ABOUT

Kit believes that despite sincere attempts to make workplaces fair for everyone, successfully doing so will only be achieved when we change the hidden systems that perpetuate unfairness. 
 

By creating Hard Stop, Kit and Lauren are exposing those hidden systems and teaching employees how to change them.  Kit, a third-generation lawyer, has used her decades of professional experience as fuel for her work to change outdated and harmful systems.  She served as the Chicago Director of Reed Smith’s Women’s Initiative for eight years, where she learned crucial lessons about systemic challenges to women’s advancement and developed a life-long passion for data-driven solutions to outdated systems that reinforce bias.  When Kit was promoted to Global Director of Reed Smith’s Women’s Initiative Network, she had the opportunity to apply what she had learned on a global scale.   
 

Kit is a frequent speaker on practical solutions to complicated problems in the workplace, like the chronic under-reporting of sexual harassment, and its impact on both employees and employers. 
 

As CEO of Hard Stop, she is dedicated to providing practical resources and support to employees who want to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace. 

In her career, Lauren has witnessed and experienced workplace sexual violence. 

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Initially, and as most people do, she accepted this problem as an unfortunate but survivable component of an unchangeable system. However, after leaving a job to escape an unsafe work environment, she realized that inaction and the idea of the next generation inheriting this working world was unthinkable. Lauren also knew she was not alone; every woman with whom she shared her story had also survived a nightmarish harassment scenario, which led her to believe that an inequitable system impacting all companies and industries was at the root of this problem.

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Looking for solutions to change the future of the workplace, Lauren investigated the motivations that drive companies to isolate survivors and protect the perpetrators of sexual harassment and assault. Her research led her to Kit, and the two mapped out the hidden, pervasive system that incorrectly paints survivors as enemies of their companies.

 

As COO of Hard Stop, she now seeks to make this eminently fixable system known to workers and survivors everywhere.