Goldberg Segalla names Berdzik first woman to firm-wide management committee

Listen to this article

Caroline Berdzik was elevated to Goldberg Segalla’s firm-wide management committee Tuesday, becoming the first woman to serve on the board that oversees the firm’s 21 offices and 400-plus attorneys.

Berdzik, an equity partner, also chairs the Employment and Labor and Healthcare practice groups. She joins fellow partners Al D’Aquino and Joe Hanna of Buffalo, Chris Belter of Manhattan, and David Brown of Greensboro, N.C. on the committee.

Berdzik called her nomination and subsequent election to this position “very humbling.”

“To me, I always want to help others and work on doing good and that’s one of the reasons why I love being an attorney. I just do that as an extension of service,” Berdzik said. “I’m a very service minded person. I’ve always been involved in organizations and somehow always worked my way up through leadership. I guess with the way I do things and how I give 110 percent to things, maybe I should have anticipated that this was something that would happen down the line, but I’m really so honored and humbled and excited.”

Berdzik is based in Princeton. She practices in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, and often works in the firm’s Los Angeles office with the employment team based there. Her practice is “very active,” she said, and she recently prevailed on a significant motion to compel arbitration in an employment matter in New Jersey state court after what she called “some robust briefing and oral argument.”

“For me though, one of the things I enjoy most about my practice is working with clients day to day on solving their problems,” she said.

In addition to litigation, Berdzik assists clients in human resources work and as outsourced general counsel. Prior to joining Goldberg Segalla eight years ago, she was in house assistant general counsel at Care One Management LLC in Fort Lee overseeing the assisted living company’s litigation portfolio.

A Rutgers Law grad and attorney with two decades’ experience, Berdzik spoke of admiration for recently deceased United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who was a professor at Rutgers Law from 1963 to 1972 and who she called “a trailblazer for women.”

“Her quote really resonates with me, ‘Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.’ And the firm’s management committee, a lot of decisions get made there. She was not only a trailblazer for women, but an unbelievable jurist and legal mind,” Berdzik said.

Berdzik is an NJBIZ Best 50 Women in Business alumna, having nabbed the distinction in 2015.