Karen Gillen is an employment lawyer who understands the challenges corporations face and quickly identifies cost-effective and practical strategies for overcoming those challenges.
Karen represents employers in class, representative and collective actions, and single and multi-plaintiff lawsuits in employment matters. She litigates a range of claims including discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination, breach of employment contract, and ERISA. She also enforces and defends against claims involving restrictive covenants. Karen successfully represents employers in federal and state courts, and arbitration before FINRA, AAA, and JAMS. She appears before administrative agencies including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Labor, the New York State Division of Human Rights, the New York City Human Rights Commission, and several other state and local administrative agencies, and has prevailed on her clients’ behalf or negotiated very favorable resolutions in those forums.
Karen is a trusted advisor and strategic partner to clients and their allied advisors, assisting with challenges they face including compliance, sensitive investigations, classification issues, and termination decisions. She has worked with organizations to build processes and policies from the ground up. Clients turn to Karen for guidance on workforce reductions, executive departures, and cutting-edge issues where there has been little or no precedential guidance such as COVID-19, various executive orders, and the FTC Rule banning non-compete clauses.
Karen also assists clients with drafting employment agreements, severance agreements, and restrictive covenants, and advises companies on employment and labor issues arising in mergers and acquisitions.
Karen works with publicly held, privately held, and family-owned businesses in a variety of industries including financial services, media and entertainment, technology, aviation, property management, and construction, among others.
Before joining the firm, Karen was a partner in both a full-service and international employment boutique firm. She also served as associate general counsel at American Airlines, where she led the employment and benefits team through the merger with US Airways.
Admissions
- New York
- New Jersey
- Arizona
- U.S. District Court, Eastern and Southern District of New York
- U.S. District Court, New Jersey
- U.S. District Court, Arizona
- U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth and Ninth Circuits
Memberships
- Society for Human Resource Management