Leading the Way Award
In 2018, this award was combined with the Ohio Women's Bar Association's Founders' Award, named after the twenty-six women, along with the first class of founding members, and recognized an outstanding woman attorney who contributed to the legal profession. Together, the OWBA and OWBF continue to honor outstanding women lawyers who demonstrate exemplary leadership.
Leading the Way Award Recipients:
2019 -- Helen Mac Murray (Mac Murray & Shuster LLP)
2018 -- Marilyn McClure-Demers (Nationwide)
2017 -- Michelle Roe (Thirty-One Gifts)
2016 -- The Honorable Betty Montgomery
2015 -- Jeanette Knudsen (The J.M. Smucker Company)
2014 -- Justice Judith Lanzinger (Supreme Court of Ohio)
2013 -- Susan Jacobson (Cardinal Health)
Founders' Award Recipients:
2017 -- Yvette McGee Brown (Jones Day)
2015 -- Judge Benita Y. Pearson (U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio)
2013 -- Deborah Platt Majoras (Procter & Gamble)
2011 -- Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor (Supreme Court of Ohio)
2009 -- Judge Mary Jane Trapp (Eleventh District Court of Appeals)
2007 -- Holly Taft Sydlow (U.S. Attorney's Office) & Kerin Lyn Kaminski (Giffen & Kaminski, LLC)
2006 -- Joyce D. Edelman (Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur, LLP)
2005 -- Mickey Rabin
2004 -- Sandra J. Anderson (Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease, LLP)
2003 -- Magistrate Judge Vernelis K. Armstrong (U.S. District Court, Norther District of Ohio, Western Division)
2002 -- Louise P. Dempsey (CSU's Cleveland-Marshall College of Law)
2001 -- Barbara J. Smith (McDonald, Hopkins, Burke & Haber Co., L.P.A.)
2000 -- Magistrate Judge Patricia A. Hemann (U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio)
1999 -- Pamela N. Hultin (McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Haiman Co., L.P.A.)
1998 -- The Justice Alice Robie Resnick Award of Distinction (Supreme Court of Ohio)