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www.canadianlawyermag.com 21 Female Trailblazer Excellence Award Recipient 2021 Canadian Law Awards RBC proudly congratulates Lisa for her outstanding leadership in the evolving legal landscape for Canadian payments and open banking, and for her tireless efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and broader community as a whole. Lisa Ford Senior Counsel, RBC Law Group "Direct your energy in the best way possible and know that it cannot just all be toward work or all toward family." Sudevi Mukherjee-Gothi, Pallett Valo LLP But the data also indicated an exit rate higher than the recruitment rate, so progress was relatively flat. When the organization looked further, women scored "significantly lower" in their engagement level and how their skills were taken advantage of by the employer. "We then started working with the hiring managers to understand where the gaps are." Charlene Theodore, president of the Ontario Bar Association — the group's first Black president — said the issues all female lawyers face increase when it concerns racial- ized women. "I've too often seen lofty aspir- ations laid waste by gender and race-based exclusion, by imposter syndrome or by an unyielding culture that too often forces upon women an impossible choice between family, ambition and career," she told those at the summit. Theodore pointed to the OBA's "not another decade" program, which aims to challenge organizations in the legal profes- sion to develop a "feasible, workable plan" to improve equality in the workplace, based on all metrics, but highlighting the need to have more lawyers of colour in the profession. She added that what doesn't work for women in the workplace "doesn't work well