Lydia Quarles, J.D.
Project Manager

Phone: 662-325-9196
Fax: 662-325-3772
Email: lq1@sig.msstate.edu

Lydia Quarles is a Project Manager at the John C. Stennis Institute, Mississippi State University. She received her Juris Doctorate in 1975 from Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, and her MA and BA from Mississippi University for Women, in 1972 and 1971 respectively, in political science and communication. After over a dozen years in the private practice of law in Alabama and Mississippi, she joined the Mississippi Workers’ Compensation Commission as an Administrative Judge in 1993. Eight years later, in 2001, she was appointed Commissioner of the agency. In 2006, she resigned to join the Stennis Institute.

Quarles remains active in bar work, and currently chairs the Women in the Profession Committee, a standing committee of the Mississippi Bar. She also serves as co-chair of the Mississippi Supreme Court’s “Gender Fairness Implementation Study Committee� and acts as the Chief Operating Officer of the Workers’ Compensation Section of the Mississippi Bar. She is a fellow of the Mississippi Bar Foundation, a recipient of the Mississippi Bar’s Distinguished Service Award, and a member of the Mississippi School for Math and Science Foundation Board. Quarles was recently honored by the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, receiving the Mary C. Lawton Award for lasting contributions to the Mississippi Workers’ Compensation Commission in the areas of alternative dispute resolution and access for Hispanic workers.

She is married to Jim Mozingo, an attorney who specializes in commercial litigation and transactional law.