Each year, the Ms. JD Honors recognize exceptional members of the community in connection with its annual conference. This year, the Eighth Annual Conference, Superwomen JDs, will take place at New York University School of Law, with the awards reception taking place on the evening of Thursday, Feb. 18 and the conference taking place on Friday, Feb. 19.
The Ms. JD Awards Committee was absolutely overwhelmed by the caliber of this year’s nominees, so much so that it had a difficult time deciding which amazing women and men to honor. The quality of your nominations demonstrates just how passionately the community feels about recognizing leaders, and it was inspired by each and every nomination. On that note, the JD Awards Committee are pleased to announce the Ms. JD Honors Awardees and give you a preview of their stories.
Haddonfield’s Dr. Ilise Feitshans will receive the Road Less Traveled Award. The Road Less Traveled Award is given to a woman who is using her J.D. in a unique, non-traditional way to pursue an issue or cause that she is passionate about. The nominees need not be in legal practice.
Feitshansis an attorney, global health activist and international diplomat. She has created health and safety protections throughout the world, in places where there was no existing roadmap for policy, no precedents to follow, and no guiding law. She assisted in writing policy for confidential AIDS testing for minors for the New York City Board of Health (1988); lawful uses of genetic information for the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) Ethical Legal and Social Implications (“ELSI”) working group of the Human Genome Project (1993); University of Denver Commission on Preventive Law (1997) regarding positive incentives for corporate compliance programs to address violence in the workplace; and accessible mammograms for women in wheelchairs (NJDDC 2003).
Feitshans was the first person, male or female, to earn a doctorate in the emerging law of nanotechnology at the Geneva School of Diplomacy. During the completion of her doctorate degree, Feitshans won a grant from the European Science Foundation to study at the Center for BioNano Interactions at the University College of Dublin, where she remains the only lawyer to have studied. She currently serves as an expert on the law of nanotechnology for the Council of Europe, where she examines the interface between emerging technologies and human rights laws and also advances efforts to obtain more ratifications for their new law preventing Medicrime.
