Chelsea S Novelli

Chelsea Novelli made the jump from prosecutor to insurance defense on a gut feeling. “I had a number of criminal trials and got great experience out of that,” she says of her time as a prosecutor.

But, after moving to New Jersey, she decided she wanted to try something outside of criminal law. The move paid off when she accepted a job at Callahan & Fusco. “I’ve been here four and a half years and made partner in September,” she says.

Novelli’s success at Callahan & Fusco and her quick rise through the ranks are impressive enough, but her contributions to the industry go further in her previous capacity as the firm’s employee success leader. In this role, Novelli helped with the professional development of colleagues across all of the firm’s offices.

She says, “I realized that, for people like myself who have never done this type of work before—insurance defense or any type of coverage work—there was an opportunity to train people; to bring in people that maybe didn’t come from this line of work.” And so Novelli proposed the employee success leader role to the firm’s executive committee. She says she attended CLM’s Litigation Management Institute, “and that, to me, was a huge eye opener. I want to take our training and development efforts and make it a ‘mini’ LMI.”

For young professionals looking to carve out their own careers, Novelli advises, “You are your own advocate, and you are going to get where you want to go by your actions. People can help you along the way; people can certainly fight for you and be a sponsor behind closed doors, but you have to put yourself in the position to take the first step.”