Empowering People Through Training, Investigations,
Coaching and Mediation
About Our Founder
Elena Paraskevas-Thadani, Esq.EPT Legal, LLC was founded by Elena Paraskevas-Thadani, an experienced employment attorney with over 25 years experience in the legal profession, specializing in resolving workplace challenges and disputes.
Training
Elena is an experienced trainer having conducted and developed hundreds of Equal Employment Opportunity trainings on professional conduct, nonharassment, diversity, litigation avoidance and other employment compliance topics. Elena brings over two decades of litigation experience to her compliance trainings, and develops and delivers fun, educational, interactive and customized programs for her clients.
Investigations
Elena has conducted sensitive workplace investigations involving claims of discrimination, harassment, misconduct, corporate theft/embezzlement, bullying, or wrongdoing on the part of C-Level and other executives or employees. She has conducted and advised on investigations in many industries, including the financial industry, technology sector, law enforcement, hospitality and retail sector, and for educational institutions (including Title IX). Elena is an Association of Workplace Investigators Certificate Holder (AWI-CH), is a certified Title IX Hearing Officer, and is licensed as a Private Investigator by the New York Department of State. Elena is on the Board of the Directors for the international Association for Workplace Investigators and is a cofounder of its NY Metro Area Local Circle.
Arbitration and Mediation
Elena is an experienced arbitrator and mediator certified by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and by the New York Peace Institute. She specializes in mediating pre-litigation matters when parties are still in the workplace and employment cases such as wage and hour disputes, discrimination, whistleblower, restrictive covenant and class action lawsuits. She serves on the United States District Court Eastern District of New York mediation and arbitration panels.
In addition to her experience in private practice, Elena served as a law clerk to two federal judges, The Honorable Andrew J. Peck, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (2000-2002) and The Honorable Nicholas Tsoucalas of the US Court of International Trade (1997-1999), and a student law clerk while in law school to United States District Court Judge Frederic Block and Magistrate A. Simon Chrein. During her tenure in the courts and in private practice Elena worked on hundreds of hearings, trials, arbitrations and mediations.
Coaching
As a certified and experienced executive coach, Elena has assisted company leaders, C-Level executives, law firm partners and service professionals manage their teams more effectively, build their influence in their field, and increase their business development success. Elena is an adjunct coach with Skillful Means Marketing, LLC, voted the #1 coaching service for attorneys in a recent New York Law Journal survey, among other awards and accolades.
Additional Background
Elena previously practiced plaintiffs’ and defendants’ general commercial litigation and employment law at Katten Muchin Rosenman (2002-2005) and Seward and Kissel LLP (1999-2000). She worked for Kaplan Fox, a plaintiffs’ class action law firm as a summer associate in 1996.
Elena is a former equity partner of the law firm Littler Mendelson, the largest global employment and labor law practice in the world. She is a graduate of Fordham College (’95) and Fordham Law School (’97). While at Fordham Law, Elena founded the Fordham Law Chapter of the Unemployment Action Center, through which she provided pro bono advocacy to unemployment insurance claimants, and also worked as a student advocate at the Northern Manhattan Improvement Center, where she provided services and representation to public assistance applicants and recipients. Elena also served as an intern with EDNY Judge Frederic Block (1995), EDNY Magistrate Judge A. Simon Chrein (1996) and the EDNY US Attorney’s office (1996-1997). She is admitted to practice in New York Connecticut and the District of Columbia.
Latest News
Everything You Wanted to Know About LGBTQ+ Issues in Investigations but Were Afraid to As
What Lawyers Want From Mediation Panel
Not winning in the moment is not the same as “failure”.
Our colleague Elena Paraskevas-Thadani points out that in nature one size doesn’t fit all— shouldn’t this be the case for our workplaces as well?
Testimonials
Very helpful and very inclusive. Jessica is very personable and her use of personal examples really made me feel comfortable getting in touch with my own emotions.
Beneficial to all employees, and I would recommend Jessica, she was lovely and made many personal references which helped the conversations.
There are a lot of people in a lot of work places who need this type training and also need to take it seriously. I hope the trainer (Jessica) is able to provide this session far and wide and wish her the best of luck!
Jessica was a very effective presenter as she encouraged participation, provided relevant case examples as well as drew from personal experiences and knew the material very well and presented it in a way that was easy to understand.
That it was a good reminder of how to comport oneself in the workplace, that it was engaging and kind of fun even. A good way to learn and also bond with our colleagues.
Reminder that we all create the culture of the workplace and need to actively enforce the best in us.
This course was a great introductory session on how to create a positive workplace, what to look out for in terms of harassment, and what our roles and responsibilities are to help maintain a healthy work environment.
This training framed the topic in a way I hadn’t really thought of before. I also liked that it was more on the interactive side.
I really appreciated how interactive the course was and the speaker did a fantastic job of covering the content while also monitoring the chat and fostering discussion. I also enjoyed that although we were covering heavy topics, there was a lightness and humor throughout which improved my experience and made me feel more comfortable.
This was a very valuable course, and honestly one of the best diversity and harassment trainings I have attended. It was informative, engaging, and impactful!
Elena presented herself as an advocate for leaders and turned it into an opportunity for leadership education in a way, and that made it useful for understanding how the content applies to us and what we can do to improve culture.
It was refreshing to have an interactive training. It kept me engaged and learned about scenarios that would happen in my role and how to identify and deal with them.
A highly interactive course to learn about harassment that not only gives you the information you need but allows you the opportunity to ask the questions you have on the topic.
I’ve never taken another comparable course. The course content and facilitators were excellent
There were many good situations used as examples. I liked that participation by all those who attended was welcomed and encouraged.
Elena was excellent. This session was informative and fun for a workplace training meeting.
Overall good explanation and examples of how culture and our own actions affect the workplace.
Elena was very informative and provided details for every situation and topic she discussed.
This training session made me aware of how easy it is to offend a co worker and how I should be mindful of what I say in the workplace.
The presentation was great and was able to get people to participate.
Elena was efficient and had a lot of information about the topics.
This training course was very good because it will help us interacting with other employees and the guests.
This course was more interesting, useful, and engaging than I anticipated! Thank you!!
Elena was awesome. She provided good information and was thoughtfully prepared.
I enjoyed the training session. My co-workers have attended previous sessions. They had good things to say and they were right.
Elena facilitated the training session in a way that kept it moving quickly, which encouraged the participants to be more engaged.
The training course brought out ongoing issues that I thought I knew very well and taught me many new things.
Elena is a great speaker and presenter. She did a good job keeping me engaged in the conversation.
The training session was well-structured, very engaging, and not cliché.
The training session was very entertaining and motivating. It had good pacing and kept my interest.
The training session had good content that was well organized with good points of communication while staying at a good length.
Elena is an excellent public speaker.
I think the interactive nature of the presentation was better than just being presented with rules.
Elena provided a great training course that was valuable for our nature of work.
Elena was very attentive to questions. It made the training interesting and very interactive.
The course allowed knowledge exchange, was very interactive, and gave great examples that required group participation.
This was an excellent course. Well presented and useful. The pace was good, [there was] time to understand the message but kept moving along.
The training provided wonderful questions that got us to think.
The course material was very well delivered once Elena made it feel comfortable.
Elena is a great speaker and presenter, she did a good job keeping me engaged in the conversation.
Elena conducted a good presentation that helped to create an awareness of our effect on company culture.
Excellent, informative, and ‘fun’ for an at-work training session.
Elena conducted a great program. It was Informative and helpful.
Elena was great at explaining the topic and keeping the group involved.