Mikah Thompson is the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and a Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. She teaches the following courses: Civil Procedure, Evidence, Race and the Law, and Employment Law. Dean Thompson’s research centers on the intersection of evidentiary law and race. She also writes on the pedagogy of legal education with a particular emphasis on techniques for infusing cultural self-awareness into the first-year law school curriculum. Dean Thompson is an affiliate faculty member at the UMKC School of Medicine where she directs a program that educates future physicians and other medical professionals on anti-racism and cultural bias in medicine. Dean Thompson’s awards for her teaching and research efforts include the 2023 Marvin Lewis Rich Faculty Scholar Award, the UMKC School of Law Professor of the Year Award for 2021 and 2023, the 2022 Missouri Lawyers Media Diversity and Inclusion Award, the 2021-2022 UMKC Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the 2021 Daniel L. Brenner Faculty Publishing Award.

Dean Thompson is a certified mediator in the states of Kansas and Missouri and frequently provides continuing legal education in the areas of employment law, professional responsibility, implicit bias, and allyship. Since 2019, she has served as a Tri-Chair of the Missouri Supreme Court’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Fairness. She earned her law degree from Washington University in St. Louis. Dean Thompson is a wife and mother of four, including two adult daughters and twin boys who are 14 years old.