Daiquiri Steele serves as the Director of Diversity & Inclusion and Assistant Professor of Law in Residence at the University of Alabama School of Law. She formerly served as a Civil Rights Attorney with the U.S. Department of Education, where she provided legal counsel relating to federal investigations of discrimination involving the nation’s school districts, colleges, universities, and state educational agencies. She also served as a mediator for civil rights claims. She previously worked for the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, where she assessed federal contractors’ compliance with employment discrimination laws.
Professor Steele serves as a member of the American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on the Future of Legal Education, ABA Standing Committee on Public Education, and Alabama State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She previously served as a Commissioner on the ABA Commission on Racial & Ethnic Diversity in the Profession. She has also served as Diversity Director for the ABA Young Lawyers Division, a member of the ABA Section of Labor & Employment Law, and Vice-Chair of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee for the ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice. She is also the Assembly Speaker and Chief Policy Officer for the Young Lawyers Division.
Professor Steele previously served as the Georgia Young Lawyers Division Director of ABA Involvement, and is a graduate of the Georgia Young Lawyers Division Leadership Academy. In 2016, she received the Award of Achievement for Outstanding Service to the Profession by the State Bar of Georgia Young Lawyers Division. Professor Steele is also a member of the National Bar Association, and a previous Co-Chair of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys Government Attorneys Section.
She graduated with Bachelors of Arts degrees in both Economics and Political Science from Spelman College where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. She earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Georgia School of Law, her Masters degree in Public Policy and Administration from Northwestern University, and her Ph.D. in Business Administration from Hampton University.
Professor Steele has spoken at many national, state, and local conferences on a variety of topics, including federal equal employment opportunity laws, diversity in the legal profession, diversity pipeline programs, implicit bias, sexual harassment and sexual violence, the use of statistical analysis in disparate impact cases, cyberbullying, and the responsibilities of postsecondary institutions concerning students with disabilities.
