About
Support: For scheduling, contact Tracey Kuffel (tkuffel@umich.edu)
Karla Renee Williams, Esq. has been working in and around education throughout her career, both in the classroom and outside of it. In this new, staff-centered role, she will lead efforts to develop and execute employee experience strategies that align with LSA's newly articulated Mission, Vision, and Values - with a particular emphasis on inclusion and well-being. Karla Renee will provide strategic leadership and vision for LSA Human Resources and the staff team in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) office, while working closely with our Associate Dean for DEI.
Prior to joining the University of Michigan, she served as Executive Legal Counsel & Deputy to the President and Interim Dean for Workforce Development & Continuing Education within the City University of New York (CUNY). As Deputy to the President, Karla Renee was responsible for the daily operations of Bronx Community College (BCC) across four (4) divisions and thirty-four (34) buildings on a campus that serves approximately 16,000 students each year. She has also led BCC's Human Resources department, serving 2,500 faculty, staff, and administrators in multiple collectively bargained unions. Over these eight (8) years, she collaborated with campus leaders to diversify their workforce, improve campus accessibility, and develop an Office of Affirmative Action, Compliance and Diversity. This included serving as Labor Designee, Records Access Officer, and liaison on reappointment, promotion, tenure, and leave processes for both faculty and staff.
Prior to her time in CUNY, she was an Assistant Solicitor General and Assistant District Attorney in DeKalb County, Georgia, with a main practice in juvenile rehabilitation-focused prosecution and the development of wraparound services for justice-involved youth. She arranged educational, vocational, medical, behavioral, and mental health care for exploited, trafficked, and runaway children and others who found themselves within the juvenile justice system.
Karla Renee has taught advanced bar studies, multijurisdictional substantive law, legal writing, and stress management courses both live and online at law schools across the country as an adjunct professor and lecturer with Kaplan Bar Review. In the past years, she has regularly guest lectured at NYU Stern in the Executive MBA Program in the Leveraging Your MBA and Advanced Topics in Management Communication courses.
Karla Renee graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Pre-Law from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. While there, she studied at Manchester University in Manchester, England, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, Mortar Board, and Phi Alpha Delta honor societies. She received her Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and graduated from the Executive Program at New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business with her Master’s in Business Administration and specializations in Organizational Strategy and Leadership. She reads voraciously, loves working out, sings and plays piano, and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.
