Ivy Kagan Bierman

Nearly two years into the national focus on sexual harassment in the workplace and gender equality issues, Loeb & Loeb LLP’s Ivy Kagan Bierman is at the forefront of the #MeToo movement.

A labor and employment specialist in the entertainment field, Bierman is an outside advisor to the Commission on Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, chaired by Anita Hill. Bierman also holds a leadership role with TIME’S UP. She she is a member of the group’s Legal, Legislative and Policy Committee on Sexual Harassment and Gender Parity.

“My role has primarily been to basically help the other women who are involved with TIME’S UP in really understanding the legal issues surrounding sexual harassment and gender discrimination,” she said.

Her work in that capacity got the attention of Susan Sprung, the associate national executive director of the Producers Guild of America, who had Bierman help on an initiative aimed at training independent production companies on workplace expectations.

“It was fantastic. It was really a great training we put together there,” Bierman said of the April event. “The goal is to provide very practical training that independent production companies don’t always have because they can’t afford it.”

The product of an artistic family. Her father was a jazz trumpeter, her mother was a ballet dancer and her brother is a jazz pianist. Bierman says her work is the perfect intersection of her interests: the law and entertainment.

“I was always very drawn to artists,” Bierman said. “When I came out to Los Angeles 35 years ago, I knew I wanted to be a labor lawyer and I also knew I really wanted to focus on the entertainment industry.”

Bierman is also a go-to lawyer when studios and Hollywood institutions are faced with claims that employees or contractors engaged in inappropriate workplace behavior.

In the last year, she helped counsel the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when it investigated allegations of sexual harassment, counseled TV show creator Jill Soloway when actor Jeffery Tambor was accused of acting inappropriately on the set of Transparent and consulted for AMC when actor Chis Hardwick was accused of sexual assault.

— Nicolas Sonnenburg