Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, emerita tenured associate professor of Employment Law & Legal Studies at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, is a cum laude graduate of the Howard University School of Law and a magna cum laude graduate of the Federal City College (now the University of the District of Columbia). She is licensed to practice law in DC and six federal jurisdictions.  She has over 60 awards and recognitions for teaching and service, including the 2019 Minority Services & Programs Honored Trailblazer tribute, 2017 award for UGA’s best Diversity & Inclusion program, 2016 Women’s Studies Professor of the Year and one of UGA Student Government Association’s ten Outstanding Professors of the Year, and the 2015 national $25,000 Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman award for excellence in teaching.  The Beckman award arises from being recommended by a student who has accomplished something significant for the community who attributes it to their professor’s influence. Dr. B-A, as she is affectionately known, used her award to establish the Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander Building Bridges Scholarship at the University of Georgia for students who engage in diversity work to build bridges of understanding.  Upon her retirement from UGA in February 2021, the University honored her decades of diversity work by creating the Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander Inclusive Faculty Award for faculty demonstrating a significant commitment to Diversity & Inclusion.  Dr. B-A delivered a TED Talk on Practical Diversity in 2015 (with over 149,000 views) and is the 2011 recipient of the University of Georgia’s highest award for diversity, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Building Bridges award.  She was also a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship and taught and conducted research on race and gender at the Ghana School of Law in Ghana, West Africa for ten months.  

Before coming into academia, Dr. B-A worked in legal capacities in Washington, DC at the Department of Justice’s Honors Program, Criminal Appellate Division, the D.C. Court of Appeals, the highest court in DC, as law clerk to the Honorable Julia Cooper Mack, the first black female appointed to a court of last resort in the US; the White House Domestic Council, serving as assistant to the Associate Director and General Counsel;  the Federal Trade Commission's Antitrust Division,  and the Federal Labor Relations Authority litigating federal sector labor law cases.  She also taught at Antioch School of Law in their National Farmworker Paralegal Training Program and the University of North Florida and served as a special master (labor mediator and arbitrator) for the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission.

Dr. B-A publishes extensively in the Employment Law area with particular emphasis on race, gender and sexual orientation issues. In 1994 she co-authored a first-of-its-kind textbook, Employment Law for Business, (McGraw-Hill, Publishers) which established the discipline in colleges of business.  The text is now in its tenth edition and remains the leading text in the country in its discipline.  She also co-authored The Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Environment of Business in a Diverse Society published by McGraw-Hill Publishing Company and The Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Environment of Business published by South-Western Publishing Company.  In 2018 she published her first e-textbook, Contemporary Contracts, for Great River Learning.

Dr. B-A has conducted diversity and Employment Law seminars for thousands in the public and private sector since 1983, has been featured in media across the country, including National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune magazine, Georgia Trend, the Houston Chronicle, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution. 

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Dr. B-A dedicates all of her Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Belonging work to her Ancestors, 3 daughters and 2 grandchildren.