PRESS RELEASE: Melinda B. Kaufmann Selected to Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame Board
HARTFORD, Connecticut: Melinda B. Kaufmann, an attorney who serves as counsel in the education law and labor and employment practices at Pullman & Comley, LLC, has been selected by the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame to join its Board of Trustees.
Ms. Kaufmann advises boards of education on all aspects of their operations and represents them before state and federal agencies, including the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the State Board of Mediation and Arbitration, the State Board of Labor Relations and in arbitrations before American Arbitration Association arbitrators. She has also represented boards of education before the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights on claims of disability and race/national origin discrimination and successfully defended a school district in the first special education jury trial in the country.
In her labor and employment practice, Ms. Kaufmann defends employers and their individual officers, agents and employees in federal and state courts and before federal and state agencies regarding various issues including: discrimination, retaliation and harassment claims under Title VI, Title VII, Title IX, Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act, Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, Fair Labor Standards Act, whistleblower claims, covenants-not-to-compete, constitutional claims under Section 1983, First Amendment, Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act and various employment-related tort claims. She has also successfully defended employers in federal jury trials involving the Americans with Disabilities Act and the First Amendment rights of employees.
Prior to law school, Ms. Kaufmann taught special needs and regular education students, drafted middle school mathematics curriculum and designed curricula for special needs students. She earned a B.S., summa cum laude, from the University of Albany, an M.S. from The College of Saint Rose, and a J.D. from the William and Mary School of Law, J.D., Order of the Coif.
Diane Whitney, a colleague of Ms. Kaufmann at Pullman & Comley, served as the chair of the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame Board of Trustees from 2014 until earlier this month, when the new inductees were welcomed to the board.
About Pullman & Comley:
Pullman & Comley will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2019 and is one of Connecticut’s largest firms, providing a wide range of legal services to clients in the New England region, as well as throughout the United States and internationally. Pullman & Comley’s major practice areas include business organizations and finance; environmental, energy and telecommunications; government finance; health care; labor, employment law and employee benefits; litigation; property valuation; real estate and lands use; regulatory, and trusts and estates. The firm has offices in Bridgeport, Hartford, Stamford, Waterbury, and Westport, Connecticut and White Plains, New York. The firm is an active member of the Law Firm Alliance, an international affiliation of law firms. For more information, please visit www.pullcom.com.
About the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame
The Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame is an educational outreach organization whose mission is to honor publicly the achievement of Connecticut women, preserve their stories, educate the public and inspire the continued achievements of women and girls. Founded in 1994, the Hall stands as the state’s premier source for Connecticut women’s history with more than a hundred Inductees. These women’s lives and accomplishments are celebrated and documented through a wide spectrum of innovative statewide programs offered free of charge to Connecticut citizens. To learn more, visit: http://cwhf.org/about-us#.