Q&A: Michelle Todescato-Chan Champions Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in E-Discovery

Michelle, you’ve been a clear and resounding voice to amplify the needs of underrepresented groups at FTI and across the industry. Can you share some examples of your work to foster inclusivity?

I embrace authenticity and encourage my colleagues and teams to be true to themselves. My daily activities involve promoting and nurturing diverse talent across the global community that we serve within FTI Technology. For five years, I’ve been assigned as a coach and mentor to our young professionals to help them develop their skills and successfully own their careers. Moreover, I’ve been participating in internal and external engagements that allow me to coach peers, colleagues and women within the community. 

I am also proud of my hands-on role in FTI’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. This is a people-focused firm that celebrates and promotes diversity. This is inspiring and an example to the tech community when it comes to hiring, attracting and retaining diverse talent. Since 2021, I’ve been a co-lead with FTI Consulting’s employee resource group, Hispanic/Latinx Organization for Leadership Advancement (HOLA), where I actively engage in efforts and events that help our Hispanic/Latinx colleagues network, develop their careers and promote more inclusive practices throughout our global offices. 

Celebrating our differences is another important aspect of my commitment to FTI’s culture. Quarterly, I collaborate with colleagues to organize a fun hourly virtual trivia event that shares significant historical and cultural knowledge that fosters inclusion and belonging across our teams in our U.S., Canada and LATAM offices. 

What motivates you to be so active in diversity and inclusion efforts?

It’s my inherent commitment to cultivating an environment where everyone feels safe and valued. From my early days in the e-discovery industry, I felt that my dual legal education in Brazil and the U.S., combined with my proficiency in Portuguese, Spanish and English, were an advantage in supporting clients and colleagues in a variety of cross-border matters, particularly in the LATAM region. 

With this goal in mind, voicing my value to leadership regarding what I bring to the table became my most valuable tool. This helped me nurture my confidence, which was key in pushing my career forward, and the type of advice that I often share when I coach women and people from other underrepresented groups. 

Leaning on this experience, I previously trained and mentored 150+ Brazilian attorneys across multiple law firms on e-discovery tools and document review competencies. By collaborating with the client and colleagues, I understood the case needs and developed large-scale processes that ensured quality work product and reduced costs across the investigation. Yet, the mentoring opportunities were the most rewarding assignments of the project. At that time, e-discovery was fairly new in Brazil. By leveraging my dual education and background, I helped bridge both legal and cultural gaps across the teams, while coaching many unrepresented people who were then starting their legal careers. Many of them are now in prestigious positions in the Brazilian e-discovery industry.

Another rewarding milestone was to see my mentee based in our Canada office earn promotion to Senior Consultant. She is a talented young lawyer born and raised in Pakistan, whose promotion was the result of her talent and empowerment, and our firm’s opportunities that allow women like me to coach and support talented young women like my mentee.

In addition to promoting inclusion within FTI Technology, you’ve also invested time in supporting women with career development outside the firm as well. Can you speak to some of those corporate citizenship activities?

I’m from Latin America, and had to restart my professional career in the U.S., and understand the importance of partnering with seasoned women within the community to help immigrant women reach their professional potential, as I too needed back then. One of my most memorable engagements was volunteering with FTI Consulting’s Women’s Initiative (WIN) and New Women New Yorkers to provide career legal advice to immigrant women in the New York City area. 

Also, like many in this industry, I suspect that my love for solving problems and helping clients and colleagues keep me fully committed to supporting learning and development for underrepresented groups. For example, I’ve been part of our Discovery Consulting Best Practices group, and it’s been amazing working with these talented colleagues to develop best practices and guidelines. We share this information firmwide to ensure our teams can support clients across the globe, regardless of their time zone, through reliable and standardized processes. This is a journey that I’m proud of, as many of the folks I’ve trained in my career are now building their careers in the industry.

The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of FTI Consulting, its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals.