Hilarie Bass

Hilarie Bass is the Chair of the University Board of Trustees, a 65-member governing board of a $3.5B top-50 ranked private research university. She also services on the Board of U health, a $2B academic medical center of the university. Until December 2018, Bass was president of Greenberg Traurig, a leading global law firm with more than 2000 attorneys in 40 offices worldwide. She was simultaneously president of the American Bar Association. Bass is the President of the Bass Institute for Diversity & Inclusion. She is a global evangelist for gender parity and an outspoken advocate for expanding the ranks of women leaders at corporations, nonprofits, and other institutions. In her role at the Institute, she has spoken around the world on issues of gender parity, women’s leadership, and the retention and elevation of women in the corporate context. She is also one of the most recognized attorneys in the United States, having served as co-president of the international law firm Greenberg Traurig and as president of the American Bar Association (ABA).

Throughout her law career, Bass fought for greater participation for women in the top ranks of law firms. At Greenberg Traurig, in addition to serving asco-president, she previously headed the firm’s 600-member litigation department for eight years and founded and chaired its Women’s Initiative. At the ABA, the world’s largest voluntary professional organization with more than 400,000members, Bass traveled the world speaking on behalf of the ABA about the insidious damage of implicit bias in the legal profession and the importance of retaining and promoting female leaders. She also led the creation of a task forceat the ABA on implicit bias in the justice system. Bass currently serves as Chair of the University of Miami Board of Trustees. She also serves as Chair of the ABA’s Rule of Law Initiative, which oversees over $40M in grant programs operating in over 40 countries around the world.