Seattle Chamber Honors Women for Innovative Gender Equity Initiatives

Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt CEO Graciela Gomez Cowger is active in efforts to increase diversity in the legal profession. Madeleine Winslow, an inclusion consultant with Mercer, is a key player in the consulting firms When Women Thrive Division. And law firm Davis Wright Tremaine has an initiative, called Project W, which works to help women build successful businesses and achieve workforce parity.

All three were honored June 6 by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce with a Women in Business and Leadership Initiative Award for their focus on advancing gender equity in the workforce.

Employers have the power to help make our economy more inclusive, said chamber President and CEO Marilyn Strickland. This years winners demonstrate how our regions business community is living up to its commitment to improve gender equity and economic opportunity.

Gomez Cowger, who like Strickland was a panelist at Seattle Business magazines recent Daring Women event, received the Female Leader of the Year Award. She is the first woman CEO of Portland-based Schwabe and is one of only a handful of Latinas to lead a law firm in the United States. Winslow received the Rising Star Award, which recognizes a woman with fewer than 10 years of experience who demonstrates exemplary leadership traits. She is working on an initiative to create virtual reality sexual harassment training.

Seattle-based Davis Wright Tremaines Project W is a nationwide effort that works to create partnerships with investors, entrepreneurs and business executives.