I am honored and excited to serve as President of the New York Women’s Bar Association for 2025-2026.  I know I stand on the shoulders of the strong women who founded and led our organization, shaping it into the formidable force that it is today.

I thank our outgoing President, Jocelyn Jacobson, and the 2024-2025 Officers, Board, Advisory and committee chairs who devoted themselves to planning the myriad events, CLEs and programs that benefit our members. These include our signature annual events: our flawlessly executed Annual Awards and Installation Dinner, Membership Reception and Judiciary Reception, for which we have Virginia LoPreto, Jennifer Brown DeBlasi, Olivia Lee and Elizabeth Bass to thank, and the award-winning Martha (Meg) E. Gifford Summer Program – “What It’s REALLY Like to Practice Law as a Woman,” organized by Hon. Lisa A. Sokoloff, Hon. Crystal Villasenor, Ernestine Mings, and Melissa Glassman.

This past year, we carried on the work of projects that originated within our organization, including the city-wide Guardianship Diversity Initiative, conceived by Judge Sokoloff and administered with the assistance of our Elder Law & Disabilities Committee, which aims to increase the diversity of candidates for court appointments in guardianship matters; and the Legacy Project — always smoothly run by the Hon. Judith Gische and Fran Hoffinger — which documents and preserves NYWBA history through videotaped interviews of NYWBA pioneers and past leaders.

We are so grateful for the tireless behind-the-scenes labor of love that keeps the NYWBA operating so smoothly, including  the critical work of our Treasurer, Judy White; Vivian Drohan, Membership Committee chair; Amy Goldsmith, CLE Committee chair; Olivia Sohmer, Sara Mahoney, and Isiris Isaac, Newsletter Committee co-chairs; our new executive director team, skillfully led by Sarah Kuhns; and Beth Bryson, who always rolls up her sleeves and pitches in when needed.

We stand at a critical juncture.  Roe v. Wade has been overturned and other legal precedent critical to the protection of women and other vulnerable groups is at risk of suffering the same fate. Lawyers, judges and the very institutions our democracy was built on are attacked and undermined.  The very premise upon which our organization was founded — that there is value to a bar association focused on women and women lawyers — is under attack.

Last year, we celebrated a historic moment: the New York State legislature’s passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, the result of years of advocacy by our umbrella organization, the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York of which we are a founding chapter. This past May Day, I joined a group of NYWBA members and hundreds of other attorneys in Foley Square for a Rally for the Rule of Law, which our long-standing Director Dawn Cardi helped organize, where we brandished our pocket constitutions and reaffirmed our attorneys’ oath as members of the Bar in protest of the federal administration undermining of the rule of law.

There is much work to be done to further our mission — the fair and equal administration of justice and the advancement of women in our profession and society. In the year ahead, we will continue to uphold and reaffirm the basic principles our organization holds dear: the rule of law, equal justice for all, judicial independence and women’s rights — which include our bodily autonomy.

We will continue to defend and protect our members’ abilities to do their jobs as lawyers and judges, independently and without fear of reprisal.

We will continue to defend and fight for the rights and well-being of women, children, members of the LGBTQIA+ communities and other vulnerable people.

We will continue to value and promote diversity, instead of treating it as a threat; we will build community and work and stand with our sister affinity bars.

I hope you will join us at our Annual Dinner on June 9th as we take a breath, celebrate our 90th anniversary and the significant progress we have made since our inception, and fortify ourselves to take on the growing challenges ahead. I hope you will stay with us afterward, and work alongside us.

There is much work to be done. Together, we are more than up to the task.

Lissett Costa Ferreira