Executive Committee
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Katherine M. Forster
President
KATHERINE M. FORSTER is a partner in the labor and employment department at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP. Ms. Forster represents employers in a wide range of matters including class actions, wage and hour disputes, wrongful termination, discrimination and harassment litigation and appellate matters. In addition to her litigation practice, Ms. Forster advises employers on compliance with state and federal labor laws in connection with corporate restructurings, executive separations and day-to-day operations. Ms. Forster joined the firm in September 2002 after serving as a law clerk to the Honorable Edward Rafeedie of the United States District Court, Central District of California, and was elected to the partnership in December 2007. She was selected for inclusion in Southern California Super Lawyers®–Rising Stars Edition 2008.
Among other class action and single-plaintiff litigation matters, Ms. Forster currently represents Merrill Lynch in a nationwide series of class action lawsuits brought by stock brokers who claim that they are entitled to premium overtime compensation and were subjected to improper wage deductions. She is also defending NBC Universal against a putative class action brought by television screenwriters alleging a pattern and practice of age discrimination by the major networks, studios and talent agencies. She was one of the principal counsel of record in Reynolds v. Bement, 36 Cal. 4th 1075 (2005), in which the California Supreme Court held that corporate officers and directors may not be held personally liable under the California Labor Code for wage claims by corporate employees.
In addition to her WLALA commitments, Ms. Forster currently serves as Chair of the Los Angeles County Bar Association (LABCA)/WLALA Joint Task Force on the Promotion and Retention of Women Lawyers and as Co-Chair of the Saturday Seminar Committee for the LACBA Labor and Employment Law Section. She is also a member of California Women Lawyers, the Association of Business Trial Lawyers, the Labor and Employment Law Sections of the California State Bar and the American Bar Association (ABA), and the Employment Subcommittee of the ABA Litigation Section’s Class Actions and Derivative Suits Committee.
Ms. Forster’s recent speaking engagements include Anatomy of the Plaintiff’s Employment Lawsuit and Cutting-Edge Employer Practices to Avoid Employment Lawsuits and Nuts and Bolts of Employment Law, presented by LACBA; Taking the Step to Federal Court, presented by the Federal Bar Association; and Climbing the Corporate In-House Ladder, presented by WLALA.
Ms. Forster received her undergraduate degree in Politics from Princeton University, where she was President of the Princeton Madrigal Society, Secretary of the Glee Club and toured Europe with the Princeton Chamber Choir. She received her law degree from the University of Southern California, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as Executive Senior Editor of the Southern California Law Review. While in law school, Ms. Forster also served as a Legal Writing instructor, President of the USC Women’s Law Association and a member of the WLALA Board of Governors. In 2001, she published an article entitled Strategic Reform of Contingent Work, 74 S. Cal. L. Rev. 541 (2001).
Prior to entering law school, Ms. Forster was a project manager in the aerospace and defense industry. She is married to Greg Wortman, a luthier and musician. Ms. Forster is an avid wine collector and enjoys cooking, music, hiking, Yankees and Dodgers baseball, and Lakers basketball.
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Helen B. Kim
President-Elect
Helen B. Kim is a partner and member of Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP’s Litigation Securities Litigation practice team. Ms. Kim represents public and private companies and their directors, officers and principal shareholders in complex commercial litigation, including the defense of securities and other class actions, shareholder derivative suits and regulatory investigations. She appears on behalf of her clients in state and federal courts, both in New York and in California. She has been named by The Daily Journal as one of the Top Women Litigators in California. Ms. Kim is a graduate of Yale Law School, The Juilliard School of Music, and Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges. While in law school, she was Note Editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, Ms. Kim served as a law clerk for the Honorable Roger J. Miner, United States Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit. Ms. Kim has served on the WLALA Board of Governors since 2002. Ms. Kim is a member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association's Board of Governors and serves on its Judicial Appointments Committee. Ms. Kim also serves as co-editor of the ABA Litigation Section's Securities Litigation Journal. She also serves on the ABA's Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession. She is the immediate past president of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association. Ms. Kim is married to Richard E. Nathan, a solo practitioner, and is the mother of two children (ages 14 and 5).
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Angela S. Haskins
First Vice President
Angela S. Haskins is a civil litigator and partner at Baker, Keener & Nahra, LLP. Ms. Haskins specializes in the defense of physicians as well as other medical and healthcare personnel and facilities. Ms. Haskins began her legal career as a secretary and paralegal for a plaintiffs’ product’s liability firm in Ohio while attending undergraduate courses at The Ohio State University. She continued her legal career as a Case Administrator and the first non-lawyer Director for the Center for Mediation at the American Arbitration Association while attending evening classes at Southwestern University School of Law. She then became a principal at ADR International, an alternative dispute resolution marketing consultancy, where she spent five years before joining the litigation ranks. Ms. Haskins has been a WLALA member for thirteen years and has served on the Board of Governors for twelve years in a variety of capacities.
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Tanya L. Forsheit
Second Vice President
Tanya Forsheit is a partner in the Litigation and Dispute Resolution Department of Proskauer Rose LLP, and a member of Proskauer’s Privacy and Data Security Practice Group. Ms. Forsheit handles complex commercial and appellate litigation, and counsels clients on privacy and data security legal requirements and best practices. Ms. Forsheit frequently writes and speaks on recent developments in federal and state privacy laws, is a co-author of a chapter on State Privacy Laws in the Practising Law Institute treatise Proskauer on Privacy: A Guide to Privacy and Data Security Law in the Information Age, and launched Proskauer’s Privacy Law Blog, www.proskaueronprivacy.com, in March 2007. Ms. Forsheit is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she was a Senior Editor of the Journal of International Economic Law, and graduated, cum laude, from Duke University. Ms. Forsheit was WLALA Communications Officer in 2007-2008 and Co-Chair of the Financial Development Committee of the WLALA Board of Governors in 2006-2007.
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Courtney Powers
Secretary/Treasurer
Courtney A. Powers is the Director of Advocacy and Government Affairs for the Daughters of Charity Health System. She has served on the Women Lawyers of Los Angeles Board of Governors for three years.
Previously, Ms. Powers was an associate at the law firm of Folger Levin & Kahn LLP in Los Angeles. Ms. Powers was appointed to the Commission on the Status of Women for the City of Los Angeles and served from 2004 to 2005. She also serves as an adjunct instructor at Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles, teaching a course on women and the law.
Ms. Powers graduated from the University of California, Berkeley (Phi Beta Kappa) and UCLA School of Law. While at UCLA she was co-editor-in-chief of the UCLA Women's Law Journal, and an extern law clerk to Judge Richard Paez, United States District Court for the Central District of California.
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Ruth Kahn
Communications Officer
Ruth D. Kahn is a partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP where she specializes in the defense of complex civil litigation and toxic tort litigation. Ms. Kahn is actively involved with a variety of matters arising from the use of industrial chemicals in occupational settings to the release of contaminants to the environment. She is experienced in analyzing the effects of, and liability for, an incident, and in quantifying damages. She has been identified by the Daily Journal Corporation as one of the Top Women Litigators in California. Ms. Kahn is a respected negotiator. She routinely handles hearings and trials in state and federal courts. Ms. Kahn obtained a B.S. from the University of Colorado and her J.D. from Case Western Reserve University. She has been a member of WLALA since the early 1990s and has served on the Board of Governors since 2006.
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