attorney or general counsel. She is a legal business affairs partner, bridging the traditional gap between sales, product and marketing, bringing legal expertise to each function in a partner-like way.

Sisson started her career in entertainment law. From there, she entered the world of data, product, and technology at Dun & Bradstreet, where she has been thriving for the past 10 years working directly with product, technology, and marketing teams to create and launch products that help small businesses. As the lead small business attorney for Dun & Bradstreet, Sisson is responsible for product parity, messaging, and enablement and works diligently to ensure that all teams are serving the end customer. During the pandemic, she was instrumental in helping to launch new emergency solutions to support over 2.4 million small businesses in the United States.

Tiffany Renee Thomas

Senior Counsel–Employment Law
Genentech
UC Berkeley School of Law

Tiffany Renee Thomas is an experienced employment law attorney and HR professional whose career serves as an example of both excellence and service. Throughout her law firm career, she maintained a thriving pro bono practice that provided legal services to organizations such as the African American Art and Culture Complex, Family Support Services, and the Black Coalition on AIDS.

In March of 2020, Thomas joined Genentech’s legal department as senior counsel — employment law. In the last two years, she has led important aspects of the company’s COVID-19 practices, policy development, and compliance programs and acted as the lead legal advisor to Genentech’s sites, which are home to the majority of the company’s essential workers throughout the pandemic. She has also served as legal advisor for the company’s Chief Diversity Office, where she has used her legal and diversity and inclusion background to inform the CDO’s programming and initiatives.