Phil Wilson: [00:00:10]
Hey everyone! We just finished recording another Left of Boom episode with an attorney from Seyfarth, Dawn Soloway. Dawn has a super interesting background, and she heads up Seyfarth’s Cultural Flashpoints Task Force, which is a really interesting group, helping employers navigate these incredibly tumultuous times that we have. We talk about things like the vaccine mandates, DEI, that we’ve got a big presidential election coming up. And a lot of the conflicts that occur at work center around some of these cultural flashpoints. She gives some really great practical tips on how employers can navigate some of these difficult times. We hit some of our favorite stuff to do in Boston. It’s a great episode. next Left of Boom Show with Dawn Reddy Solowey. Enjoy.

Michael VanDervort: [00:01:02]
Good morning. It’s Michael VanDervort, and this is another episode of The Left of Boom Show. Today we’re going to pivot off the presidential debate from a couple of nights ago and talk about burning issues.

Phil Wilson: [00:01:14]
Wait! There was a debate a couple of nights ago. I missed it.

Michael VanDervort: [00:01:19]
I didn’t even ask you if you watched it. I actually did watch it and it was amazing. The divisiveness in the country, cultural flashpoints, lots of people with strong opinions that differ and cause consternation and discord in the workplace. And we have somebody here who specializes in helping employers deal with that today. And that’s our guest, Dawn Reddy Solowey. Dawn, welcome to Left the Boom Show. How are you?

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:01:46]
Thanks so much. I’m delighted to be here.

Phil Wilson: [00:01:49]
Yeah. Hi, Dawn. It’s great to have you.

Michael VanDervort: [00:01:50]
We’re glad to have you. Go ahead, Phil. Sorry.

Phil Wilson: [00:01:53]
I just said it’s great to have her on the show.

Michael VanDervort: [00:01:55]
So, Dawn, I always start out just by basically rather than reading a bio and all the stuff, you do litigation, you do a lot of religious accommodation, a lot of different things. But why don’t you tell us about yourself and your bio and what you do, and then we’ll jump into the topic of the day?

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:02:12]
Absolutely. Thanks. So I am Dawn Reddy Solowey. I am a partner at Seyfarth Shaw in our Boston office in the Labor and Employment group. So, I am an employment litigator and counselor for clients all around the country. I do have specialized expertise in trials and appeals, as well as religious accommodation and discrimination. And I am the co-chair of our Cultural Flashpoints Task Force.

Michael VanDervort: [00:02:43]
Which is going to be the subject of a good chunk of our conversation today. Before we go down that rabbit hole however, we always like to start out our show with a question that comes out of the leadership work that Phil has done in the past and some of his books on approachability, and that is, could you share with us a person or persons that may have influenced you and mentored you through your career at a time maybe when they believed in you more than you believed in yourself or that brought you some special aspect that helped you be successful.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:03:21]
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m thinking of female mentors in the jury trial space because there are not as many women who try cases as there are men. And I think the first person I can think of is when I was in high school, I did an internship at the Legal Services Clinic in Worcester, Massachusetts, where I grew up, and that was really my first exposure to law, I think I was 16, and to the courtroom. And I got to go to court every day with this Legal Services attorney, who was a woman and was just absolutely blown away by the fact that this was her job and that she got to do this as her work.

[00:04:07]
And she was very encouraging about how I had all kinds of questions about how you get trained to be able to do this. So, I would say her for sure. And then at my original first law firm out of law school, Judy Maloney, who some people in Boston may know. She’s a trial lawyer legend here. And she was a real mentor to me around courtroom practice. We tried cases together when I was a very junior associate, and I learned a lot from her.

[00:04:43]
And then my final one would be a Seyfarth lawyer named Lynn Cappleman, who is the chair of our national trial team and an incredibly gifted trial lawyer. We’ve tried lots of cases together, and I’ve just learned so much from her. So, those would be my choices. And I certainly try to encourage younger women in the firm to pursue trial work and be a mentor myself to those.

Phil Wilson: [00:05:10]
That legal services work is so challenging and so important. My roommate my third year of law school, that’s what he went into when he got out of law school. I’m not sure that I would have been inspired to go into law watching a lot of those cases, but that is some of the most important legal work that is done.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:05:40]
Absolutely. And I went on in college to volunteer at Greater Boston Legal Services for that same reason. Incredibly important work. And it’s still an organization that I support when I can.

Phil Wilson: [00:05:52]
Cool. So, mentoring other lawyers. Just maybe just a quick tip or two. What do you do to encourage and grow young talent?

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:06:06]
Yeah, it’s a great question. So, we have a program at Seyfarth called the Trial Advocacy Institute that trains associates in trial practice. And I encourage all of our associates to take part in that, but particularly some of the women who may not have thought of themselves as potential trial lawyers. And last year in Chicago, we hosted a full-blown mock trial where senior members of the trial team mentored individual teams, and we had a full mock trial with judges.

[00:06:41]
And then practice tips. And it was a lot of fun. And I think we all learned a lot. I know I certainly learned a lot from the other mentors to the other teams. And so, that’s been a great program, and I think a great way to encourage kind of the next generation of trial lawyers here at Seyfarth.

Phil Wilson: [00:07:01]
Cool.

Michael VanDervort: [00:07:02]
Nice. When I was an undergrad student, I aspired to go to law school. I never did, but I did an internship at a landlord-tenant legal aid clinic in the city of Detroit. The court rate of deciding in favor of landlords was like 94% or something. And most of the time the law is on their side. But I had a case- and I did intake work. And I was writing up cases. And I stupidly and naively, because I was not a law student at the time, took a case in and walked down the hall, and filed a motion on behalf of the client for a consent decree to contest the consent decree.

[00:07:43]
And then I went and told the director of the clinic that I had filed this motion. And he’s like, ‘What?’ Because you had to be a law student, right? I’m like, well, I did all the work, you know. And he goes, ‘Oh, crap.’ So he goes running down the hall and he has to go down and re-enter everything. But he comes back and says, you did a great job on that, actually. I was like, well, I’m sorry, I didn’t know i couldn’t, and I wasn’t empowered to do it.

Phil Wilson: [00:08:06]
That was awesome. Except for the malpractice part.

Michael VanDervort: [00:08:09]
All except for the part where you’re about to violate our very operational reason. Like I said, I was naive and passionate about helping this lady. It was a big deal. Anyway, well, thanks for sharing that. So, I was thinking about the litigation piece because it’s not a specialty. We talked to a lot of employment lawyers. But in labor law, which is a bit different from the area of employment law that you practice on a regular basis, we don’t go to litigation so much. There are obviously board charges and stuff.

[00:08:43]
So, maybe just take us down how do you help clients with litigation? Is it better? Can you just walk us through some of the high-level stuff there for a second, since that’s an area that we don’t touch on a lot with our listeners?

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:09:01]
Sure. Yeah. In the employment space, cases typically start at the charge stage, at the EEOC or a state equivalent agency. And then from there, often we’ll proceed to either federal or state court. And so, Seyfarth does the full gamut of either defending those charges, defending single-plaintiff cases in state and federal court as well as class actions, for example, in the wage and hour space in, in both state and federal court. So, it’s a wide range of litigation that we practice.

Michael VanDervort: [00:09:40]
You’ve had a big jump up out of the pandemic in vaccination cases and religious accommodation stuff. That spawned not necessarily new, but a whole new angle on that. Right?

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:09:54]
Absolutely. So, I’ve long had expertise in religious accommodation and discrimination, but I always say that it used to be a very sleepy little area of the law where occasionally somebody would want to wear a yarmulke to work or need a break for prayer or a Sunday off for worship. And then in 2021, when the pandemic was on full display, many of our clients adopted mandatory vaccination policies and saw a huge surge of requests for religious exemption from those vaccination policies. So, we had clients that might have 100 or 1000, In 10,000 25,000 requests for religious exemption, which is way beyond anything that they were able to handle in many cases internally with their existing HR teams.

[00:10:53]
And so, we stood up in real-time. This was a 24-over-seven process back in 2021 of helping clients to process all of those requests for accommodation, religious and medical accommodation, and had to really design innovative processes to manage that number of requests and make sure that each one was individually reviewed and according to best practices. And then not too long after that, we started to see litigation arising out of those denials where an employee was denied an exemption request and in some cases was either put on leave or terminated.

[00:11:39]
Many of those employees filed suits and those suits, believe it or not, are still coming in at a fairly rapid clip. And many of them are still in litigation that were filed back in 2021 or 2022. Seyfarth is litigating those cases all around the nation.

Michael VanDervort: [00:11:59]
It’s crazy that it takes so long. You said you stood up in real-time, so there was a vaccination- You guys use this task force idea, which fascinates me because I haven’t seen other law firms do it. I saw that you were involved in one that was involved around vaccinations and accommodations. And then in the last year or two, you’ve also pivoted to cultural flashpoints task force that we’re going to talk about. So, let’s go there. First of all, talk about like why you took the approach you did with the task force and what that looks like, and then what the issues are. And we’ll go down that rabbit hole.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:12:44]
Yeah. So, you’re exactly right that we did have a vaccine task force back in 2021. And that was really just designed to help our clients around the country because of this extreme volume and because the vaccine exemptions raised so many novel questions of first impression that our clients were really looking for guidance. And so, we set up a task force, which was run by partners across the firm who had particular areas of expertise that intersected with vaccines. And then we’ve also trained a ton of associates in helping clients to manage these processes.

[00:13:28]
We had a technology approach to it too, an innovative way of helping clients to manage that huge volume. So, that was the vaccine task force. And then I think what happened with the Cultural Flashpoints Task Force is in about mid-2023, still litigating all of the vaccine cases but we- I guess to step back, Seyfarth has this culture of innovation. That’s one of the things that stands out. We stand out for our history of innovation. And part of that is looking in a new, fresh way at what clients are facing and trying to stand in their shoes so that we can be true partners with them.

[00:14:23]
And in 2023, we recognized that there were all of these ways, that polarization that was out in, out there in society was coming inside the workplace. So, vaccines were a perfect example, right? Vaccines were politicized. They were discussed a lot in the media. There were these different factions. There was all this misinformation about vaccines in terms of their ingredients, efficacy, and safety. And that came in a very direct and real way into the workplace in the form of these exemption requests.

[00:14:59]
But we were seeing it not just in the vaccine space, but in, for example, challenges to DEI programs or conflicts between religious rights and LGBTQ rights or other protected classes. And so, we set out to say how do we help clients think about the ways in which polarization is coming into the workplace. And, of course, we were even back in 2023 anticipating that this was going to be an election year. Here we are. And so, the task force is we assembled a group of experts from around the firm in these different areas. So, religious accommodation, DEI, LGBTQ issues, other areas of expertise and brought them together to think about how we could best help clients in this space.

Phil Wilson: [00:15:55]
I think it’s interesting. I’m curious about your comment. It’s become strategy to- DEI is a great example where one political move is to start a bunch of litigation related to- it could be vaccines, but Dei is a great example. Walk us through a little bit about what is it like being on the front lines of this giant litigation strategy to just it seems to create political points.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:16:30]
Yeah, I think you’re exactly right. I think that we are now in a space where the political and the litigation are very much overlapping. We saw that in the vaccine space where many of the religious exemption requests were downloaded from the internet and were ghostwritten by political or religious groups. And we certainly see something similar in the DEI space and continuing in religious accommodation requests now pivoting more- Well, there are a lot of, a lot of clients have or employers have revised their vaccine policies because the pandemic has changed and the science has changed. The vaccines have changed.

[00:17:18]
But religious accommodation requests continue to come in and have just morphed into different trends that we’re seeing, but those are still very much driven by political and religious groups in many cases.

Phil Wilson: [00:17:33]
I should know the answer to this but how important is it that my accommodation request is actually firmly held personally versus it aligns with my political viewpoint?

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:17:50]
It’s a great question. So, the basic super high-level law here is that the employee has to show a sincere religious conflict with a workplace rule, and if they do, then the employer has to engage in an interactive process to see if they can offer a reasonable accommodation without incurring undue hardship. So, when they’re processing a request, it’s really about looking at 1-sincere, 2-religious, 3-conflict with a workplace rule. And using the interactive process to try to get at those issues.

[00:18:27]
So, if something is, for example, completely political, completely secular. ‘I don’t want to come to work on Sunday because I have my kid’s soccer game.’ That’s completely secular. In some cases, ‘I don’t want to take a vaccine because I just don’t believe that my employer should be telling me what to do with my body.’ That’s really more of a political stance as opposed to something that is religious in nature. But it can be tricky to find those lines. And that’s where we help clients navigate some of those tricky distinctions.

Michael VanDervort: [00:19:00]
So, as you brought this task force, is this all within the employment law universe, basically?

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:19:08]
Yes.

Michael VanDervort: [00:19:09]
Okay. So, employment lawyers with different disciplinary expertise. As you bring them together, you said you needed to figure out how to help clients, I guess, holistically. How did you approach that? And what kind of stuff do you do besides the client-lawyer relationship? Let’s talk about examples.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:19:34]
Yeah. We help clients in lots of ways. And the task force is really designed to share information and make sure that we are leveraging the depth and breadth of our expertise from across the firm to these complex problems that clients have. So, we do a lot of counseling of clients where they have an immediate flash point. ‘Oh, my God, this has erupted today and we need help figuring out, you know, what to do next.’ We also do a lot of training. So, I was in Chicago yesterday training a group of about 30 in-house employment lawyers in how to develop a framework within the organization to think about how to handle flashpoints.

[00:20:19]
And so, we do that sort of training. And then we also do litigate cases that arise out of these kinds of flashpoints when they become an EEOC charge or a lawsuit. And I should add also investigations. We sometimes help clients where there might be a complaint about a flashpoints issue and the employer needs to do an investigation. And that’s also something that we will either guide from a legal perspective or serve as a third-party investigator in those matters.

Phil Wilson: [00:20:56]
Michael, there’s a place where this intersects with our day job with the NLRA and the NLRB. There’s been a lot of controversy, certainly on the management bar side around the NLRB is pretty much anything goes as far as speech in the workplace. They’re very, very reluctant to call anything out of bounds and not protected by their statute, which comes into conflict often with the EEO rules around workplace civility and an employer that wants to enforce a workplace where respectful conversations happen, especially around topics of race or sex. I’m just curious, what’s your feeling about that?

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:21:52]
It’s an excellent point and something that is very much part of our work on the Flashpoints Task Force. So, I talked about a framework. So, what we help clients to do is think about a sort of cohesive, consistent, customized framework that their organization will use to navigate flashpoints on a throughline. So, rather than reacting one by one to individual flashpoints, creating a framework for thinking about these issues. And that will include I say customized because it’s going to vary from employer to employer.

[00:22:31]
So, it’s going to depend on their corporate values and mission, their policies, but then also what the law says. And to your point, what the law says can be tricky and sometimes in conflict. So, we help clients think through a couple of different layers of legal analysis. One is the title seven. So federal non-discrimination law. But then also what is the risk under the NLRA? Is the speech protected concerted activity? And is it either a unionized or non-unionized workplace? And then also there’s an additional layer of state law just to make things more complicated, because when you talk about either off-duty conduct or political expression, there are frequently state laws that can apply.

[00:23:24]
So, what we try to do is help clients think about those different areas of legal risk, and then think about what are the practical options that are compliant with those intersecting laws, but also consistent with the company’s mission and policies. And not just minimizing legal risk, but also protecting the company reputation, keeping morale up so that you’re retaining the best talent.

[00:23:54]
And also just making sure that employees are actually focused on the work because one thing that we find in flashpoints is that sometimes there’s so much chaotic polarization within a particular workforce, maybe on Slack or Jabber in the workplace or in other settings that the management is throwing up their hands and saying nobody’s doing the work that we need them to be doing. So, we try to come from a holistic approach to those kinds of flashpoints.

Phil Wilson: [00:24:33]
Okay, great.

Michael VanDervort: [00:24:34]
So, there are tons of examples of around DEI, especially where companies have gone out and been more progressive in their approach perhaps. And now, with this discord and public pressure from one side or another, they retrench. Do you guys talk to your clients about like consistency and maintaining? Because it’s tough if you get one of these boycotts or one of these hot 24-hour periods where everybody’s blasting your brand all over social media. How do you help clients with that kind of stuff?

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:25:14]
Yeah, that’s a great point. And I think that’s why I come back to this framework because we encourage clients to think through in advance a proactive and consistent approach. And so, sometimes employers will develop their own internal flashpoints taskforce if you will. And we will help them decide who are going to be the stakeholders, who are participants in that, and help provide hypotheticals, for example, the real-life cases that we’ve seen, how would they handle that internally? And that way they are developing something that is consistent and that is not reactive.

[00:25:54]
Because just as you said, when a flashpoint erupts and it’s on Twitter and you’ve got a thousand of the same emails coming in from the public or customers, it’s difficult sometimes for clients not to panic. And so, we encourage to have a proactive approach in advance so that you’ve already got an internal team that’s assembled, that’s aware of the legal parameters and that has thought through an approach. Which then, of course, you have to customize to that specific situation, but you’re not sort of starting from scratch as the flashpoint is erupting on X.

Phil Wilson: [00:26:37]
And part of that strategy probably includes accepting that we’re going to get some litigation. It’s like if we’re going to hold on to this position- And just like go back to that example of if you insist on workplace civility and those types, we’re going to really focus on the EEO side of things. You’re accepting the risk that if the NLRB were to ever look at what you’re doing, they’re probably going to find policies that they feel like infringe on protected concerted activity because they can’t really get clear on how these two statutes are going to play together. And the client then just has to understand.

[00:27:24]
Same thing with DEI. If you’re going to lean in on DEI, you’re at risk of either a bad PR campaign or potentially litigation over the stance that you’ve taken. And if that’s consistent with your values and everything, that just seems like where you’re starting with is like, okay, what is what’s the framework? And then in that inside that framework, there’s going to be bad things that are going to happen, probably, but we’re going to respond to it in a culturally effective way.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:27:58]
Yeah. I think what’s fascinating about the flashpoint’s work is that the answer is going to be different for every client. Because there are different levels of risk aversion and different priorities. But I will say that I think, for example, since we’ve been talking about DEI, our view is that companies can absolutely stay true to their DEI mission despite the challenges. And we see lots of clients doing that. And it’s really more about not so much walking it back, but really just being thoughtful about, again, being proactive about, for example, looking at the external facing public statements that the company is making about DEI.

[00:28:48]
Looking at what the website says- because that’s where some of these groups are trolling to look for defendants. And also just auditing your programs, your DEI programs to make sure that they’re compliant with the law. And if you do that, then it is definitely workable to maintain a robust DEI program, which is so important to so many companies to make sure that they’re attracting and retaining the best talent from across the board. But you’re absolutely right that the risk appetite is one of many things that we help clients consider when they’re creating that framework.

[00:29:37]
I was just going to add that in terms of policies, I think one of the things that we would encourage the companies to do is to really take a look at their policies to make sure- If you’ve got a political expression policy from five years ago, you got to take a new, fresh look at that in 2024 because it’s just a completely different world. And same thing with religious accommodation. I find that a lot of times companies have really well-thought-out robust disability accommodation policies and templates, and then nothing for religious accommodation because like I said, it used to be a sleepy area of the law.

[00:30:16]
It used to be something where maybe you’d get 1 or 2 a year. But that’s just not the landscape anymore. And so helping companies to think through updating their suite of policies to make sure they’re ready for the present moment.

Michael VanDervort: [00:30:31]
In my career, I literally had maybe two religious accommodation requests. And they were early on. They were 20 years ago, I was in a position in recent years that we just talked about since the pandemic, where I didn’t touch that kind of stuff. So, it wasn’t that they didn’t exist in the companies that I was at. I just didn’t deal with them. I feel very fortunate that I didn’t have to, like, live in the trenches of HR in what you’ve talked about in the last 3 or 4 years, because I know some of my colleagues at my former employer were buried with that kind of stuff.

[00:31:02]
I’m curious. Dawn, in the real-time moment, we kind of joked around at the beginning, oh, there was a debate the other day. So, obviously there’s an election coming up. You’re still dealing with stuff that’s 3 or 4 years old in terms of litigation. What are the real hot buttons? What are you hearing? What are employers on the phone calling you about today and your task force? What do you view as the hot-button items of today? And then following up on that, what tips can you offer employers to help deal with those? Because that’s probably what they’re seeing on the ground.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:31:37]
Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s interesting because the issue of the day does morph a little bit every couple of weeks according to what’s happening out in the world. Certainly, ever since October 7th of last year, there has been just a pretty constant wave of questions around post-October 7th. Sometimes that looks like disputes inside the workplace. Sometimes it’s concern about social media postings, outside speakers who come in ostensibly to speak about a particular topic and veer off into talking about the Israel-Hamas war. So, that is a persistent theme.

[00:32:23]
I know last spring there were a lot of questions about do we have to hire students who were in the encampments. And now with students returning to campus, I think there’s a renewed series of questions about protest activity and those sorts of things. But you mentioned the debate. I think what we’re seeing, and it’s so interesting how phrases and topics that are out there in the campaign are immediately inside the workplace. So, as an example, the term DEI hire, which many of us find to be a very offensive term is something that’s ripped right out of the campaign.

[00:33:12]
And so, it’s very easy for employees to be talking about ‘Oh, what did you think of that in the debate last night?’ And then having that topic morph into talking about the workplace that the employees are in and who’s a DEI hire at our company. And as you can imagine, things can go really south really quickly in that space. So, lots of questions that are coming into the workplace from the campaign and whatever the issue or phrase of the day is for sure.

Michael VanDervort: [00:33:47]
And so, how do employers deal with that? Like what do you recommend short term? And obviously, besides calling you.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:33:55]
Well, like I said, I think taking a real hard look at policy to make sure they’re updated to meet the moment. And that’s not just discrimination policies, but look at where your flashpoints are erupting in your workplace. So, I never in my life thought that I would have so many questions about Zoom backgrounds. That is, for whatever reason, an area where people like to broadcast their political thoughts. So, they’ll put Free Palestine or I stand with Israel on their Zoom background, which leads to sometimes either people being offended inside the workplace or sometimes customers feeling like, wait a minute, is this the company’s position?

[00:34:40]
So that’s an area, for example, where you might say, okay, this is really creating a lot of chaos and division in our workspace and so we’re going to look at our virtual background policy. And you have to use the company’s virtual background or please make sure that it’s professional and neutral. Or don’t alter the company Zoom background. So, policies are a big issue. And I would say the secret weapon of cultural flashpoints is training. So, making sure at multiple levels, first of all, that the in-house legal team is really aware of those different layers that we talked about, of intersecting laws of title seven, NLRA and state law, and some of the common areas of dispute and tension.

[00:35:32]
And then also making sure that the frontline managers are aware. They may not be aware, for example, that the standard for religious accommodation changed in 2023 in a unanimous Supreme Court decision. So, those managers or HR people who are intersecting with those religious accommodations really need to know the current framework so that they’re exercising a compliant process. So, training. And then workforce training. So, Seyfarth has a training subsidiary called Seyfarth at Work. And our cultural flashpoints task force has partnered with Seyfarth at Work to create a workforce broad training about how to navigate differences and cultural beliefs, to have a respectful workplace.

[00:36:26]
And a lot can be done on the front end to train employees about not everyone thinks like you. Not everyone in the company necessarily agrees with you on these things. People in Boston may not think the same way as people in Texas or Missouri. And training can do a lot to sensitize people to those issues and is really just a great investment so that you’re not doing cleanup later. And it reduces the chance of litigation.

Michael VanDervort: [00:37:02]
Awesome. Anything else on your end, Phil?

Phil Wilson: [00:37:07]
Well, it’s a good defense as well right? You can show hey we’ve trained everybody on how to do this.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:37:17]
Absolutely.

Michael VanDervort: [00:37:21]
First of all, I want to say thank you for doing this. We’re running up on the end of our time here. So, thanks for doing this. This was a great discussion. I look forward to having it up on the website. We always close with a fun question. We’re handicapped because Phil and I are in Oklahoma. We’re far from New England. And so, I’m not sure my question was fair to us.

Phil Wilson: [00:37:47]
Yeah. We’re sandwiched between those two states that you just named that are different than Boston.

Michael VanDervort: [00:37:53]
Yeah, exactly. We’re flyover country. So, the question I came up with regionally is what’s your favorite spot in Boston or New England, and how does it connect to the themes we’ve talked about today since the birthplace of the country was a revolution that came out of that part of the world? I don’t know if we can tie that together in a good way or not, but let’s take a shot at it.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:38:17]
Well, I’m going to go with Fenway Park which I think actually does relate to cultural flashpoints, if you’ll just bear with me. Fenway Park is a place where it’s a historic and storied place. But it also is a place that really brings people together of every possible background, race, age you know, you name it. And for this sort of common purpose of rooting for the Reds.

Phil Wilson: [00:38:51]
Yelling at Yankees fans.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:38:54]
Occasionally. And so, I think that it is an apt place for this topic because it’s a reminder that there is a lot that we all have in common, even if we may have really strong disagreements on certain topics. And I think that’s what employers really want to try to tap into to maintain respectful and collaborative workplaces in our polarized time.

Phil Wilson: [00:39:24]
Great answer. That’s great.

Michael VanDervort: [00:39:26]
What about you, Phil?

Phil Wilson: [00:39:28]
My favorite place in Boston?

Michael VanDervort: [00:39:31]
Or New England or whatever.

Phil Wilson: [00:39:34]
Before my daughter was born, we had a great trip. My wife was so sick, but we went to New Hampshire and saw my best friend from high school. We just had a great time. I love Boston. I want to veer toward food, so a good crab roll, lobster roll, and some oysters. Wherever you turn, there’s great seafood.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:40:11]
Absolutely. Our office is in the Seaport District in Boston, and so we’ve got lots of amazing seafood restaurants overlooking the water. You’ll have to visit next time you’re in Boston.

Phil Wilson: [00:40:23]
Yeah. Will do.

Michael VanDervort: [00:40:24]
So one of my favorite things to do is to go whale watching. And so, I’ve been out of Plymout and Provincetown. And I thought both of those are very apt. I went out to Provincetown a decade ago and saw 27 humpback whales in three hours, including a mother and her calf. It was it was amazing. And I was up in New England a year or so ago and had a similar day out of Plymouth. And of course, the pilgrims landed in Plymouth. I guess the rock isn’t real. Plymouth Rock isn’t a real thing, but it’s a nice tourist trap.

[00:41:01]
And then, of course, Provincetown has its own unique flair that makes it really cool. So, I think those apply a bit to cultural flash points and that we’ve seen a lot of history come up. So, that was a stretch on that question. Well, thanks very much, Dawn, and I want to thank you again. And we’re going to go ahead- I just wondered if you had any final thoughts you wanted to add. Otherwise, we’ll wrap.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:41:21]
No, other than, if employers are wrestling with these issues, we’re here to help and people can feel free to reach out to me at my office at Seyfarth Shaw.

Michael VanDervort: [00:41:33]
Awesome. And we’ll have that information in the show notes. Thanks for doing this.

Phil Wilson: [00:41:37]
Dawn, Thanks so much.

Dawn Reddy Solowey: [00:41:39]
Thank you. Okay, bye.