Stephanie Baron
You currently serve on The Associated’s Lawyer’s Committee. What other leadership roles have you held within The Associated system? Why is being involved important to you?
After completing the YLC program, I held a variety of roles on various young leadership committees. Soon after completing YLC, I co-chaired the Young Business Roundtable Committee and helped to coordinate networking events for 60-100 Baltimore Jewish professionals. More recently, in addition to my involvement with the Lawyer’s Committee, I am a member of the Jewish Professional Women’s Committee. I am also on the Board of Directors for Pearlstone and have served in that role since 2016. Being an active participant and giving back to our community has always been very important to me. My family is committed to active participation in the community. My parents instilled those values in my sister and me, and I certainly hope to raise my children with the same values. I have met so many wonderful people through my involvement in The Associated and have had the opportunity to engage in both personally and professionally rewarding events and activities. We are very lucky to have such a vibrant, active Jewish community and I have enjoyed being involved in The Associated in a variety of different ways over the years.
Your primary area of practice is Employment Law at Miles & Stockbridge. Please tell us how COVID-19 is affecting the clients you work with.
COVID has had a profound impact on nearly all of my clients in some form or another, requiring them to modify the way that they do business and, in many cases, how they interact with their employees, customers and vendors. Initially, like the rest of the world, many of my clients were scrambling to understand the new laws passed to respond to COVID and to figure out how to accommodate employees’ working from home. Over time, many clients have had to deal with issues of furloughs and even layoffs. I have been advising clients how to respond when an employee or visitor reports a positive COVID diagnosis and what their obligations are to other employees and individuals who may have been on their worksite. Some clients are still primarily working remotely but starting to look ahead and plan for a return to the office. I have been working with them to establish return to work guidelines and training for employees. There are federal, state and local laws to consider and many of them are changing on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis, which is very complicated for business owners.
