Groat-Alpern 2024 Awards Announced
James E. Miller ’88 and Lauren Ezrol Klein ’88 will be honored by the ILR School with its highest awards at the April 18 Groat and Alpern Awards celebration at The Pierre in Manhattan.
Miller will receive the Judge William B. Groat Alumni Award, a tribute to professional accomplishments in the industrial and labor relations field. Klein will receive the Jerome Alpern Award for outstanding service and support to the ILR School and professional accomplishments outside the industrial and labor relations field.
Managing partner at Miller Shah Attorneys at Law, Miller concentrates his practice on financial services and whistleblower litigation, including ERISA, securities, corporate governance and employment matters. He has also represented clients in trade regulation matters and other complex commercial litigation, including patent, licensing and other intellectual property matters.
Miller earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Daniel H. Huyett III, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
He began his law practice in 1992 at Pelino & Lentz, P.C. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he concentrated his practice on representing clients in labor and employment litigation and other complex commercial litigation. In addition to representing major corporations in commercial and employment litigation and collective bargaining negotiations, he represented clients in employment discrimination litigation and securities industry arbitrations.
Miller serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council. Each year, he sponsors several credit internships that introduce ILR students to Miller Shah’s practice, offers opportunities to contribute to legal efforts that intersect with subjects at the heart of ILR’s curriculum and provides inroads into a field with historical barriers to entry. He developed a project analyst program for interns to join Miller Shah for one or two years to hone their research and analytic skills. Miller also supports a credit internship for a student who spends a semester with a union or labor organization.
Klein, the Jerome Alpern Award recipient, is executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, serving as chief legal officer for the world’s leading performing arts center. As part of Lincoln Center’s executive leadership team, she provides legal advice across a broad range of matters and supports and counsels 80-plus member board on governance.
Before her role at Lincoln Center, Klein was executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary, and a 21-year veteran of Time Inc. At Time Inc., she was a member of the executive management team responsible for all global legal and governance matters, including all legal aspects of an NYSE-listed company and board governance. Klein also led legal teams in acquisitions and divestitures of businesses. She played a lead role in the company’s 2014 spin-off from Time Warner, the establishment of Time Inc. as a new independent public company, and the $3 billion sale of the company in 2018.
A Harvard Law School graduate, Klein began her career as an associate in the corporate department of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York, where she focused on transactions in the mergers and acquisitions and securities areas.
Klein serves on the President’s Council of Cornell Women, the Cornell ILR Dean’s Advisory Council, the Cornell ILR Alumni Association Board Executive Committee and is co-chair of ILR’s capital campaign. She has generously supported the ILR Annual Fund and has endowed a scholarship fund.