Deborah Volberg Pagnotta is an AV-rated lawyer, and the founder and president of Interfacet, Inc., a company that provides services to help organizations avoid costly litigation associated with sexual harassment, cultural miscommunication, discrimination and other employment-related issues. Services include training, investigation and mediation.
Deborah began conducting workshops on sexual harassment in 1988, shortly after the Supreme Court first recognized sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination. She has provided hundreds of trainings on a wide range of employment issues to myriad organizations and groups, including financial institutions, law enforcement personnel and fire departments, municipalities, universities and law schools, healthcare practitioners, lawyers, insurance carriers, and not-for-profits. She has conducted numerous neutral fact-finding investigations and has successfully mediated many employment disputes, including complex, multiparty controversies.
Prior to founding Interfacet, Inc., Deborah was the employment practices partner at Kirkpatrick & Silverberg LLP, a top-rated New York law firm (now merged), where she litigated on behalf of both employees and employers, and counseled businesses on best practices. Prior to entering the private sector, she served as Director of the Westchester Regional Office of the New York State Department of Law, where she supervised a highly successful mediation program, resolving thousands of disputes yearly. She also served as Director of Legal Affairs for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, managing a large staff of lawyers, paralegals and support personnel, and developing the agency's sexual harassment policy and complaint procedure.
Admitted to the New York and California bars in 1982, Deborah founded and co-chaired the Employment Committee of the New York State Women's Bar Association, and also chaired the Gender Issues Committee of the Westchester Women's Bar Association. She has written extensively on employment issues for legal and industry media. Recent articles include "Three White Ducks, One Brown: Diversity at the Workplace," published by the New York State Bar Association, Winter 2002. She lectures frequently on employment issues and will be co-presenting a seminar on Human Resource Audits in White Plains, NY on May 21, 2003.
Deborah received her law degree from Hastings College of the Law, University of California, in 1981, and completed her undergraduate studies in anthropology and linguistics at Brandeis University.
