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New York Litigation partner Paula Anderson was named by the Council of Urban Professionals (CUP) as a CUP Catalyst Change Agent in Law. This annual award recognizes diverse leaders in the legal sector who have achieved extraordinary success in business while making a significant impact on their community through nonprofit or public sector service, mentorship and philanthropy.

In recognition of her achievement, Anderson was profiled in a short video produced by CUP, where she discussed pursuing her passion as an advocate for justice; becoming an instrument of change by mentoring associates, promoting diversity within the legal industry and advising clients on how they can be catalysts for change; and empowering individuals through education. As a concrete example of the latter, Anderson recounted her interaction with a young man who worked at a hotel where she was staying in Sierra Leone, during a trip to participate in a think tank to advise the local government on criminalizing the enlistment of child soldiers. This young man had lost both his parents and was running errands at the hotel to earn money to go to school. Moved by his story, Anderson pledged to pay for his education, and today he has earned both an undergraduate and a master’s degree. Anderson also recounted how her work advising clients on fighting corruption abroad contributed to socioeconomic change in some of the world’s most impoverished nations.

Founded in 2007, CUP is a leadership development organization with over 1,500 individual members, a national network of 20,000, and 70 corporate partners spanning the financial services, law, media & entertainment, digital & technology, non-profit and public sectors.