Simmons, Malika

Malika Simmons teaches the capstone course in our Master of Entrepreneurial Ventures program. She has also served as a speaker in undergraduate classes. 

 

Malika lives and works in the Kansas City area, where she is Assistant Counsel for Kansas City Life Insurance Company, a fourth-generation family business.  As such, she handles a wide variety of legal and related matters for the company. 

 

Previously, she served as the Co-Director of the Entrepreneurial Legal Services Clinic and Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC) School of Law.  As Director, she provided a variety of legal and related services to startups, social ventures, and other small businesses in the Kansas City community.  In addition, she worked closely with the Entrepreneurial Scholars Program at the UMKC Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management.   

 

She began her career at Husch Blackwell LLP, in the corporate department, where she gained broad-based experience practicing in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, securities law, insurance, corporate governance, private equity, and privacy requirements under HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the Fair Credit Reporting Act.   

 

Malika received her law degree from Washington and Lee School of Law, in Lexington Virginia.  While there she served on the Executive Editorial Board of the Race and Ethnic Ancestry Law Journal (later renamed the Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice).  She earned her bachelor’s degree from Brown University.  At Brown, she was awarded the CV Star Fellowship by the Howard Swearer Center for Public Service.