Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer, Barings (Chicago/Charlotte)
Chasity A. Boyce is an attorney and diversity leader who has served as a mentor for over a decade. She has always felt the need to mentor, and in law school served as the orientation chair for 1L law students in hopes of easing the transition to law school. Chasity’s experience working as an associate in Chicago law firms, and conversations with her peers, quickly exposed the diversity issues within the legal field. Therefore, she co-founded and co-created DAPP as a vehicle to infuse the law firm pipeline with diverse attorneys and to empower diverse attorneys to succeed in the ever-challenging legal field.
Chasity is a past president of the Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater Chicago, Inc. During her term as president, she led BWLA in holding a National Summit of Black Women Lawyers, which gathered women from across the country and addressed issues relevant to women of color in varying legal markets and identified techniques and strategies to overcome some of the obstacles they commonly face in the legal profession. She also serves on the Illinois Supreme Court’s Commission on Professionalism’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board, the Chicago Bar Association’s Board of Managers, Duke University’s Women’s Forum’s Steering Committee; in 2015, Governor Bruce Rauner appointed her to the Illinois Statutory Court Fees Task Force, and in 2016, the Executive Ethics Commission. She is also the co-founder of Uncolorblind, a diversity blog and enterprise dedicated to identifying and addressing diversity and inclusion issues in corporate America, and frequently presents and writes on topics related to hiring, promoting and retaining diverse attorneys in big law and across the legal field.
Chasity’s legal excellence and community involvement has not gone unnoticed. Her awards include being named to the Lawyers of Color Inaugural Hot List for the Midwest Region, which recognizes early- to mid-career attorneys under the age of 40; The National Black Lawyers – Top 100, the National Bar Association’s 40 Under 40 Nation’s Best Advocates and Distinguished Service to the Black Women Lawyers’ Association.
Chasity is Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at Barings, where she also sits on the firm’s Senior Leadership Team. Previously, she was Vice-President, Head of Inclusion and Diversity at Heitman, LLC and has also served as a Diversity and Inclusion Manager at Skadden Arps and Associate General Counsel to Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, where she managed a public safety, child welfare and education portfolio and oversaw the Governor’s clemency process. Prior to entering public service, Chasity was a litigator in both a boutique and mid-size firm in Chicago. She earned her A.B. in Public Policy and a certificate in Markets and Management from Duke University and her Juris Doctorate degree from the Howard University School of Law.