Diamondbacks Lawyer Leaves Team to Launch Diversity Drive

Nona Lee, the only openly gay Black woman in the executive tier of Major League Baseball, has resigned as chief legal officer of the Arizona Diamondbacks to pursue her passion of diversity and equity.

Lee has formed Truth DEI, a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultancy catering to companies, sports teams, and other organizations. She already has client in the Diamondbacks, where she spent 22 years, 17 as the top in-house lawyer.

“I am, and will always be, a lawyer,” said Lee, a Los Angeles native and former college basketball player at Pepperdine University. “I don’t think I will ever stop practicing altogether. That being said, my passion and focus now is definitely on DEI.”

Lee said she hopes her nearly three decades of legal practice will help her in the next chapter of her career. She was an associate at two Phoenix-based law firms and worked as an associate general counsel for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns before becoming the Diamondbacks’ general counsel in 2005.

During her time with the Diamondbacks, Lee used her position as one of the highest-ranking LGBTQ members of an MLB club’s front office to become an advocate for change. She chaired a “Jedi Council” started by the Diamondbacks to promote justice, equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Lee is “a local and national role model due to her expertise, leadership, and internal rise,” said Derrick Hall, president and CEO of the Diamondbacks, in a statement.

Caleb Jay, general counsel for the team, confirmed via email that he will now lead the club’s legal department. The Diamondbacks named Summer Comstock an associate general counsel last year.

Changing Times

Baseball itself has made inroads on inclusion. A female player, Kelsie Whitmore, made history this month by playing in a game for an MLB-affiliated minor league team. But Lee said she believes the sport can do more.

She said she was disappointed to see Michele Meyer-Shipp, a fellow lawyer and former human resources and diversity chief for the league, leave in January to become CEO for Dress for Success Worldwide, a nonprofit that helps working women from low-income backgrounds.

Lee called Dress for Success a “wonderful organization” and said she was excited for Meyer-Shipp’s new position. The league hasn’t replaced her, although Lee noted MLB’s “DEI efforts are ongoing” under league executives Billy Bean and Justin Reyes.

Lee said she is hopeful that as more women enter MLB’s executive and coaching ranks, a female player like Whitmore one day will take the field in the big leagues.

Big Law and Corporate America also have work to do when it comes to DEI, said Lee, whose mother was a legal secretary.

She said she doesn’t put much stock in the oft cited rationale by some firms that their inclusion efforts have lagged due to in-house legal departments hiring away their most diverse lawyers.

“As organizations, we are each responsible for our own DEI metrics, we cannot blame our failure on others,” said Lee, adding that such arguments show a lack of understanding or desire to embrace diversity as a core value.

Lee said in her experience firms lacking in diversity are not investing the time and resources necessary to recruit and retain those candidates. Diverse lawyers and employees, usually the minority in a workplace, need to be welcomed, valued, included and treated equitably if they’re expected to stick around, she said.

“Diversity doesn’t just happen,” Lee said. “It requires education, strategy, cultural shift and commitment, a focus on employee engagement, and a commitment to prioritizing employee well-being.”

Avoiding Pitfalls

Lee is a supporter of diversity mandates if they are “tied to cultural values and are rooted in strategy and accountability,” she said.

Diversity Lab’s Mansfield Rule certification program for firms and in-house legal departments is as an example of a strategic initiative that has proven successful when implemented, Lee said.

Mandates in and of themselves, however, aren’t sustainable unless backed by an “authentic buy-in” from organizations to support “transformative change,” she said.

Coca-Cola Co.’s decision to scrap a high-profile diversity and inclusion protocol that included race-based staffing requirements for its outside counsel has been mentioned by some lawyers as a measure that went too far and exposed the soft drink giant to potential discrimination claims.

While Lee doesn’t have first-hand knowledge of what led Coca-Cola to abandon a program pitched by its former general counsel, she suspects that “corporate leadership and ownership may not have been aware of or in support of” the policy prior to its implementation.

She called Coca-Cola’s response “unfortunate,” given that the intention of the program was to promote and require accountability on diversity and equity by the company’s U.S. legal services providers.

“People can be resistant to change, especially change they don’t understand,” Lee said. “That’s why organizational education about DEI, and its benefits, is so critical.”