Shonette Gaston

About Shonette Gaston

Innovative and confident Chief Operating Officer with a dedicated focus on optimizing enterprise-wide performance, productivity and profitability. For more than 25 years, I have built upon previous successes as a decisive management and business leader who develops and executes strategies to operationalize overall vision, implement policies, build top-performing teams and optimize performance and efficiency. My comprehensive administrative leadership spans long-term planning, finance, HR, facilities, support and marketing — all in support of executive decision-making geared for rapid growth, service delivery improvements, and cost reduction.I have verifiable, repeatable and industry-leading success in globalization, performance oversight, and practice management through: Proven Leadership: Recognized for leading and cultivating multiple teams of more than to achieve peak performance, developing firm-wide training and development programs and enhancing overall culture and staff satisfaction. Strategic Pricing, Legal Project Management, Practice Group Management and Client Relations: front line driver of business management through analytics with a concentrated focus on client relationships and delivery of client predictability - teaching teams how to think like the client. Process Improvement and Cost Efficiency: Adept at providing and standardizing tools and processes to allow executive leadership to better analyze and optimize utilization, enhance profitability and shift reactive, short-term thinking into more strategic, long-term business and relationship development. Project Management: Hands-on experience spearheading complex initiatives on time and within budgets and scopes, from designing new corporate offices to enhancing financial controls, outsourcing, centralizing support services and more.My span of expertise includes: Administration Operations Team Leadership Training & Development Support Services Facilities Management Productivity Business Case Development Presentation & Public Speaking Cultural Alignment System Automation

Experience

1. Chief Operating Officer

   Blank Rome LLP

   Aug 2021 — Present · New York, NY, US

Education

• Fordham University School of Law

  Certificate, Structural Issues in Law Firm Management

• Kellogg Executive Education

  O'Melveny Leadership Institute

  2010

• University of Maryland Global Campus

  Bachelor's Degree, Management Studies

  2006

• The Wharton School

  Graduate Certificate, Business Data Analytics

  2018 — 2018

• University of Maryland Global Campus

  MBA, Finance, General

  2006 — 2009

Skills

• Business Profitability
• System Automation
• Legal Research
• Corporate Law
• Litigation
• Project Management
• Performance Management
• Operations
• Facilities Management
• Government
• Employment Law
• Continual Process Improvement
• Legal Compliance
• Policy
• Support Services
• Mediation
• Business Case Development
• Cost Savings
• Cultural Alignment
• Productivity Improvement
• Corporate Governance
• Public Speaking
• Presentations
• Slas
• Training & Development
• Litigation Support
• Practice Management
• Cross-Functional Team Leadership
• Administration
• Intellectual Property