Features

Hannah Lim-Johnson – Kelly Services

Permanent diversity in a temporary field

Once upon a time, the “Kelly Girl” was a ubiquitous image—a woman filling in for a day or a week in a company typing pool or another clerical job.

The better part of a century later, Kelly Services has evolved to be a go-to resource for labor in a wide array of industries with assignments that span workstyles and offer great flexibility. But it’s not just about the businesses being served.

Hannah Lim-Johnson – Kelly Services

Hannah Lim-Johnson | Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer | Kelly Services

Now in her third year as senior vice president and chief legal officer at Kelly, Hannah Lim-Johnson says providing diverse workforce solutions for customers must be matched by encouraging diversity within the company.

“Our noble purpose is we connect people to work in ways that enrich their lives,” Lim-Johnson says. “Everything we do here revolves around and supports that purpose, and I am delighted to help fulfill it where I can.”

Changing labor markets

In 2018, Kelly Services provided 500,000 workers for clients ranging from small and mid-size companies to most of the Fortune 500 businesses.

Lim-Johnson notes Kelly is now transforming into a specialty talent company focusing on national and international market needs in areas such as education, STEM and professional and industrial.

Assignments often run months and years instead of days or weeks, as they did in the early days of the business and employees have access to many benefits and resources including free online training, holiday pay and health care coverage.

In early 2019, Lim-Johnson helped close Kelly’s acquisition of Global Technology Associates LLC and NextGen Global Resources. In addition, she’s supported Kelly’s recent acquisition of Insight, an educational staffing company.

Lim-Johnson says the acquisitions help accelerate Kelly’s pivot to becoming a specialty talent solutions and outcome-based services provider.

“We’re bringing together impressive pools of talented engineers with strong technical, telecom and 5G expertise,” she says, “along with experienced substitute teachers who combine with Kelly’s existing education businesses staffs to serve nearly 4 million preK-12 classrooms every school year.”

With her team of 46 attorneys and legal and security professionals, Lim-Johnson is also working to streamline Kelly’s outside counsel services, including more fixed-fee arrangements. Now more than 90 percent of outside counsel work is done on the fixed-fee basis, and spending for those services has been reduced by 24 percent, she says.

Diverse approaches

As Lim-Johnson ensures Kelly is well positioned to support its talent and full-time employees, she has also been charged with diversifying and supporting staff since her hiring in 2017.

In summer 2020, that will include collaborating the with national law firm Thompson Hine for a second year through a unique internship.

The program, created with fellow Kelly employee Danette Duron-Willner, gives diverse first-year law students the opportunity to spend one month cycling through Kelly’s legal department while they participate in Thompson Hine’s summer associate program.

Hannah Lim-Johnson – Kelly Services

Danette Duron-Willner

“This started with Hannah. She had objectives and priorities when she joined the company, which included diversifying our partner firms so that they mirrored the demographics of our employee population,” Duron-Willner says. “The program is pioneering and a great effort to start.”

For Thompson Hine, the internship program complements its existing summer associate program by providing essential, real-world in-house experience.

“The skills developed during both of these experiences greatly enhance the student’s understanding of how law firms and clients work together to achieve client goals,” says Nirvana Dove, who manages Thompson Hine’s ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Kelly and Thompson Hine have a joint selection process and the 2019 interview process resonated with Lim-Johnson.

“I was asked by a prospective intern what Kelly does as an enterprise and what our law department specifically does to foster and encourage diversity and inclusion,” Lim-Johnson says. “It struck me that providing an inclusive and diverse environment is much more at the forefront with the younger generation.”

Her own choices

Although she chose a path away from the medical careers her parents and four of her five siblings have, Lim-Johnson knew she wanted to be an attorney from an early age, following in the steps of an older brother who went to law school and is now a tax litigator in Los Angeles.

“He was the first one to do something different, and it paved the way for me to explore other areas,” she says.

The overall influence of a studious family guided Lim-Johnson, as well. She earned a bachelor’s in English literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and then her J.D. from Rutgers Law School, where she was managing editor of the school’s law review.

After graduating Rutgers in 1997, Lim-Johnson joined the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office as a litigator, primarily in labor and employment matters.

That experience, as well as three years spent at a New York City law firm, helped shape how she litigates and develops strategies, she says, and set her on the path to becoming senior litigation counsel for Tyco in 2007.

Hannah Lim-Johnson – Kelly Services

Coming in-house gave her a more complete view of a company’s health and operations, she says, and at Tyco she participated in two subsidiary spin-offs. As a result of the second one, she was also hired as vice president, chief compliance officer and chief litigation counsel at the home security company ADT in 2012. At ADT, she learned about managing larger teams while integrating litigation and compliance functions.

In 2016, Lim-Johnson left ADT after Apollo’s leveraged buyout of the security company for Public Service Enterprise Group, or PSEG, a power service and generation company in northern New Jersey. But it was not long before Kelly came looking for her during an internal recruitment effort, and she joined the company in 2017.

Along with her efforts to make Kelly more diverse and inclusive, Lim-Johnson joined the board of directors of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association and serves on its executive committee.

Overall, she’s inspired by the Atticus Finch quote in “To Kill a Mockingbird”: “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

Specifically, she’s clear on how the company needs to progress.

“It’s all about diversity and inclusion,” she says. “We have to make sure Kelly offers that type of environment. It’s much more at the forefront and bringing it about means the world to me.”

Published on: March 3, 2020

regions:

categories: ,

Showcase your feature on your website with a custom “As Featured in Vanguard” badge that links directly to your article!

Copy and paste this script into your page coding (ideally right before the closing tag) where you want to display our review banner.

Testimonials

I was honored to be the subject of an article. I enjoy reading Vanguard articles and seeing how other attorneys got to their positions and see their jobs. It's also interesting to see how different law firms partner with the subjects of the articles.
– Henry Marquard, in-house counsel, Stanley Consultants Inc.
It was a great honor to be featured in Vanguard Law. Working with every member of the team, from the initial interview with Erin Clark, through production with Victor Martins, writing the article with Taryn Plumb and creating the final content with Dave Gushee, was a true pleasure. Everyone was very professional, enthusiastic and supportive, and their creative approach and positive attitude clearly came through in the final product.
– Kevin C. Rakowski, Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, Compliance with Radian Group Inc.
As promised in advance, my feature in Vanguard has increased my visibility within the profession and prompted more than a few people I have not communicated with recently to reconnect. One of the Italian law firms I have used in the past is now in the process of interviewing me for an article on their website and tweeting out the feature story. Activity and the number of people connecting with me on LinkedIn has soared, which is great. The Vanguard writers and editorial staff were great to work with—highly professional and made the effort to make the experience both fun and rewarding (they were also respectful of the time pressures and demands all lawyers face). I was very pleased with the experience and the final outcome. Needless to say, I have been very pleased. All in all working with Vanguard has been a very positive experience which generated good publicity for both Shawcor and myself. My sincere thanks.
– Tim Hutzul, General Counsel, ShawCor Ltd.
The piece highlighting my company, Bob Baker Enterprises, Inc., came out fabulous. Our company is in the new and used car sales and service industry. Everyone was great to work with and extremely professional. They produced a high-quality product and have provided expert assistance and guidance post-production of the article.
– Wade Poulson, General Counsel, Bob Baker Enterprises Inc.

LATEST EDITION

Fall II 2023

READ NOW

GET VANGUARD IN YOUR INBOX.

  • * We’ll never share your email or info with anyone.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.