THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL 44 | NOVEMBER 2022 OBA DIVERSITY AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED THE OBA DIVERSITY Committee hosts the 2022 Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Diversity Awards Dinner on Thursday, Nov. 3, in conjunction with this year’s OBA Annual Meeting. During the ceremony, this year’s OBA Diversity Award recipients are recognized. The winners include: Member of the Judiciary Judge Sharon K. Holmes Judge Sharon K. Holmes is a 1977 graduate of Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa. She received her bachelor’s degree from Loyola University in New Orleans and her J.D. from the OCU School of Law. She is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. and proudly served in the United States Air Force. Before being elected to the bench, Judge Holmes was a criminal defense attorney, and prior to that, she was an assistant district attorney for Tulsa County. In 2015, she took the bench after an election, which made her Tulsa County’s first Black female district court judge. Judge Holmes was recently unopposed in a bid for her third term, which will begin in 2023. She currently presides over a criminal docket. Judge Holmes is also a 2020 recipient of the Mona Salyer Lambird Spotlight Award. Attorneys M. Alexander Pearl Professor M. Alexander Pearl is an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. He is a nationally recognized scholar in the fields of water law, climate change law and policy, Indigenous legal/social issues and statutory interpretation. His research focuses both on distinct concepts within these fields as well as intersectional issues that cross legal fields and social dynamics. He regularly works collaboratively with scientists and scholars in related fields to produce both practical and theoretical scholarship. After graduating from OU with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, Professor Pearl obtained his J.D. from the University of California Berkeley School of Law. While at Berkeley Law, he was on the California Law Review, chaired the Native American Law Student Association and was a research assistant for the late esteemed scholar of Indian law and statutory interpretation, Professor Philip Frickey. From Berkeley Law, Professor Pearl returned to Oklahoma, where he clerked for Judge William J. Holloway Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. After completing his clerkship, he worked as an associate at Kilpatrick Townsend in Washington, D.C., where he exclusively represented Indian tribes and individual Indians in a variety of capacities and a diverse array of fora. Professor Pearl joined the faculty at the OU College of Law in 2020. For the previous six years, he was a member of the faculty at the Texas Tech University School of Law. While there, he was the director of the Texas Tech University School of Law Center for Water Law and Policy. He was also affiliate faculty with the Texas Tech Climate Science Center, where we worked with faculty from a variety of academic departments to address climate change and environmental justice issues. During his career, Professor Pearl has won several awards for teaching and scholarship, including being voted by the students as the 1L Professor of the Year. Since arriving at OU, Professor Pearl is affiliate faculty at the Department of Native American Studies and has had the pleasure of being the faculty advisor for the Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher Chapter of the Black Law Students Association.
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