garnered thus far through litigation and my experience in business, particularly regarding exposure to operations and oversight of employment practices, human resources and risk management. I found a huge gap in small to mid-sized businesses that did not have full-time human resource departments or access to legal oversight. As such, I formed AH Consulting Group and became an outsourced human resource and legal department for small to mid-sized local businesses. It was more transactional in nature, which meant that I could do my work from anywhere and at any time. The only start-up cost I incurred was a highly functional laptop, business cards and professional liability insurance. While I was successfully developing customised policies and procedures and employee handbooks unique to the businesses I was representing, I also facilitated recruiting and safely separating employees. Additionally, I began performing investigations related to claims in the workplace for any genre of harassment. After one particularly nasty and intense sexual harassment investigation, my client, a city, asked for me to consult almost full-time to assess employment practices across their entire organisation. Basically, I was on site, auditing all aspects of their employment practices and making suggestions and recommendations for implementation. Eventually, that same client hired me full-time as a city attorney to implement my recommendations and to oversee the human resources department and their risk manager. This city had few residents and was run more like a business, which also gave me additional insights into business practices and operations. After working at the city and having worked in litigation, a for-profit business, it was now time for me to explore the business of non-profit organisations and return to my initial passion and concern for victims of domestic violence. Hence began Chapter Four. Having graduated with massive amounts of debt from my undergraduate university and law school education which took 17 years to pay off, I was ready to give back to my community full-time. I had spent a significant amount of time on the board of a domestic violence shelter and had been involved in many philanthropic activities with my children over the years, but I wanted to understand the actual business side of the non-profit world. In 2013, I began working as the outreach and education provider for 1736 Family Crisis Center (1736) and coordinated all community response and relations on behalf of the agency. In that role, I prepared and presented educational presentations on issues of domestic violence, youth homelessness and human trafficking to wide-ranging audiences, including health and human service providers, service clubs and government officials. Through these efforts, I helped raise public awareness of these critical issues, advocated for stronger community collaboration and provided linkages to 1736’s various programs and resources for homeless and at-risk youth, homeless veterans, victims of domestic violence, victims of labour and sex trafficking, and low-income families. During my time at 1736 I had the opportunity to help create a federally funded street outreach program that focused on homeless youths between the ages of 16 and 26. It was so inspiring and impactful that it only confirmed my desire to start a foundation of my own. I left 1736 in December 2019, just before the pandemic hit. Chapter 5 is where I am currently. During the first two years of the pandemic, and while I was slowly building out the concepts for my foundation, I agreed to work part-time as a fractional general counsel for Technology Management Concepts, a sales and consulting firm based in El Segundo, California. I had maintained my relationship with them as an employment practices consultant since 2008. Additionally, I continued to handle the employment practices at Donahue & Horrow LLC, a firm handling bad faith insurance and medical malpractice that is also located in El Segundo, California. What I was not expecting was for my involvement to grow in both businesses as much as it did. The rules regarding employment practices in light of the pandemic were changing daily. Having always had a passion for operations, I became an integral part of TMC and began to oversee the outside marketing firm for D&H in addition to the employment practices that had always been my specialty. At TMC, the business avenue for selling and implementing Microsoft business solutions that enhanced the ability for virtual communications was doubling WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM | AUG 2022 MY LEGAL LIFE - AVIGAL HORROW 24 Over many brainstorming sessions with my husband, we tried to capture how to utilise the skills I had garnered thus far through litigation and my experience in business,
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