Ann Olivarius
| Ann Marie Olivarius | |
|---|---|
Ann Olivarius
|
|
| Born |
19 February 1955 Brooklyn, New York, USA |
| Residence | London, England |
| Education |
Yale College (BA Political Science 1977), summa cum laude Yale Law School (JD 1986) |
| Occupation | Chair of the Executive Committee, McAllister Olivarius |
| Years active | 1986–present |
| Children | 2 daughters, 1 son |
Yale College (BA Political Science 1977), summa cum laude
Yale Law School (JD 1986)
Ann Olivarius is an American-British lawyer.
Olivarius graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Yale College. During her junior year she worked for the Administrative Assistant to the Chief Justice of the United States. In 1978, the second year Rhodes Scholarships were open to women, she was selected as one of 32 American Rhodes Scholars.
At Oxford she won the Nuffield Prize for an outstanding doctorate in Economics, which studied worker-owned high-technology firms. She also served as a Governor of Manchester College, Oxford, and worked for the international law firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, where she was instrumental in drafting the early arbitration rules that helped ensure that London became one of the main centres for international dispute resolution. She returned to Yale to finish the joint JD-MBA program from the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management, a three year course, with highest honors. While in her last year at law school, Olivarius brought a case against a debt collection agency that used abusive collection tactics to collect monies not actually owed. She was pivotal in getting the firm to apologize and change their procedures.
In March 1977, in light of the upcoming ten-year anniversary of the admission of women to Yale College, the Yale Corporation asked Olivarius as a campus leader to chair the preparation of a Report on the Status of Women at Yale. The report included testimonies from approximately 30 students and faculty describing various aspects of women’s life on campus, some humorous, some deeply serious, including some persistent problems. It ended with a discussion of unwanted sexual advances by professors, ranging from sexual harassment (a term not yet invented) to rape. The scale of complaints on this subject that emerged as Olivarius oversaw the Report to the Corporation was surprisingly large. She followed up by presenting detailed accounts of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape by several professors to University officials, seeking a central clearing house where complaints of this sort could be lodged and dealt with, rather than treated as a private problem for the female student to handle herself. But the University took no action. Ultimately she joined with four other students and one faculty member in bringing suit against Yale – the case of Alexander v. Yale. The plaintiffs asserted that, in failing to adopt proper procedures to deal with sexual harassment complaints, the University had discriminated against women on the basis of gender. While the case was dismissed by the court on other grounds, it confirmed, for the first time, that allowing an environment in which sexual harassment could persist constituted sex discrimination.
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