Labor and Employment Law Section Chair Wants To Cultivate Future Leaders
8.5.2026
Community and cultivate are two of Labor and Employment Law Section Chair Iyana Titus’ favorite words. That helps explain why nurturing new leaders and developing a more diverse section membership are among her goals for the upcoming year.
To direct young attorneys toward New York State Bar Association leadership requires a multi-prong approach, she said. For starters, you must reach out on social media and podcasts where they are, and eliminate the barriers that discourage them from becoming involved.
“We did a survey and we realized that people don’t always know how to get involved. And that’s fair. They signed up for membership and now are unsure what to do. It’s almost like you need to treat it as though you are onboarding a new employee. You need to connect with this person in a more formalized way than a generic e-mail. You need to introduce the section to the person, show them how to be involved, and get them on a committee.”
From there, she emphasized that the onus is on experienced committee members to identify potential leaders.
Titus has asked her committee chairs to identify rising leaders and to think about how the section can engage them by the end of her term.
“I want them constantly thinking about engaging more individuals as a means of cultivating new leaders,” Titus said.
She added that as chair she has a role as well.
“I need to be a brand ambassador for the section, where I’m the person who is receiving, meeting people, making them feel comfortable and then having other members follow my lead. If I’m at a meeting and I don’t recognize someone or if I see a young lawyer, I have to make a point to introduce myself and speak to them,” Titus said.
This is also where employing contemporary media tools comes into play.
“I think about how podcasting is somewhat a new way of how people are communicating so I want to try to do a pilot and see where that could take us as a section,” Titus said.
She added that the section also needs to increase its social media presence, which she has initiated herself by regularly incorporating LinkedIn and Instagram into the section’s engagement strategy, while laying the groundwork for a video that will commemorate its 50th anniversary later this year.
Titus also wants to communicate the unique skill sets an attorney must have to practice in the labor and employment sector.
“I find employment attorneys are fun. We have great people skills, because one aspect of employment law is that people are so emotional about their jobs. And, you must have a specific temperament to be able to get information out of people, to help them to move along when they’ve lost their job. You need a certain skillset to do that,” Titus said.
Looking ahead, she is finalizing the agenda for the Fall Section Meeting, which is set for Oct. 2 to 4 in Ithaca.
Neurodiversity, unionization of student workers, higher education, and cannabis legislation are all potential panel topics while a trip through America’s first wine trail, the Cayuga Wine Trail, and a children-focused tour of the Museum of the Earth are among the scheduled social activities.
“We sometimes forget that we have all kinds of attorneys who are in all different phases in life, and so sometimes if we only focus on the more senior attorneys, then we might miss out on the attorneys who are sort of new as parents, and maybe for them, they need to make this into a family vacation. And so, I was really thinking about making sure we were promoting and doing different activities that are apart from the meeting,” Titus said.
Titus has also reached out to Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School and the Cornell Law School to ensure that students are attending and socially interacting with section members so they may see the value of a career in labor and employment law.
Student engagement is also a key component of revising the section’s mentorship program at Annual Conference in New York City.
The mentorship program, which was interrupted during the pandemic, holds a personal meaning for her.
“I have been a product of a mentorship program in both the labor and employment and the dispute resolution sections, so I’m a big advocate for it. We already have a proposal. We just need to finalize some things, but ideally once we match people, I would like to have something in person, primarily around Annual Conference where people have the chance to interact in person,” Titus said.
Titus is collaborating with professors at New York University School of Law and the CUNY School of Law so that section members can discuss their careers as labor and employment attorneys directly with students.
She is also aiming to partner with the Dispute Resolution Section on programming that would encourage students to start thinking about mediation and arbitration earlier in their career.
“You have to start thinking about mediation and arbitration early on, although you may not really begin practicing in that area until later in your career. Nevertheless, there is a lack of diversity around neutrals and a lack of law students being exposed to that aspect of law so we’re trying to address that,” Titus said.
Finally, the Young Lawyers Section is another group she is aiming to collaborate with after they co-hosted a successful program this spring.
“When you’re new to a firm, the one thing you are going to have to be is an employee first, and so one of those things that you need to understand is how to navigate firm life, and the program we did on that was very successful. Also, one of the other things that Marcella (Young Lawyers Section Marcella Jayne) was concerned about was how do you voluntarily leave a firm in a way that doesn’t damage your reputation and so we want to continue to talk about that,” Titus said.
“So, there is a lot going on. It’ll be a good year. What I do know is it’s going to go by fast because of the level of engagement that I need to have to ensure all these things are happening while at the same paying attention to what my leadership team is doing,” she said.
