Center for Excellence in Decisionmaking Roundtable Discussion EARLE SCHWARZ, Interviewer
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arle Schwarz spent time with four of his favorite people to talk about one of his favorite projects - Center for Excellence in Decision-making (CEMD). All interviewees have been involved in the CEDM for a period of time - Judge Bernice Donald currently on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Judge Thomas Parker sitting on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, Dean Katherine Schaffzin who is the current dean of the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, and Terrence Reed, Managing Director at FedEx and current President of the Center for Excellence in Decision-making. This interview delves into the CEDM’s history, purpose, and future.
History SCHWARZ: Judge Donald, rumor is that you coined the title, or the name the Center for Excellence in Decision-making, and you were involved in the Center from the time it was an idea or a glint in our eyes. Help us understand the history and your involvement, and why this project is so near and dear to your heart. JUDGE DONALD: I will say first and foremost the opportunity to work with incredibly passionate, distinguished, and committed individuals is the first thing that attracted me. I go back to the beginning of our journey to explore and learn about the term implicit bias, which we incorporated as a part of a Memphis Bar Association project under one of our really visionary MBA leaders, Earle Schwarz. We invited a trainer to come in and make a presentation. We recognized that as the legal profession is one of the least diverse professions in the country, that we, as lawyers, have an obligation legally, ethically and I believe, morally to do everything we can to make the profession a profession that is more diverse and just. So, we invited Ms. Kimberly Papillon, who was our trainer, to come to Memphis and do several days of training for a variety of groups of lawyers. Because we are such optimists, there was a question on the front end, I think by Earle Schwarz: If we end up with excess funds from this venture, what do we do with these funds? I think lawyers and judges are natural problem solvers, and it occurred to me in that moment that we should broaden this opportunity. We should expose more people. Knowledge is always, in my view, a shared 22
commodity, or should be. And I thought that we ought to impact the larger legal landscape in our community, if not beyond. I'm mindful that sometimes when the term race is interjected in a term, that it can become a charged word, and it can cause some unintended reactions. But this group always wanted to be inclusive, and we wanted to build bridges, not build barriers, or increase barriers. To me a diverse institution, an equitable institution is one that provides a benefit to all participants, and one that seeks to respect and enlarge the dignity of individuals, and one that strives for excellence, a model that I thought we ought to strive for. And so, to answer Earle’s question, I said, we will create a center, and we will call it the Center for Excellence in Decision-making because all of the things we do, the decisions that we make are intentional. And diversity and inclusion have to be intentional. Equity has to be intentional. And bias reduction must be intentional. It
Judge Donald talks about the formation of CEDM
