About Work+Family Insight
Making Businesses Stronger Through Innovative and Inclusive Solutions
Work+Family Insight helps employers meet the challenges of managing employees who are pregnant, parenting, or caring for family members. We focus on practical solutions for handling employee issues, strategies for reducing tension between supervisors and employees, legal compliance, initiatives to prevent family caregiver discrimination, and bias-free flexible work arrangements. Our expertise complements and expands employee retention and engagement initiatives, diversity, equity and inclusion programs, inter-generational team building, and employee wellness programs.
Our Principal, Cynthia Thomas Calvert, is a nationally recognized expert in pregnancy accommodation law and Family Responsibilities Discrimination. She is passionate about creating workplaces with reduced tension and increased productivity where employers and employees can both thrive. In today’s workplace, that means addressing the needs of employees with families and rethinking how work gets done. The result will be a more inclusive culture that benefits all employees and their supervisors, with lower costs and increased competitiveness.
Cynthia Thomas Calvert, Principal
My approach updates the way we work so employers and employees can both prosper. The reality is that most employees these days are or will be caregivers. Employers gain when they think creatively about work, reduce caregiver bias, provide flexibility, and support caregiving employees. This makes employees more committed and productive, leads to better retention, and improves customer relationships. Let’s talk about how you can work better with your employees.
–Cynthia Thomas Calvert, Principal, Work+Family Insight
More About Cynthia
Cynthia is a lawyer, consultant, writer, and speaker who, along with Joan C. Williams, pioneered the concept of family responsibilities discrimination (also known as caregiver discrimination). A key focus of her research is how the influence of unconscious bias can be reduced in personnel decisions. She believes that solutions that block bias have to be practical and designed to meet business needs.
Cynthia serves as the Senior Advisor for Family Responsibilities Discrimination at the Center for WorkLife Law (WLL), based at the University of California College of the Law San Francisco, where she was previously Deputy Director. She advises lawyers, employers, employees, policy makers, and others regarding the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, the PUMP Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the FMLA, the ADA, Title VII, and state and local laws that prohibit discrimination against parents and other family caregivers. She was also the co-founder and co-director of the Project for Attorney Retention, WLL’s initiative to promote flexible schedules in legal employment. At both WLL and PAR, she led groundbreaking studies of family responsibilities discrimination, professional advancement on flexible schedules, obstacles to successful implementation of flexible work programs, and the advancement of women in the workplace.
Writings & Publications
Cynthia Thomas Calvert co-authored the only legal treatise on FRD: Family Responsibilities Discrimination (Bloomberg BNA Books 2014). Cynthia also co-authored Solving the Part-Time Puzzle: The Law Firm’s Guide to Balanced Hours (NALP 2004) and Flex Success: The Lawyer’s Guide to Balanced Hours (WLL Press 2011).
Cynthia has written numerous articles that have appeared in publications such as HBR.org, HR Daily Advisor, Kiplinger.com, the ABA’s Law Practice Management, Law.com, The Legal Times, Corporate Counsel, and the Women Lawyers Journal. She has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ABA Journal, Associated Press, NPR, National Law Journal, New York Lawyer, Legal Times, Financial Times, Diversity & the Bar, Working Mother, and other publications. She speaks frequently about family responsibilities discrimination, pregnancy and lactation accommodation, flexible work arrangements, retention and advancement of women, and inclusion. She has testified before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee and the EEOC.
Cynthia practices management-side employment law in the District of Columbia and Maryland. She was a partner at the D.C. litigation firm of Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, LLP (now part of Baker Botts LLP). She is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center (cum laude, 1985). After graduation, she clerked for the Honorable Thomas Penfield Jackson, United States District Court for the District of Columbia.