HARRISBURG (May 3, 2010) - Penina Kessler Lieber, Of Counsel in the Pittsburgh office of Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel LLP, will begin a one-year term as secretary of the Pennsylvania Bar Association (PBA) at the close of the organization's Annual Meeting May 14 in Hershey.

Lieber is a past At-Large Governor representing women lawyers on the PBA Board of Governors. A current member of the PBA House of Delegates, she is a past chair of the PBA Charitable Organizations Committee and the PBA Attorney Discipline Study Committee. She is a charter member and executive council member of the PBA Commission on Women in the Profession. She served as co-chair of the 2009 Women in the Profession Annual Conference and as co-chair of the PBA Annual and Midyear meetings. She also is a member of the PBA Leadership Recruitment and Development Committee and the PBA Professionalism Committee.

Lieber is a trustee of the Pennsylvania Bar Foundation and serves as the assistant treasurer of the board of directors of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute. Lieber also is a Pennsylvania delegate to the American Bar Foundation.

She has been appointed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to serve on the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (1990-1996), which regulates the professional conduct of Pennsylvania lawyers; and on the Pennsylvania Interest on Lawyers Trust Account Board ("IOLTA"), which funds legal services to the needy.

Lieber is an approved mediator and early neutral evaluator in the alternative dispute resolution program of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. She has been elected to membership in the Pittsburgh Tax Club. As adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, she has taught courses on nonprofit and tax-exempt law since 1994. She has published three books on nonprofit legal issues and has been a featured speaker at international conferences on the charitable sector in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Barbados, West Indies, as well as at many state and national conferences.

She has served as a director of the United Way of Allegheny County, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation and the Pittsburgh Public Theater.

Lieber is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Harvard University. She earned a master's degree in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh and a juris doctorate degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where she was a member of the Law Review.

Founded in 1895, the Pennsylvania Bar Association strives to promote justice, professional excellence and respect for the law; improve public understanding of the legal system; facilitate access to legal services; and serve the 29,000 lawyers who are members of the association.