(NEW YORK) Katten announced today that Financial Markets and Funds partner Carl Kennedy has been named a member of the 2022 class of Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) Fellows.

"In the few years that Carl has been at Katten, he has developed meaningful relationships with his colleagues and clients and demonstrated effective leadership skills, all of which positioned him as an excellent candidate for this program," said Katten Chief Diversity Partner Leslie Minier. "Carl is a talented attorney, who has a deep interest in increasing the representation of diverse attorneys in the legal industry. Katten strongly supports him and is invested in his career trajectory."

The Fellows program is an intensive, yearlong professional development program that mentors the legal industry's diverse leaders of tomorrow. Designed for lawyers with eight to 15 years of experience, the program connects high-potential attorneys with their peers, as well as leading general counsel and managing partners, for mentoring and career guidance.

Kennedy will participate in virtual and in-person class meetings, with opportunities to interact with key legal and business leaders of large US corporations. Further, leadership lunches will be hosted by LCLD member organizations featuring a managing partner or general counsel as the keynote speaker.

Kennedy represents financial institutions, asset managers, clearinghouses, hedge funds and proprietary trading firms and counsels them on regulatory, compliance, transactional and enforcement-related issues in the commodities and derivatives markets. Prior to joining Katten, he was a senior in-house counsel at a large investment bank, an attorney to a global trade association which represented the hedge fund industry on US and international legislative and regularly policy issues, and a policy advisor to former US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Commissioner Scott O'Malia.

The Leadership Council on Legal Diversity is an organization of more than 400 corporate chief legal officers and law firm managing partners — the leadership of the profession — who have pledged themselves, through their Leaders at the Front initiative and other means, to creating a truly diverse US legal profession. Their action programs are designed to attract, inspire and nurture the talent in society and within their organizations, thereby helping a new and more diverse generation of attorneys ascend to positions of leadership. By producing tangible results in their institutions, they work to promote inclusiveness in their organizations, circles of influence and society, with the ultimate goal of building a more equitable and diverse legal profession.