Judge Bernice B. Donald will Receive ABA's Lifetime Liberty Achievement Award

NAWJ Past President Judge Bernice B. Donald was honored September 16^th with the inaugural Lifetime Liberty Achievement Award by the American Bar Association.

This award celebrates the lawyers and judges who have spent their career actively promoting diversity and inclusion within the legal profession and awarded by the American Bar Association Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section.

 “Judge Donald was one of the first recipients of the Liberty Achievement Award and her continued dedication to diversity in the profession merits her recognition as the first Lifetime Liberty Achievement Award honoree,” said Sharon Sayles Belton, vice president of Government Partnerships & Alliances at Thomson Reuters.

Judge Donald was nominated to the 6th Circuit bench by President Barack Obama in 2011. Prior to that, she served on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee as an appointee of President Bill Clinton in 1995. Donald was the first African American woman to serve as a bankruptcy judge and the first African American woman to serve as a judge in the state of Tennessee.