Marcia K. Thompson is currently a department Chair and Assistant Professor and has been a global human resources executive at Amazon where she served as the Director of Community Innovation. She is an attorney and has over 20 years of experience working on creating equitable workplaces in corporate, academic and within the public-sector. She started her career working for the Department of Justice (DOJ), where she realized her passion for helping people. During her tenure there she was trained in policy review, consensus building, mediation, and civil rights protections in the workplace and became a volunteer EEO counselor. Marcia also created a recruitment initiative while working at DOJ within her agency to assist with creating access to and diversifying one of the core positions.
The program’s success won her an award and changed the way recruitment was conducted. Upon graduating from law school, she continued her work in creating spaces for diverse voices and skills as a consultant and attorney. She advised organizations, leaders, corporations, and government agencies on how to create respectful workplaces. Marcia has conducted organization wide assessments, both qualitative and quantitative reviews, training and served as a Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer (CDEIO) for a corporation. She has worked to assist with employee belonging, engagement, organizational development, and change-management initiatives across various enterprises.
She has developed customized training and curriculum on a host of Title VII topics, taught for years as a criminal/social justice professor and often served as a curriculum reviewer for other entities. She is a certified mediator, and an executive coach and has worked with corporate and public agencies to resolve matters in the workplace that had a nexus with inequitable treatment based upon protected classes.
Marcia has served as general counsel for a national organization and provided guidance on a gamut of organizational matters. She has served on Boards and Committees for years committed to ethics, civil rights and equity in the workplace and has helped to develop internal strategies, national policies, and procedures for recruitment, hiring, retention, and mechanisms for building inclusive, and equitable organizations. She also served as an Ombudsperson on Capitol Hill and collaborated with human resources, legal, compliance, and organizational leaders across the Capitol to address and resolve concerns with policies, process, and procedures.
Marcia has also served as a certified workplace investigator and has conducted fact findings on administrative matters, she has also served as a federal hearing officer within the Department of Justice. She is a keynote speaker often seen at national conferences on leadership, data-driven problem-solving, as well as building heathy communities and public safety related topics.
For many years she has been working nationally on social justice, equity, reform, and community engagement in some of the nation’s high-profile cities seeking assistance with police reviews, assessments, reform, and community trust building.