Paula Hinton Selected as Finalist for The Texas Minority Counsel Program’s 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award

Paula Hinton, Partner in Winston’s Houston office, member of Winston’s Executive Committee, Chair of Winston’s Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI), and a member of the firm’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee, was selected as one of three finalists for the Texas Minority Counsel Program’s 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award. This award is intended to recognize outstanding leadership for the promotion of diversity and inclusion, and is presented to attorneys who have demonstrated extraordinary support and advocacy for the advancement of minorities, women, and LGBTQ people in the legal profession.

Throughout her legal career, Paula has served as an active champion for diversity by providing visible and vocal support for diversity and inclusion efforts as well as personally mentoring and championing generations of women lawyers. Since joining Winston in 2013, Paula has spearheaded the following initiatives:

Strategic Business Goal: Increasing Diversity. Paula was a key driver in getting Winston’s Executive Committee to adopt increasing diversity and inclusion as one of 10 primary goals in the firm’s strategic business plan. She helped establish five-year, measurable goals for the representation of women and attorneys of color in the partnership, in leadership positions, and among the firm’s most highly compensated. 

Diversity Sponsorship Program. In 2016, through the WLI, Paula and her partners launched a one-year sponsorship program that matched the Firm’s most influential partners with senior women associates and junior partners. This initiative was designed to identify and cultivate sponsor relationships for women at critical stages in their careers. Sponsors and sponsorees participated in formal programming over the course of a year around individual goals, career planning, and professional and business development. As a result of the pilot program’s success, Winston formalized the Diverse Associate Sponsorship Program.

Expanding the WLI outside the United States. Under her leadership, Paula expanded the WLI to the Firm’s Paris, London, Hong Kong, and Dubai offices. Every Winston office now has an active WLI.

Adoption of the Mansfield Rule. In 2017, Paula was instrumental in ensuring that Winston began a one-year pilot of the Mansfield Rule, which measures whether law firms have affirmatively considered women and attorneys of color — as at least 30 percent of the candidate pool — for leadership roles, key committee appointments, lateral positions, and advancement within the firm. We are pleased to report that the firm achieved Mansfield Certification Plus status for 2018 and 2019, and Paula is the Partner Champion for Winston’s participation in Mansfield Rule 3.0.

Business Development Training and Targeted Professional Development Programs for Women Lawyers. Under Paula’s leadership of the WLI, Winston has provided numerous business development trainings and other targeted professional development programming to women lawyers to help them advance within the firm.

Family-Friendly Policies. Paula was one of the architects of Winston’s revised reduced-hours policy and its gender-neutral parental leave policy, which provides 20 weeks of paid parental leave, coaching for new parents, and new benefits such as free overnight breast milk delivery. The parental leave policy has led to an increase in the amount of leave that both men and women take after the birth of a child and the support they receive to reintegrate back into the firm and into premium workstreams.

Leader in Efforts to Promote Equity for Women Nationwide. Paula also is part of the Winston team working with activists across the country that helped bring about Illinois’s historic ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 2018 and is now supporting ratification efforts in North Carolina and Virginia.

Visit our Diversity and Inclusion page to read about what makes Winston a great place for diverse lawyers and talent.