Deborah Enix-Ross, senior adviser to the International Dispute Resolution Group and a member of the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Council, became president-elect of the American Bar Association today at the end of the association’s 2021 Hybrid Annual Meeting.

In August 2022, she will take over as president of the world’s largest voluntary association of lawyers, judges, and other legal professionals becoming the ABA’s 11th woman president. Detroit lawyer Reginald M. Turner became ABA president today and will serve a one-year term.

“The collective influence of the ABA has the power to change the legal profession, the justice system, and society for the better,” Ms. Enix-Ross said. “I am proud to be a part of that change.”

Ms. Enix-Ross has been a part of the association’s leadership for years, serving as chair of the ABA’s policymaking House of Delegates and as chair of the ABA Center for Human Rights and ABA Section Officers Conference. As chair of the ABA International Law Section, she co-founded the Women’s Interest Network and worked with the International Bar Association to create its Women’s Interest Group. She also led an international legal exchange delegation to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Ghana, where she delivered an address commemorating the country’s 50th anniversary of independence.

In addition to her ABA leadership roles, MS. Enix-Ross is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and has served as vice president of the World Justice Project, and is former vice chair of the International Bar Association’s Bar Issues Commission, as well as the ABA’s former representative to the IBA. Ms. Enix-Ross was appointed by the U.S. Departments of Commerce and State as one of the original eight U.S. members of the trilateral NAFTA Advisory Committee on Private Commercial Disputes. She is a member of the Advisory Committee of the New York Law School Alternative Dispute Resolution Skills Program.

Ms. Enix-Ross earned a B.A. in broadcast journalism from the University of Miami and J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law. She also received a diploma in comparative law from the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law of Columbia University and a certificate in international law from the London School of Economics.

The ABA is the largest voluntary association of lawyers in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.