From all of us at OIG, we wish you and yours a very happy holiday season and an amazing 2023!

End of Year Message from Amy Oppenheimer

Dear Colleagues, Clients, Friends and Family of OIG,

As 2022 comes to a close we at OIG are grateful to all of you.

We are grateful to our clients who trust us to fairly assess the situations they find themselves in.

• We are grateful to our colleagues who share their wisdom and friendship with us.
• We are grateful to our friends and family who give us support, love and solace through the year.
• And we are particularly grateful to our employees, who work hard to enable us to do our work.

Finding a way to work together yet apart in these years of Covid has not always been easy. We have seen workplace and school complaints increase, as the differences between people seem heightened and many of us feel fragile and alone. We are lucky to have each other, to get through another year, to have interesting and meaningful work, perhaps even to thrive.

2023 will bring changes at OIG. I am stepping aside as managing partner as Vida steps in. Her many years of experience at law firms makes her uniquely qualified. We all appreciate her kindness, her calm demeanor, and her considerable wisdom.

I plan to spend more time mentoring our attorneys and staff, doing strategic planning, and working on the areas I am passionate about – training (including one-on-one coaching, which I love to do) and conflict resolution.

Tina will continue to be our marketing maven, speaking and arranging for others to speak and write, while maintaining her own investigations caseload. Zaneta, in addition to her investigations, will be working with Ilona Turner – who is joining us as a fulltime senior attorney – on our mediation and conflict resolution practice. We are so very happy to have her. Alezah will be leading our Title IX investigations and hearing officer work.

On the admin side, Cody will move from being an office manager to an office administrator, taking on a larger management role. Lily has taken on many of the things Cody used to do and our new hire in the admin department, Tammie, is helping both of them and us. We’ve added a writer – Cindy Tucey, and continue to rely on Jacob, who has been with us for years.

Things are humming along.

We continue to grow our team incrementally, focusing on quality more than quantity. We have added amazing senior attorneys to our ranks – Tracey Merwise and Jack Morse – as well as some recent law schools grads – Maria Walker, Jeanette Boykins and Neil Bautista. Look for a few more additions in the new year.

A big shout out to those who have been with us for a while and are the backbone of our work – Madeline, Danielle, Ashlyn, Gorev, and Garrett. And our of counsel, Renee and Sandy.

Rather than send gifts this year, we have made donations to three organizations supported by our staff and clients, including:

Many of us wanted to give to our local food banks. Rather than choose one, we are giving to Feeding America (fka, Second Harvest), an umbrella organization for all food banks in the United States. This group works with national food producers to create donations that are distributed locally through food banks across the country.

Bay Area Crisis Nursery prevents child abuse and neglect through providing supportive services to Bay Area families. This includes short-term residential care and emergency childcare services.

The Impact Fund provides grants for public interest litigation that benefits a large number of people, leads to significant law reform, and raises public consciousness.

We hope each of you give to the extent you can to organizations you support. My father taught me to donate 10% of my income every year. Over the years since his death I have wondered if the 10% was supposed to be before or after taxes. This summer I got my answer. I found my grandparent’s budget from 1948 and there was the line item for donations. It was for just over 10% of their gross earning. It’s a tall order, but a righteous one. After all, I was also taught a person’s job is to repair the world and seek to make a heaven on earth. That’s an even taller order and is something we can’t do alone. Sharing what we have is surely a good start.

Thanks to each of you, especially those of you who made it to the end of this missive.

Warm wishes for a happy and healthy 2023.

Best Regards,

Amy Oppenheimer