ML Community Engagement

Prior to the pandemic, Yaneeke Samuels supported and sat on the board of two charities, New Alternatives and Life Preservers Project, which assist LGBTQ+ and HIV+ youth. Working with these organizations, Yaneeke has been delivering meals and toiletries to those same groups of people throughout New York City to ensure that they have food and supplies to survive.

For Morgan Lewis, serving the communities in which we live and work has always been part of who we are. While those efforts vary depending on local needs, the commitment is the same firmwide. As just a few examples: our New York, Washington, and Houston offices have raised more than $40,000 for local food-related charities in their cities. Our Philadelphia, Princeton, Chicago, Hartford, London, and New York offices have donated food and supplies to their local hospitals and front-line workers. And our Orange County office compiled their much coveted toilet paper supply to donate necessities and food to a local food bank.

Helping to address a critical COVID-19 need, a team led by Dennis Gucciardo and Steve Navarro guided CPAP and ventilation technology maker Airon Corp. in a collaboration with GE Healthcare to license the design to its ventilators. Ford Motor Co. is producing tens of thousands of ventilators out of its Michigan plant through this life-saving collaboration.

Carrie Gonell, Joe Duffy, Nancy Nguyen, and Sarah Allen secured the release of four asylum-seeking women held in a detention center who were at risk of contracting COVID-19 in the crowded center. The team’s dedication led to all four women being released within weeks of our first petition. One of the women had spent nearly three years in immigration detention before her release, and now she, and the other women, can pursue their asylum cases without fear of becoming ill in detention.

In Northern Cyprus, Izzet Sinan helped fund a makeshift vegetable farm with entirely recovered or reclaimed materials to feed the poor in this corner of the world. Izzet is supporting a cousin, who owns the land and is managing the farm, including building the infrastructure with his own hands and growing the crops with help from friends and family, to feed people affected by the pandemic.

Lesli Ligorner helped form ProCure Hope with a small team of professionals spanning the US and Asia who are volunteering their time to identify, source, transport and distribute badly needed PPE to front-line workers. With representatives on the ground in both China and the US who speak both English and Mandarin, the group can evaluate supply chains to shorten the time to get masks into the hands of those most in need.