By Christina Schweighofer
When Autumn Moore, JD 2010, enrolled at the USC Gould School of Law, she knew she would fit right in; the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusiveness had long struck her as outstanding. But nothing validated her expectations more than a legal ethics class she took as a 1L with Camille Gear Rich, Professor of Law and Sociology.
“To see someone who looked like me, a Black female, and whose work is on the cutting edge, dealing with race, culture and gender — it made me feel empowered,” she says.
An employment attorney with Clark Hill in Chicago, Moore has always oriented herself to strong women and drawn on the connecting power of shared human experiences. Raised by a single mother from age 10 on, she identified as a young person with Jane Austen’s female characters — “they are whip-smart and funny,” she says — and later with women in law who juggle career and family as a matter of course and without much ado.
Among these lawyers are Professor Rich and Moore’s last employers in Los Angeles, USC Gould alum Melanie Ross, JD 1990 and Lora Silverman. Moore says she took her cues from all three women for her first solo trial last year in L.A. Six months pregnant, she fought the case over three days and won, validating an employer’s classification of a vendor as an independent contractor rather than an employee.
For her, the experience was as much about legal matters as about female empowerment. “Obtaining gender equality isn’t just saying treat us equally,” she says. “It is showing that we can be great attorneys and try cases even while carrying a child, that we can practice law and still be great moms. We don’t have to choose.”
To prove her point even further, Moore recently took on another big commitment as regional chair for the USC Gould Alumni Association in Chicago. “We’re pretty far from L.A.,” she says, “but Chicago is a great place to live and work, and I wanted to help solidify USC’s presence out here and hopefully attract more alumni to the area.”
Her programming plans for the local Gould community include connecting with alumni from other USC schools and USC sports viewing parties. For those less passionate about sports, she wants to schedule arts-themed, family-friendly events.
Moore herself, whose daughter was born earlier this year, has certainly been taking advantage of the local arts scene since moving to Chicago this summer to be closer to her husband’s family. (Michael Moore, also a Trojan, graduated with a master’s degree in engineering in 2009.) An exhibition she recently saw at the Art Institute, “Charles White: A Retrospective,” reminded her of why she enjoys the work of African-American artists. “At the end of the day,” she says, “it speaks to a shared sense of humanity and emotion that we all experience regardless of skin color.”
