Gina Maisto Smith

Gina is the chair of Cozen O’Connor’s Institutional Response Group and the founder of the nation’s first practice dedicated to the institutional response to sexual and gender-based harassment, violence, child abuse, elder abuse, other forms of discrimination and harassment, workplace misconduct, and criminal conduct. Gina provides consulting, counseling, and legal advice on all aspects of the institutional response to misconduct. She assists institutions in designing effective institutional responses that integrate the complex federal and state regulatory framework with the unique dynamics of interpersonal misconduct and its impact on individuals, institutions, and communities. Gina is frequently called upon to advise institutional clients including presidents, boards, senior management, and counsel on the intersection of trauma-informed, fair, and impartial processes with the intersecting legal landscape.

Gina is known for adeptly integrating the complexities of criminal, civil, regulatory, and institutional processes with a keen understanding of the unique psychological and cultural considerations attendant to sexual, gender-based, and interpersonal misconduct in the institutional setting. She regularly advises educational and child-serving institutions including public and private K-12 schools, colleges and universities, private industry, public companies, government entities and nonprofit organizations about policies, changes in the law, and investigations into allegations including child abuse and sexual misconduct, including sexual violence. She conducts investigations into individual conduct and institutional responses, and audits policies, procedures and practices. She routinely assists institutions in the development of policy, design of systems, and implementation of operating procedures for effective internal and external responses. She also provides training for boards, senior leadership, employees, K-12 administrators and multiple higher education constituents, including Title IX coordinators, sexual assault response teams, judicial hearing boards, investigators, and members of the campus community.