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Employment Mediation Institute 2023 Speakers

Phyllis Cheng, Esq. 

Phyllis Cheng is a neutral at ADR Services, where she mediates employment, civil rights, and other matters. She also serves on the mediation panels of the Second District Court of Appeal and the U.S. District Court, Central District of California.  

Phyllis served in the administrations of four California Governors.  She was director of the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, vice chair of the Fair Employment and Housing Commission, and member of the Commission on the Status of Women and Comparable Worth Task Force. 

Phyllis was a partner at DLA Piper, of counsel at Littler Mendelson, and associate at Hadsell & Stormer.  She was a research attorney at the Second District Court of Appeal and a deputy attorney general at CalDOJ’s Civil Rights Enforcement Section. 

For 20 years, Phyllis has written a column on Cases Pending before the California Supreme Court in the California Labor & Employment Law Review. She co-edits California Fair Housing and Public Accommodations (The Rutter Group), prepares the California Labor & Employment Case Law Alert, and contributes to other publications.  

Dr. Debra Dupree

Dr. Debra Dupree is a Dispute Resolution Specialist, Conflict Coach, Mindset Doctor, and International Trainer and Keynote Speaker. Dr. D is the host of the bi-weekly podcast ‘Decoding the Conflict Mindset’ bringing ‘thought leaders’ throughout  various disciplines about how to engage with self and others through difficult conversations and negotiations.

Debra has trained throughout North America, Australia, India and the Pacific Rim in workplace mediation, advanced strategies for dispute resolution professionals, and leadership strategies for today’s hybrid workworld.  She currently serves on the SCMA Board of Directors and serves on the Employment Mediation Panel and Faculty for the American Arbitration Association (AAA).

Andrew H. Friedman, Esq.

Andrew H. Friedman, a name partner with the law firm of Helmer · Friedman LLP, primarily represents employees in all aspects of employment law.

Mr. Friedman has handled a wide range of employment-related litigation in state and federal courts including winning a $4.1 Million jury verdict in a fraud and breach of employment contract lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court and jury verdict in the Orange County Superior Court in a sexual harassment case. He has resolved multiple seven-figure wage and hour class actions. 

Mr. Friedman served as Counsel of Record in Lightfoot v. Cendant Mortgage Corp. et. al. (Case No. 10-56068) where he successfully convinced the U. S. Supreme Court to grant the petition for certiorari that he filed on behalf of his clients. In January 2017, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision authored by Justice Sotomayor, reversed the Ninth Circuit and ruled in favor of Mr. Friedman’s clients.

From 2020-2023, out of more than 25,000 attorneys in the Los Angeles area, Super Lawyers named Andrew H. Friedman to its list of the Top 100 Super Lawyers in Southern California and from 2019-2023, LAWDRAGON selected Mr. Friedman as one of the Nation’s leading plaintiff employment attorneys.

Chambers USA, the Nation’s leading legal data and analytics provider, has awarded Mr. Friedman with its highest possible rating (“Band 1”) for Labor & Employment. 

Mr. Friedman is the author of a two-volume, approximately 1500-page, employment discrimination law treatise entitled Litigating Employment Discrimination Cases (James Pub. 2005-2023). Contributing Authors to the treatise include attorneys from: Proskauer Rose LLP, Sheppard Mullin LLP, Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP, and Brown, Goldstein & Levy as well as mediators Lisa Klerman, Jan Frankel Schau, and Mark Fingerman.

Lately, Mr. Friedman has received significant positive (and negative) buzz for his law review article -Attorney Workplace Investigations: Neither Impartial Nor Independent, Cal. Lab. & Emp. L. R. Vol. 37, No. 2 (2023).

Anthony J. Oncidi, Esq.

Anthony J. Oncidi is the co-chair of the Labor & Employment Law Department and heads the West Coast Labor & Employment group in the firm’s Los Angeles office.

Tony represents employers and management in all aspects of labor relations and employment law, including litigation and preventive counseling, wage and hour matters, including class actions, wrongful termination, employee discipline, Title VII and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, executive employment contract disputes,sexual harassment training and investigations, workplace violence, drug testing and privacy issues, Sarbanes-Oxley claims and employee raiding and trade secret protection. A substantial portion of Tony’s practice involves the defense of employers in large class actions, employment discrimination, harassment and wrongful termination litigation in state and federal court as well as arbitration proceedings, including FINRA matters.

Tony is recognized as a leading lawyer by such highly respected publications and organizations as the Los Angeles Daily Journal, The Hollywood Reporter, and Chambers USA, which gives him the highest possible rating (“Band 1”) for Labor & Employment. According to Chambers USA, clients say Tony is “brilliant at what he does... He is even keeled, has a high emotional IQ, is a great legal writer and orator,and never gives up.” Other clients report: “Tony has an outstanding reputation” and he is “smart, cost effective and appropriately aggressive.” Tony is hailed as "outstanding,” particularly for his “ability to merge top-shelf lawyerly advice with pragmatic business acumen.” He is highly respected in the industry, with other commentators lauding him as a“phenomenal strategist” and “one of the top employment litigators in the country.”

Tony is the author of the treatise titled Employment Discrimination Depositions (Juris Pub’g 2020; www.jurispub.com), co-author of Proskauer on Privacy (PLI 2023), and, since 1990, has been a regular columnist for the official publication of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the State Bar of California and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

Tony has been a featured guest on Fox 11 News and CBS News in Los Angeles. He has been interviewed and quoted by leading national media outlets such as The National Law Journal, Bloomberg News, The New York Times, and Newsweek and Time magazines. Tony is a frequent speaker on employment law topics for large and small groups of employers and their counsel, including the Society for Human Resource Management (“SHRM”), PIHRA, the National CLE Conference, National Business Institute, the Employment Round Table of Southern California(Board Member), the Council on Education in Management, the Institute for Corporate Counsel, the State Bar of California, the California Continuing Education of the Bar Program and the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills Bar Associations. He has testified as an expert witness regarding wage and hour issues as well as the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and has served as a faculty member of the National Employment Law Institute. He has served as an arbitrator in an employment discrimination matter.

Tony is an appointed Hearing Examiner for the Los Angeles Police Commission Board of Rights and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law and a guest lecturer at USC Law School and a guest lecturer at UCLA Law School.

Jan Frankel Schau, Esq. 

Jan Frankel Schau has been mediating full time for over twenty years and is a Panel member at ADR Services in Los Angeles, California.  She came to ADR after two decades of practice as a litigator where she specialized in employment-related matters.  As a mediator, she continues to focus on employment issues, business and tort claims, including civil rights issues.

A former President of the Southern California Mediation Association, Jan has been a Distinguished Fellow of the International Academy of Mediators for more than 15 years, serving on the Board and  presenting and leading discussion groups at many of their Conferences, including New Zealand, Edinburgh, and most recently, Zurich, Switzerland, where she lead a Panel Discussion on:  “Mediating at the Fulcrum:  when our own hearts and minds are in conflict”.  

Jan is the author of numerous scholarly articles and a book, “View from the Middle of the Road:  A Mediator’s Perspective to Life, Conflict and Human Interaction”.

She holds a degree in International Relations from Pomona College in Claremont, Ca. and a J.D. from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.  She has also served as Adjunct Faculty at Straus Institute of Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.