Kathi Vidal Named on World IP Review’s 2025 Diversity & Inclusion Top 100 List as an Influential Woman in IP

Winston & Strawn partner Kathi Vidal merited a place on World IP Review’s 2025 Diversity & Inclusion Top 100 list in the Influential Women in IP category. This annual list highlights honorees’ “dedication and commitment to driving meaningful change in the IP community.” Winners were selected through an in-depth evaluation of the nominees’ accomplishments carried out by World IP Review’s (WIPR) in-house team.

Kathi is a staunch proponent of advancing inclusivity in the legal industry. As highlighted in her WIPR profile, during Kathi’s tenure as the director of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and as Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, “she introduced an attestation process for hiring, requiring colleagues to confirm they considered a diverse pool of candidates, focusing on potential rather than past experience alone, and that they did not overly weigh the characteristics of the person previously in the position... This, along with rewriting job descriptions to remove unnecessary criteria, increased USPTO leadership diversity by 5% in one year alone.”

Among numerous other accomplishments, Kathi also founded Nextgenlawyers.com, working with judges and the USPTO to create programs that incentivized arguments by junior lawyers.

Kathi is currently an active member of Winston’s DEI Compliance Task Force, which helps clients navigate the new administration’s governmental regulations and directives impacting diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs.

Read Kathi’s WIPR profile here.

See the full list of winners here.