Features

Nausheen Rokerya – Visiting Nurse Service of New York

Lawyer embraces change through COVID challenges

It’s hard to remember a time before the COVID-19 pandemic. The days before social distancing and mask mandates often feeling like a lifetime ago.

“I often joke that I don’t even know what I did before COVID,” says Nausheen Rokerya. “These days, roughly 75 percent of my meetings relate to work generated by the pandemic.”

As vice president, associate general counsel for Visiting Nurse Service of New York, she spends her time navigating vaccine mandates, ensuring compliance with evolving healthcare-related regulations, and helping management address employment-related challenges the pandemic has created.

Nausheen Rokerya | Vice President and Associate General Counsel | Visiting Nurse Service of New York

Nausheen Rokerya | Vice President and Associate General Counsel | Visiting Nurse Service of New York

VNSNY, founded in 1893, provides home and community-based health care in New York City’s five boroughs, as well as in Long Island and Westchester. Throughout the pandemic, the nonprofit has helped ease the load on hospitals by providing home-based services upon discharge, including for patients with COVID-19. Rokerya says her work during the pandemic has required balancing legal, financial and safety considerations, amongst others.

“Beginning in March 2020, we had to make difficult decision after difficult decision, often outside of the traditional legal framework, with little time or opportunity to do a full assessment of risk, as a lawyer might otherwise do,” she says. “As lawyers, we’re trained to be risk-averse, but sometimes that training can make it difficult to embrace necessary change.”

Business impact

Because the pandemic is always evolving, Rokerya says it’s created a need for constant advice and counsel.

“Though we’re still in the pandemic, this isn’t the same pandemic we were in a year ago,” she says. “I’ve had to stay nimble.”

She meets with VNSNY leaders almost daily to discuss legal developments and advise on how the organization may respond. Given the breadth and reach of the pandemic’s impact, these meetings have introduced her to areas, processes and people within the organization that she was previously unfamiliar with.

Serving as an advisor to VNSNY’s senior leadership has deepened her understanding of how divisions at VNSNY—including its insurance arm and home care, and its hospice and managed health services businesses—respond to crisis. She’s also realized the value of strong inter-company communication and partnerships.

“The better informed I am about the needs and preferences of a particular business unit, the better I can be at providing tailored support and advice,” she says.

This doesn’t just apply to supporting the leadership team, she says. Rokerya also works closely with other groups at VNSNY, including the human resources, compliance, communications and quality teams, since being promoted to vice president last year.

“You get to see the range of impact your advice can have when working across businesses,” she says.

Broadening her skills

Trained as a labor and employment lawyer, Rokerya has welcomed the diversification of her responsibilities, as it’s enabled her to learn and grow. Managing teams and projects are skillsets she’s enjoyed cultivating, she says.

For example, Rokerya has provided critical advice to VNSNY’s Workplace of the Future initiative, which is dedicated to designing and modernizing the experience of VNSNY’s post-pandemic workforce.   She’s also been awarded opportunities to manage litigation unrelated to labor and employment, which she says has been rewarding.

“Personally I benefit because I’m gaining new skills and experiences, but it also allows the organization to operate in a leaner fashion because I can now take on a broader array of tasks,” she says.

While these hard skills have been important for Rokerya to hone, she says they’ve also shown her “softer components” of the business. One of the biggest things she’s learned over the past year is the importance of supporting local community organizations that are often underfunded.

“Working here has opened my eyes to the critical gaps in community resources that nonprofit organizations can help fill,” Rokerya says. “Having seen how impactful such organizations can be, I find myself seeking out opportunities to show my support or otherwise get involved. I want to bring visibility to this entire segment of people, not only at VNSNY, who are sometimes invisibly providing incredible services to populations in need.”

The social good

Rokerya says working at VNSNY has enabled her to marry her passion for law with her desire to support the community.

After earning her bachelor’s degree from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, and a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School, she began her career at the firm Proskauer Rose as an associate in its labor and employment department. She also spearheaded several diversity and inclusion initiatives at the firm.

In 2014, she moved to VNSNY, where she’s worked on labor-union negotiations, acquisitions, investigations and compliance-related initiatives.

“I love that my work allows me to contribute to greater good,” Rokerya says. “The organization supports New Yorkers in need, so it feels great to be a part of. It’s incredible what our frontline workers do and it’s rewarding to know my legal advice helps.

View this feature in the Vanguard Fall IV 2021 Edition here.

Published on: November 9, 2021

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

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.
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.
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.
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.

LATEST EDITION

Fall I 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.