Advisory Board on Race and Racism

Professor Dana A. Thompson is a clinical professor of law and directs Michigan Law’s Transactional Law Clinics Program, the Community Enterprise Clinic, and the Entrepreneurship Clinic.

She has devoted most of her legal career to representing community-based organizations and small businesses on transactional matters to advance economic and racial justice in urban communities. Dana teaches in the Community Enterprise Clinic, where she represents community-based and nonprofit organizations, cooperatives, social enterprises, and small businesses, primarily in Detroit.

She is the founding director of Michigan Law’s Entrepreneurship Clinic, where she represented University of Michigan student-led startups and other start-up ventures.

Before joining Michigan Law, Dana taught at Wayne State University Law School and founded and directed Wayne Law’s Small Business Enterprises and Nonprofit Corporations Clinic. At Wayne Law, she was also the director of the Damon J. Keith Law Collection of African-American Legal History. Her scholarship and other writings focus on urban entrepreneurship and community development, small business legal matters, and student entrepreneurship.

Prior to entering academia, Dana practiced at Morrison & Foerster LLP in San Francisco, then at Miller, Starr and Regalia, where she specialized in commercial real estate and corporate law. She then joined the Nature Conservancy as regional counsel.

In November 2014, Thompson was elected statewide by the citizens of Michigan to serve on the Wayne State University Board of Governors, which elects the president of the university, has general supervision of the university, and controls all expenditures from university funds, among other duties.

Dana also serves on the board of directors of TechTown Detroit. She is the past chair of the Community Economic Development Committee of the ABA’s Business Law Section and is a past co-chair of the Legal Educator’s Committee of the ABA’s Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development Law. She also is a past co-chair of the Association of American Law School’s Clinical Law Section’s Awards Committee.

Dana received her JD from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was editor of the Michigan Law Review, and her AB from Bryn Mawr College.

Ellisen Turner is a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP and renowned intellectual property strategist and litigator.

One of the few African-Americans to have led an Am Law 200 firm, Ellisen is also the former managing partner of Irell & Manella LLP. Named to the Los Angeles Business Journal’s list of the “The Most Influential People in Los Angeles,” Ellisen is deeply involved in community and national legal organizations.

Known as a thought leader on diversity in the legal and STEM fields, Ellisen Co-Chair’s the Kirkland & Ellisen Firmwide Diversity & Inclusion Committee. In 2019, Ellisen was honored with California Minority Counsel Program (CMCP) Law Firm Diversity Leader Award, which recognizes an individual who has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Ellisen has long been involved with the National Bar Association (NBA), the nation’s oldest and largest national network of predominantly African-American attorneys and judges, which recognized him as a “Trailblazer Under 40” for not only achieving distinction in his legal career but also demonstrating a strong commitment to advancing the NBA’s goals and mission. He has also served as the Chair and a Board Member of the NBA’s Intellectual Property Section.

Ellisen founded the NBA’s annual Diversity in Tech Awards, which recognize leaders for fostering diversity and inclusion in the STEM and intellectual property fields. He was also the keynote speaker at the 2018 Diversity & Inclusion Summit for the National Association for Law Placement and the Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals and for the John Langston Bar Association’s Corporate Firm Network Annual Summer Meeting.

Ellisen has been dedicated to mentoring attorneys and students from underrepresented groups. He has regularly spoken to K-12 students on the importance of a STEM education, including through the STEM Outreach program at the University of Southern California (USC).He is also regularly an invited speaker at USC’s Viterbi Summer Institute—a high achievement program designed to enhance the transition to USC for engineering students from underrepresented backgrounds—where he speaks to incoming USC undergraduate engineering students about career paths in the law. He has similarly been a speaker in the University of California Irvine Law School’s Pre-Law Outreach Program, which helps students from disadvantaged backgrounds understand the demands of law school, prepare for the law school application and admissions process, and be inspired to one day use their legal skills to give back to the community.

Throughout his career, he has been involved with organizing programs geared towards the advancement of minority groups in the law. Ellisen’s commitment to diversity follows the trails blazed by his late father, James A. Turner, a diversity leader and champion of the civil rights era who integrated the Norfolk, Virginia public schools as a member of the “Norfolk 17.”

Lara Bueso Bach is counsel in Weil’s Complex Commercial Litigation practice, where she has substantial experience in multi-district litigations, consumer fraud and product liability class actions, alter ego and fraudulent conveyance litigation, and disputes arising out of restructurings and bankruptcy proceedings.

Lara has handled all aspects of complex litigation proceedings, including fact and expert discovery, depositions, motion practice, hearings, and trial proceedings. Throughout her career, Lara has been an active contributor to the community, representing children and victims of human trafficking, mentoring female law students, and participating in various philanthropic activities.

She is the immediate past president of the Miami-Dade chapter of the Florida Association for Women Lawyers (MDFAWL) and earlier served as president (2018-2019), president-elect (2017-2018), secretary (2016-2017), treasurer (2015-2016), newsletter editor (2014-2015), and as a board member (2012-2014). Additionally, she serves as president of the MDFAWL Foundation, a 501(c)(3) that provides scholarships to law students demonstrating academic merit, financial need, and a commitment to advancing women in the law. Lara also serves on the Board of Governors of the Young Lawyers Division of The Florida Bar, and previously served on the Board of Directors of the Rollins College Alumni Association and the Diversity and Inclusion Committee of the Florida Bar.

An advocate for professionalism and diversity in the legal profession, Lara is frequently asked to speak on panels about these topics. In 2015, the Florida Association of Women Lawyers honored her as one of its annual “Leaders in the Law,” an award bestowed on women who have made significant impacts in their communities. Also in 2015, Lara was selected as one of the 40 Under 40 Outstanding Lawyers in South Florida by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. In 2017, 2018, and 2019 she was recognized as a “Rising Star” by Florida Super Lawyers. In 2018, she was honored as one of just 25 recipients of Daily Business Review’s “On the Rise” award, which recognizes attorneys under 40 years of age for “wielding influence and showing expertise in their practice areas and committing themselves to pro bono, charitable, and professional volunteer work,” and in 2019, Lara was named as an “On the Rise – Top 40 Young Lawyers Award” honoree by the American Bar Association.

Lara received a JD from the University of Michigan Law School, where she served as the managing editor of the Michigan Journal of Race & Law and president of the Latino Law Students Association. Prior to law school, Lara graduated from Rollins College with a degree in Political Science, summa cum laude.

Jay Baer is a proud alum of the University of Michigan Law School, where he was a contributing editor of the Michigan Law Review and a member of the Black Law Students Association.

After graduating from Michigan Law, Jay joined Covington & Burling, in Washington, D.C., where he advised clients on a wide range of white-collar and litigation matters. Jay also served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of Georgia. There, he was chief of the Financial Litigation Unit and represented the federal government in a variety of civil and criminal matters.

Throughout his legal career, Jay maintained an active pro bono practice focused on civil rights cases, including representing female soldiers challenging the military’s former combat exclusion policies. Currently, Jay is the chief of staff at the U-M’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, the largest of U-M’s schools and colleges. In this role, Jay serves as a policy advisor to the dean and provides leadership and strategic support to manage college priorities and initiatives.

Prior to joining LSA’s senior leadership team, Jay was an administrator at the Law School, where he worked as the director of private sector programming in the Office of Career Planning and also served in a one-year role as Michigan Law’s acting director of admissions.

Jay has a strong record of commitment to diversity and inclusion. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in Critical Social Theory from a small liberal arts college in Georgia, Jay joined the Teach for America Program. He was drawn to the mission of bringing educational equity to the classrooms of under-resourced public schools. Jay taught middle school science and social studies at a charter school in Atlanta dedicated to serving immigrant and refugee students. Later, as a lawyer, Jay volunteered hundreds of pro bono hours to ensure that low-income survivors of human trafficking and discrimination had access to legal services.

At Michigan Law, Jay was a volunteer supervisor for the name change clinic hosted by the school’s LGBTQ+ student organization, which provides free guidance to transgender individuals seeking to change their names and gender markers.

Umbreen Bhatti is the Constance Hess Williams ‘66 Director of the Athena Center for Leadership at Barnard College, where she works with young women building a better world.

Previously, Umbreen led the innovation lab at KQED, the Bay Area’s NPR | PBS station. Umbreen also serves on the board of Global Press, a news organization dedicated to reinventing the craft and business of international journalism by recruiting diverse populations of local women and training them to become professional, ethical journalists.

As a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, she developed and then hosted the podcast “Kaleidoscope: Reflections on Islam.” Beyond media, Umbreen has guided universities, libraries, local government, and nonprofits in their efforts to meet the needs of their communities in new and exciting ways.

Earlier in her career, she practiced law at the Disability Rights Legal Center in Los Angeles, the ACLU in Delaware, and Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C., and taught law students as an adjunct professor at Widener University School of Law.

Elizabeth A. Campbell is an employment attorney, HR professional, and diversity and inclusion leader.

She is also an author, speaker, and training facilitator on D&I and employment law-related topics. Effective July 16, 2018, Elizabeth became the director, diversity & inclusion for the Campbell Soup Company in New Jersey. One year later, July 2019, as part of the roll-out of a new, two-division operating model for the company, Elizabeth is now the director, inclusion & diversity, for the Snacks Division of Campbell Soup. In this role, Elizabeth has responsibility for the development and implementation of the inclusion and diversity aspects of the Campbell Snacks business strategy as a member of the HR team.

Prior to joining Campbell, Elizabeth led D&I strategy as the Partner & Chief Diversity Officer at the Houston-based law firm Andrews Kurth Kenyon and previously served as the vice president employment practices and corporate diversity officer at ARAMARK in Philadelphia. Elizabeth has previously worked in business operations and has led human resources functions.

She began her legal career in Washington, D.C. in private practice later going in-house. She actively supports several non-profit organizations and serves on the board of the National Diversity Council.  Effective January 2, 2020, Elizabeth became the board chair of the Council on Legal Education Opportunity.

Elizabeth received her BA  in Political Science and Psychology from American University in Washington, D.C., and her JD from the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor. She is admitted to practice law in Washington, D.C., New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, as well as before the United States Supreme Court. Elizabeth is the proud mother of two adult sons.

Ann Chen is assistant general counsel at TransUnion, managing matters in litigation, employment, diversity & inclusion, intellectual property, and real estate. She has significant in-house experience advising global businesses, including in the financial services, healthcare, and consumer goods industries. She is a leader in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion, including previously leading the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion program for the in-house legal department of a Fortune 100 company and as a Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) Fellow. She serves on numerous boards including the Greater Chicago Legal Clinic, the Asian-American Bar Association of Chicago Law Foundation, and the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession (IILP). Ann received her BA from Yale University and her JD from the University of Michigan Law School, where she served as an executive editor on the Michigan Law Review, president of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, and a student instructor for the Minority Affairs Program. She clerked for U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan in the Southern District of Florida (now on the 11th Circuit). She also worked as an associate at the law firms of Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Goldberg Kohn. The National Law Journal named Ann a “Top 40 Under 40 - Chicago’s Rising Stars.”

Tasheika Hinson is head of investigations in the Office of the General Counsel at Vanguard, one of the world’s largest investment management companies.

In this role she provides strategic, pragmatic, and effective legal guidance in internal investigations to a committee composed of the general counsel, chief internal audit executive, chief global enterprise risk executive, and chief human resources executive.  She leads and directs privileged internal investigations conducted by cross functional teams, including the selection, vetting and management of external counsel and subject matter experts, and identifying and recommending remediation. She also leads a team of legal analysts and attorneys charged with responding to legal processes, such as subpoenas, CIDs, search warrants.

Prior to joining Vanguard, Tasheika served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of the Virgin Islands from 2016 to 2018, and in the Northern District of Georgia from 2012 to 2016. Before that, she was an associate in the Corporate Investigations and Trial Practice at Jones Day in Atlanta.

Tasheika holds a BA from Temple University and a JD from the University of Michigan Law School where she served as the editor of the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, associate and contributing Editor of the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform and assistant editor of the Michigan Journal of Public Affairs.

Following law school, Tasheika clerked for U.S. District Court Judge K. DuBose in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

Mark Jefferson is the Inaugural Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity and Belonging at Harvard Law School. Mark counsels students from a wide variety of diverse backgrounds, with a special focus on developing relationships with and working through the concerns of students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds, whether religious, socioeconomic, racial, gender/sexual identity, political, or any combination thereof.

In collaboration with student groups, faculty, various administrative offices, and centers, Mark develops programming that promotes cultural competency, civil discourse, and thick articulations of the unique ways social justice, inclusion, and equity intersect. Additionally, he contributes to the planning and implementation of HLS Dean of Students Office events and programs including Commencement, Orientation, and student leadership development programs.

He received his JD from the University of Michigan Law School, and his BA in Philosophy from Morehouse College. In his spare time he reads whatever he can get his hands on, writes fiction, and contemplates the seemingly effortless genius of Sarah Vaughan, among other things.

Charlotte Hawkins Johnson has served as vice president and dean of students at Scripps College in Claremont, California since 2014.

Dean Johnson holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Detroit, where she graduated first in her class, and earned her juris doctor from the University of Michigan Law School.

The first female African-American partner at her Detroit law firm, Charlotte has since then helped blaze a path for other women and people of color aspiring to senior leadership positions in higher education. She was the first woman to be named dean of the college at Colgate University and the first woman to be appointed as non-interim dean of the college at Dartmouth. Charlotte has served as chair of the State Bar of Michigan’s (SBM) Access to Justice Task Force, and as a member of the SBM Standing Committee on Character and Fitness.

Charlotte was a member of the senior administration at the University of Michigan Law School from 1997 to 2006. While at the Law School, Dean Johnson served on the core communications and legal strategy teams in the Gratz and Grutter cases, which challenged the University’s admissions policies. The cases were ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the constitutional validity of race-conscious admissions policies in higher education.

While attending the Law School, Charlotte served as chair of the Butch Carpenter Committee and as a student instructor for the Minority Affairs Program. She is currently a member of the Butch Carpenter Scholarship Committee and the Committee for the Gabriel Hargo Scholarship Fund. Charlotte has served on various local and national boards, including Culture of Respect, Downtown Women’s Center of Los Angeles, and the Boston Preparatory Foundation.

John Lin is a counsel for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, where he works on telecommunications, media, and technology policy. John previously served as an oversight counsel for the Senate Budget Committee.

Before joining the Senate, he was a litigation and regulatory attorney at Wiley Rein LLP, where his practice focused on telecommunications, technology, and international trade law.

John earned his JD and MPP from the University of Michigan Law School and Gerald R. Ford School for Public Policy in 2015. While in law school, he was a student attorney for the Federal Appellate Litigation Clinic, where he argued a habeas appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He also was a Campbell Moot Court quarterfinalist, co-chair of JDs in the D, a member of the Central Student Government, and a board member of the 1L Oral Advocacy Competition and the Federalist Society.

John graduated from the University of Michigan in 2010, where he studied history and political science. He is from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

John Petoskey is a legal fellow at the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago. John received a JD and MS (Environmental Policy) from the University of Michigan Law School and the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) in 2020.

John received a BA in Sociology and Spanish Literature from University of Michigan 2016. In 2019 John was an Indigenous Human Rights fellow with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.

John is a citizen of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and grew up on his tribe’s reservation in Peshawbestown, Michigan.

Kylee Sunderlin is the legal support manager and counsel at If/When/How, an organization dedicated to transforming the legal systems and institutions that perpetuate oppression into structures that realize justice, and working toward a future when all people can self-determine their reproductive lives free from discrimination, coercion, or violence.

Prior to joining If/When/How, Kylee was a family defense attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services where she represented parents facing allegations of abuse or neglect and experiencing inhumane family separation. She was also a Soros Justice Fellow at NAPW, where she used a combination of litigation, public education, and advocacy to challenge state violence in response to medication-assisted treatment. Previously, she also worked with the ACLU of Michigan and Lambda Legal.

Kylee is a proud Michigander and double wolverine, receiving both her BA and JD from the University of Michigan. She lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan with her wife, toddler, and two dogs.

Professor Maureen Carroll teaches and writes about civil procedure, civil rights litigation, and the dynamics of the legal market. She is particularly interested in how procedure, substantive law, and the structure of the legal profession interact to define the scope of access to justice for identity-based discrimination and other broadly shared injuries. Her scholarship has appeared in the Duke Law Journal, the Cardozo Law Review, and the Temple Law Review.

Carroll received her BS in electrical engineering, magna cum laude, from Princeton University and her JD from UCLA School of Law, where she was ranked first in her class. Following law school, Maureen clerked for the Hon. Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked as a staff attorney in impact litigation for Public Counsel in Los Angeles. She then returned to UCLA as the Bernard A. and Lenore S. Greenberg Law Review Fellow.

Alicia Davis is senior vice president, corporate development and investor relations at Lear Corporation. In this position, she is responsible for leading Lear’s efforts in identifying, evaluating and executing mergers and acquisitions, strategic investments and joint ventures. She also leads the ongoing development and implementation of Lear’s investor relations strategy and oversees communications with the financial community.

Alicia joined Lear from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was the associate dean for strategic initiatives from 2016-2018. She continues to hold an appointment as a tenured professor and focuses her teaching and research on corporate governance, capital markets and mergers and acquisitions. She began her teaching career at the Law School in 2004.

Alicia was previously a corporate lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis and prior to that an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and Raymond James, where she served as a vice president.

Alicia has an undergraduate degree in business administration from Florida A&M University, a JD degree from Yale Law School, and a MBA from Harvard Business School.

Kyle Logue has been a professor at the Law School since 1993. He writes and teaches in the areas of insurance, torts, and tax law. His scholarly work explores how these areas of law can be marshalled both to enhance social efficiency and to pursue various conceptions of distributive justice.

As one of the country’s leading experts on insurance law and policy, Kyle has written (often with co-authors) a number of important law review articles in the field as well as a leading casebook. He was the Associate Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Law of Liability Insurance, which was completed in 2018. His administrative experience includes serving as the associate dean for academic affairs at the Law School and chairing the University’s Ad Hoc Committee on Tobacco Investment, which issued a report recommending that the University divest its holdings in tobacco companies.

Professor Logue is a graduate of Auburn University and Yale Law School. Before joining the University of Michigan faculty, he worked as a tax attorney in Atlanta. Prior to that, he served a one-year judicial clerkship with the Honorable Patrick E. Higginbotham on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Between 2006 and 2016 Professor Logue held the Wade H. and Dores M. McCree Collegiate Professorship, and he is currently the Douglas A. Kahn Collegiate Professor of Law.

Margo Schlanger is the University of Michigan’s Wade H. and Dores M. McCree Collegiate Professor of Law. She joined the Law School faculty in fall 2009, and teaches Equal Protection, Torts, and classes relating to civil rights and to jails/prisons. She also founded and runs the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Previously, she had been a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and an assistant professor at Harvard University.

Margo is the author of dozens of law review and other scholarly articles, and is a frequent commentator online and in print on civil rights topics. She is the lead author of a leading casebook, Incarceration and the Law (2020). Margo does substantial work in civil rights litigation and prison and immigration reform, including representing prisoners and prisoners’ rights organizations, serving as a monitor or expert, and helping to coordinate prisoners’ rights legal advocacy across the nation, organizing webinars, shared resources, and the like.

In 2010 and 2011, Margo served as the presidentially appointed Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Later in the Obama Administration, she assisted in the development of DHS policies relating to reducing sexual abuse and the use of solitary confinement in immigration detention. She also served on the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Committee on Family Residential Centers, which recommended abolishing family detention.

Margo earned her JD from Yale in 1993. She then served as law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

From 1995 to 1998, she was a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, where she worked to remedy civil rights abuses by prison and police departments.

Kimberly D’Haene is the assistant dean of student services at the University of Michigan Law School. She focuses on developing and sustaining programs that amplify professionalism, academic excellence and curiosity, and student wellness. Her portfolio includes registration, advising, accommodations, ABA issues, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and student programming.

Kim has worked in law school administration and international academic and enrichment program design and support for mission-driven institutions for much of the past 25 years. Prior to joining Michigan Law School, she was the director of academic success at the Georgia State University College of Law where she also taught Professional Responsibility.

Prior to that, Kim served as assistant dean of academic success at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School and the State Bar of Georgia as a bar exam grader. Kim earned her JD from the University of Michigan Law School, and her BA in Spanish and History from Spelman College. From 2003 to 2006, she was an associate at the law firm of Sutherland, Asbill, and Brennan (now Evershed Sutherland) where she practiced in the areas of international education liability; employment law; telecommunications, corporate litigation and commercial real estate finance.

In 2006, she started the data analytics consulting firm Customer Oriented Analytics and Reporting (The COAR Group). She transitioned back into higher education in 2008.

Kim has served as a national lecturer for Kaplan Bar Review, specializing in writing for the bar exam, and serves on the National Conference of Bar Examiners Testing Task Force Test Design Committee.

Her research has  explored factors that impact bar exam performance, particularly factors that disproportionately impact historically underrepresented applicants. 

Ramji Kaul currently serves as the law school’s assistant dean for career planning. Ramji is a double Michigan grad, receiving his BA with distinction in English literature in 2002 and his JD, cum laude, in December 2004.

After graduation from Law School, Ramji joined the Chicago Office of Dentons (f/k/a Sonnenchein, Nath & Rosenthal) where he practiced for more than 10 years. As a partner in the litigation and disputes resolution group, he litigated cases in state and federal courts focusing on complex commercial litigation, catastrophe and major claims litigation, and class action defense.

Ramji stepped away from practice and returned to the law school in 2015 motivated by the opportunity to improve the student experience and raise the level of preparedness to practice. He now leads a team of 10+ attorneys and support staff who are focused on engaging each law student through individualized counseling and targeted programming addressing topics including career exploration, self-advocacy skills, and professional identity formation.