Israel Receives MIT Service Award

The MIT Alumni Association has honored Shook Partner Sharon Israel with the Harold E. Lobdell ’17 Distinguished Service Award, for service to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and its Alumni Association “of significant depth over a sustained period.”

Israel serves on MIT’s Alumni Association Board, Corporation Nominating Committee, and the Corporation Visiting Committee for Libraries. She is also co-chair of the Club Council. Previously, she served on the Alumni Association Selection Committee and the Annual Fund Board, and was the chair for her reunion gift committee from 1991 through 2016. Israel served as president of the MIT Club of South Texas from 1995 to 1997, and has been a member on the Board of Advisors for the club since 2013.

The award was presented Friday, September 27, 2019 at the MIT Alumni Leadership Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Israel is an accomplished litigation attorney who focuses her practice on intellectual property law, with an emphasis in patent litigation. She has represented IP clients before trial and appellate courts, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the International Trade Commission. She also is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation; the Texas Bar Foundation; the Houston Bar Foundation; and the American Intellectual Property Law Association. She holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT, and received both an MBA and a J.D. from Emory University.