Office for Equity & Inclusion

The mission of the Office for Equity & Inclusion is to coordinate the university's commitment to a diverse, welcoming and respectful community, and to ensure legal compliance.

Office for Equity & Inclusion

Ryan Thompson, Esq.

Title IX Coordinator, Associate Director for Equity & Inclusion

Email:: rthompson@niagara.edu
Phone:: 716.286.8324
Office Location:: O'Shea Hall B27, PO Box 2034, Niagara University, NY 14109

Ryan Thompson began his career in investigations while in college working for the U.S. Marshal’s Service warrant squad. After graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1999 with a degree in journalism, Thompson became the crime reporter for the Cambridge Chronicle newspaper outside of Boston, MA. There, Thompson became heavily engaged in investigating and exposing the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) in the aftermath of a local boy’s abduction and murder. Thompson also received an award for his coverage of racial and ethnic issues from the New England Press Association.

In law school, Thompson continued to focus on criminal investigations, working on both sides of the law at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and at Brooklyn Law School’s innocence project. Employed briefly as a litigator at a 5th Avenue law firm in Manhattan, Thompson returned to journalism in 2007. He became the longtime legal editor of the historic Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper, covering hundreds of murders, rapes, robberies, mafia and terrorism trials.

Thompson began his career at Niagara University as an adjunct writing professor, before becoming the assistant general counsel in 2014. Over the next three years, Thompson continued to teach over a dozen writing courses, while also co-founding the Niagara Law Center. In 2017, Thompson was named Title IX Coordinator and chosen to lead the university’s new Office for Equity & Inclusion (OEI).

He is certified as a Civil Rights Investigator from the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA), and has received lengthy training on trauma-informed investigations from the New York State Police, SUNY and Harvard psychologist Dr. Jim Hopper.