NATALIE M. HIOTT-LEVINE

Attorney-at-Law
Investigator
Trainer
Special Needs Advocate
Bilingual (English/Spanish)

EXPERIENCE

Natalie Hiott-Levine currently serves as a Partner at KSBranigan Law P.C. and has assisted on employment matters over the years. She is fluent in Spanish and conducts employment investigations and training in both English and Spanish. Prior to her current role, Natalie has had a varied legal career. Recent investigations have included a myriad of issues including sexual harassment, disability concerns, and race and sexual orientation bias issues.

She brings a wealth of litigation experience, having litigated in both state and federal courts in New Jersey and New York. She also has the unique perspective of having litigated from both the defense and plaintiff perspectives. She spent a decade litigating complex commercial matters, including employment discrimination matters.

Natalie began practicing at Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer, PA in New Jersey, and then joined the New York office of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP. Her employment litigation experience includes general contract disputes, employment discrimination, sexual harassment, and restrictive covenants. She has had a broad spectrum of clients in an array of industries, including accounting and consulting firms, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, engineering and construction companies, hotels, a health insurer, and a foreign government. She has complex commercial litigation experience and has defended against claims, including, among others: breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, professional malpractice, fraud, misrepresentation, negligence, business torts, indemnification, shareholder disputes, product liability, antitrust violations, patent infringement, service mark infringement, warranties, and collection matters. Additionally, she has experience representing boards of education including attending board meetings, planning a reduction in force, preparing tenure charges, defending ethics complaints, determining tenure/seniority rights, and advising on student discipline and special education issues.

Natalie began working with the nonprofit Project for Attorney Retention (PAR), an initiative of the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Law San Francisco. PAR was a nonprofit think tank founded by nationally recognized authors and thought leaders Distinguished Professor of Law Joan Williams and Cynthia Thomas Calvert, Esq. to research, identify, develop, publish and present best practices to retain and advance women in the law and to reduce unwanted attrition of legal talent. In addition to supervising research by UC Law San Francisco law students during her seven years with PAR, Natalie has also taught prelaw courses to undergraduates at St. Peter’s University, Jersey City, New Jersey, where she taught Introduction to Law and Contracts in the Business Law and Accountancy Department as an Adjunct Professor.

Over the years, Natalie has been very active in numerous women’s and diversity initiatives and organizations in New Jersey and New York. She belongs to several sections of the New Jersey State Bar Association and is a member of the New Jersey Women Lawyers Association (NJWLA), where she served as Co-Director of Best Practices on its Board of Trustees from 2006 until 2012. Natalie also held leadership positions in the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) and New York County Lawyers Association (NYCLA). Between 2004 and 2006, she chaired the programming subcommittee of the NYSBA’s Committee on Women in the Law and chaired the Committee’s programs at two NYSBA annual meetings: “The Value of Diversity: Creating a Win-Win Environment for Women and Minority Attorneys AND Their Employers” (2005), and “Family Responsibilities: Legal Issues & Trends, Rights & Remedies” (2007). Natalie was also active in NYCLA’s Women’s Rights Committee, co-chairing its “Women in the Law: Strategies for Success” programming series in 2006-2007. During that time, Natalie also served on the executive board of NYU Law Alumni of Color Association as a class representative and co-chair of its Membership and Outreach Committee.

Natalie received her J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1995. While at NYU Law, she was the Developments Editor of the Journal of International Law and Politics and a member of NYU Law Women and the Latino Law Students Association. As a Student Assistant District Attorney at the New York County District Attorney’s Office under the supervision of the NYU Law Prosecution Clinic, she obtained a jury conviction on misdemeanor assault and trespass charges. As an undergraduate at Douglass College of Rutgers University, Natalie was a Douglass Scholar and graduated in 1992, Phi Beta Kappa, with a B.A. in Political Science, magna cum laude, and a minor in English. She was inducted into Pi Sigma Alpha National Honor Society and Golden Key International Honour Society, was a National Hispanic Scholar and a Garden State Distinguished Scholar, and was awarded the James Neilson Fellowship Award for Professional Studies.

But aside from her role as mother of three sons, she is most proud of the volunteer work she has done on behalf of students and young adults with special needs and their families for the past 20 years. For ten of those years, she served as a representative on the Special Education Parents Advisory Council (SEPAC). Prior to that, Natalie served on the executive boards of special education parent support groups and the district’s Caring Kids Committee. Natalie and her husband also spent years serving on the Family Advisory Council of the Sala Institute for Child and Family Centered Care for Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone from 2015 to 2021, where they shared personal experiences and insights in order to better the experiences of future pediatric patients and their families.

Today, Natalie continues her work with Caring Kids as a presenter and puppeteer to educate younger students about various physical disabilities, neurodiversity, and bullying. Caring Kids is a district-wide, parent-run group, whose mission is to help children grow into compassionate, positive and empowered members of society through character education programs in schools and community events. Its mantra is to treat everyone with caring, kindness and respect regardless of individual differences. She also supports her oldest son Zach in his Caring Kids presentations to third and fourth graders, where he explains and answers questions about living with visual impairment and physical disabilities. In addition, since 2021, she and Zach have become motivational speakers on the topics of inclusion of persons with disabilities in our schools and communities and the resilience of those individuals and their families in an autobiographical program entitled, “Differently Abled, Musically Inspired: A Young Man’s Journey to Inclusion & Resilience.” Together, they have presented for corporate diversity and inclusion initiatives and at libraries for special needs groups as well as the community-at-large.

Leadership, Recognitions & Associations

NJSBA Member (2011 – present)
NYCLA Women’s Rights Committee Member (2005 – 2012), Co-Chair of Strategies for Success Series
New Jersey Women Lawyers Association Member (2006-present), Co-Director of Best Practices Committee (2006 – 2012)
NYSBA Committee on Women in Law (2004-2008), Co-Chair of Programming Subcommittee (2004-2006), Co-Chair of Annual Program (2005 & 2007)
NYU LACA (Law Alumni of Color Association), Executive Board, Co-Chair, Membership & Outreach Committee (2004 – 2006)

Community Service

Motivational Speaker, “Differently Abled, Musically Inspired: A Young Man’s Journey to Inclusion & Resilience”
Caring Kids Committee (2010 – present), Representative (2010-2012), Executive Board, Director of Peer Socialization (2012-2015), Presenter, Puppeteer
Millburn Township SEPAC (Special Education Parents Advisory Council) (2013-2023)
Sala Institute for Child and Family Centered Care for Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital, NYU Langone, Family Advisory Council (2015-2021)

BAR ADMISSIONS & EDUCATION

Admitted to Practice

State of New Jersey (1995)
State of New York (1998)
United States District Court. District Court of New Jersey (1996)
United States District Court, Southern District of New York (1998)
United States District Court, Eastern District of New York (1998)

Education

New York University School of Law, J.D. (Developments Editor, Journal of International Law & Politics)
Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, B.A. with High Honors in Political Science (Douglass Scholar, National Hispanic Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Sigma Alpha)