Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Leading Across Generations: Insights from Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-1-25
Tue, 01 Apr 2025
In this episode, Amber Walsh, Partner at McGuireWoods LLP, shares insights on working across generations in the modern workplace. She discusses the challenges and opportunities of leading multigenerational teams, fostering collaboration, and leveraging diverse perspectives to drive innovation and success.
Chapter 1: Who are the speakers and what is this episode about?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business podcast. Thrilled today to be joined by Amber Walsh. Amber's on the executive committee at McGuire Woods, has practiced at the intersection of healthcare and private equity.
She's going to talk to us today about something that is more and more a piece of the workplace in teams and more, which is intergenerational teams working amongst different generations at work and a lot more. Amber, I know you'd mapped out some talking points in this, some thoughts on this.
Why don't you tell us what you're thinking about it and why this is top of mind and maybe walk us through your core talking points on you sort of intergenerational workforces and teams.
Yeah, Scott, thank you. I love this topic, and it's really front of mind for me for a variety of reasons. But having just come back from a really fun all-attorney retreat by our firm – That, as you know, is very unique. Most large law firms have partner retreats every year, every other year.
But very few firms do an all-attorney retreat of every single attorney in the firm, every office, wherever they sit. We have not done that as a firm in more than 15 years. It's very unusual. But it was really fun to see everyone together crossing just like the rest of the workforce in our firm. We also have five generations of lawyers.
And it was really top of mind for me as we were planning the content, planning the socializing, planning what is important and impactful and meaningful to talk about when you have five generations of attorneys You and I literally have colleagues now who were born after 2000, which is just absolutely wild and really, really cool.
But that's why it's really top of mind is because I just came off of this experience and also happened to be the person in the room who smack dab in the middle of that group. I am right in the middle of the five generations and as a classic Gen Xer. And so I have a lot of different perspectives in both the generations before me and the generations after me at the firm.
And that's why I'm so interested in the topic.
But let me ask you a question. You would be at the firm itself, assuming people age from 25 to at the very oldest, I would think 80-ish, you've got three generations at the firm, I would think. Because Because you wouldn't have anybody young enough to be a fourth generation or probably still practicing long enough, although some people might be of counsel, to be a fifth generation.
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Chapter 2: Why is working across generations important in today's workplace?
And where are you most focused? Where do you take this next in terms of multi-generation? You're right in the middle, as you said, 100%. Where do you take this next? Where do you take this thinking next and how does it apply?
Yeah, I'm glad you asked that. I am thinking a lot about the way that we make our teams and the way that we choose even the firm committees and firm leadership and making sure that as we think about the different perspectives, we're also getting different generational perspectives and that when we put people in all of these leadership positions and in all of these thinking bodies within the firm,
that you have some really young perspectives as well, and you're not just hitting that middle bandwidth. So that's something that's really top of mind for me right now is to take these things that we know to be true. We see them within the working teams, but you also do that within some of the firm governance. So that would be kind of, for me personally,
That next level of really, really capitalizing on the benefit of this broad range that we have in the firm right now.
No, I think absolutely fascinating. And Amber, as always, thank you for joining us. And thank you for your depth of sort of thought on these issues. It's really refreshing and amazing. Amber Walsh, again, Executive Committee Leader at McGuire Wood, just a phenomenal leader. Thank you for joining us today in the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
Thanks, Scott.
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