Public service news for this week includes info on the HBA’s newest president, board of directors and award honorees; June dates for Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program’s legal clinics; two lawyers appointed by the governor to the state’s OneStar Foundation; and how those in Texas affected by the recent severe storms can receive legal and recovery assistance.

This week’s P.S. features a grant deadline (today) for any Dallas-area organizations pursuing projects that support women; lawyers from Yetter Coleman, Shipley Snell, and Hunton Andrews Kurth receiving pro bono/community service-related awards; a trivia event that raised funds for Children’s Health; an upcoming gala that supports the Dallas LGBTQ+ community that’s in need of more sponsors; and a recent ribbon-cutting event at Houston’s civil courthouse to celebrate the recent installation of the first of several planned lactation pods.

Hector Pineda is kind of a big deal at Shell. Throughout his nearly three-decade career at one of the world’s largest oil companies, he’s gone from battling a snake wrangler in a West Texas courtroom to handling major projects and commercial transactions to providing strategic advice to top executives and managers leading Shell’s downstream and renewables businesses in the Americas. But no matter how high he climbs in the company, it is his ability to advance others and be a microphone for diverse voices that he is most proud of.Pineda is one of three finalists for the 2024 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Diversity and Inclusion, and the winner will be revealed Wednesday at an awards ceremony hosted by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook.

When you hear the phrase diversity, equity and inclusion, your mind probably goes to the boilerplate topics that are the subject of so many panel discussions in Corporate America — diverse candidate pool, hiring and retention practices, mentorship versus sponsorship, to name a few. But for Spire General Counsel Sean Jamieson, DEI became a life-or-death matter in the summer of 2021 as a whopper regulatory battle put an existential threat to the existence of one of Spire’s natural gas pipelines. Critics thought Spire only designed its STL Pipeline project to line its own pockets. Jamieson and Spire viewed the pipeline as a means to diversify the natural gas source in eastern Missouri to lower the cost of delivering reliable energy to the people who need it the most: a widely vulnerable, underrepresented customer base.

“This would have been bad for our business. But it would have been terrible for people,” Jamieson said. “I had spent the months before working with the technical analysts and modeling what it would mean if we didn’t have this pipeline, the number of customers we would potentially lose. I learned and internalized all the mechanics associated with what would actually happen.”

Jamieson’s sleepless, behind-the-scenes work to bring together diverse viewpoints to solve complex problems is why Spire’s STL Pipeline is still running. It’s also why he’s a finalist for the Association of Corporate Counsel and The Texas Lawbook’s 2024 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion.

This week’s edition of P.S. features an award-winning environmental justice paper that earned a University of Houston law student a law firm-sponsored scholarship, an upcoming cluster of scholarships worth $150,000 that will be awarded to graduating high school seniors by a Dallas law firm, info on The Lawbook’s new pro bono advocacy award honoring a great pro bono legend in the state and a thank-you note from the Texas Lawbook Foundation to recent donors.

Plus: how to get a charitable deduction by donating to the Texas Lawbook Foundation if the recent tax season bummed you (and your wallet) out.

This week’s edition of P.S. features the unveiling of Porter Hedges’ new 1L diversity fellow, a fundraising development from the Texas Access to Justice Commission and State Bar of Texas that will benefit low-income Texas veterans, a leadership change at the Houston Bar Association and the launch of a public service website focused on “adulting.”

In this Q&A, Adel Sander discusses what she considers when hiring outside counsel, what it is about her job that gets her out of bed, how diversity became front and center for her and what diversity and inclusion initiatives law firms can be doing to create change.

Adel Sander has been driven to succeed and advocate for others from the time she could talk to present day as director and deputy general counsel at Ascend Performance Materials. As a 2-year-old growing up in Baku, Azerbaijan, she pointed out to her mom that her dad in fact did split some of the domestic labor by going to the market every week. As an in-house lawyer, she bats for women and diverse professionals every day, whether it’s a new mom needing a part-time schedule, a female outside lawyer up for partner, a father who wants to spend more time with his newborn or a job applicant shunned by other employers because of their criminal history.

“I really, really like to push people into being promoted to the next level and to give people opportunity,” she said. “At one point or another, someone gave me an opportunity, so I like to return the favor.”

Sander is one of three finalists for the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston chapter and The Texas Lawbook’s 2024 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion. This is her story.