Joanna Grossman
Professor of Law
Southern Methodist University

Professor Grossman is the inaugural Ellen K. Solender Endowed Chair in Women and the Law.

After graduating with distinction from Stanford Law School, Professor Grossman began her career as a clerk for Ninth Circuit Judge William A. Norris. She also worked as staff counsel at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C. as a recipient of the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship. In addition, she practiced law at the Washington, D.C. firm of Williams & Connolly LLP.

Prior to coming to SMU Dedman School of Law, Professor Grossman taught at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University where she served as the Sidney and Walter Siben Distinguished Professor of Family Law.

Professor Grossman writes extensively on sex discrimination and workplace equality, with a particular focus on issues such as sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination. Her book, NINE TO FIVE: HOW GENDER, SEX AND SEXUALITY CONTINUE TO DEFINE THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE (Cambridge, 2016), provides a lively and accessible discussion of contemporary cases and events that show gender continues to define the work experience in both predictable and surprising ways. She is also an expert in family law, especially parentage law and the state regulation of marriage. She is co-author (with Lawrence M. Friedman) of INSIDE THE CASTLE: LAW AND THE FAMILY IN 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN (Princeton University Press, 2011), a comprehensive social history of U.S. family law. She has published articles in Stanford Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, and the Yale Journal on Law and Feminism, among other places. Grossman is the coeditor of GENDER EQUALITY: DIMENSIONS OF WOMEN’S EQUAL CITIZENSHIP (Cambridge University Press, 2009), an interdisciplinary anthology that explores persistent gaps between formal commitments to gender equality and the reality of women’s lives, and FAMILY LAW IN NEW YORK (Carolina Academic Press, 2015). She is also a regular columnist for Justia’s Verdict, an elected member of the American Law Institute, and the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her work on parentage law.

Kristin Dickerson
Emmy Award Winning Reporter
NBC 5

Kristin Dickerson is an Emmy award-winning reporter and weekend evening anchor for NBC 5. She’s always looking to tell stories about normal people doing incredible things in their community.

For the last 12 years, Kristin worked as an anchor/reporter/photographer in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She earned her first Emmy for her series on faith; interviewing people of various religions while focusing on how their faith guides their lives.

Finding fulfillment through creativity, Kristin has also earned a variety of odd accomplishments: she rode (and fell off of) Oklahoma’s largest Holstein bull, survived noodling for catfish, skydiving, scuba diving (later receiving a wedding proposal while diving in the Florida Keys), cycled 160 miles in two days for Multiple Sclerosis and rappelled off two high-rise buildings for charity.

Outside of work, she and her husband are avid gardeners, once (now retired) chicken raisers, and random critter feeders. They’ve traveled to India three times (two of which included spending the first week with only the clothes on their backs).

Kristin left her hometown, Las Cruces, New Mexico, to attend Oklahoma State University. As a freshman, Kristin walked-on the women’s equestrian team; as a senior, she earned the sport’s top honor at that time: the AQHA Highpoint Western Rider.