Mike Thurmond

Mike Thurmond
Chief Executive Officer of DeKalb County
Assumed office
January 1, 2017
Preceded byBurrell Ellis
Labor Commissioner of Georgia
In office
January 11, 1999 – January 10, 2011
GovernorRoy Barnes
Sonny Perdue
Preceded byMarti Fullerton
Succeeded byMark Butler
Member of the Georgia House of Representatives
from the 67th district
In office
1987–1993
Preceded byHugh Logan
Succeeded byMike Polak
Personal details
Born (1953-01-05) January 5, 1953 (age 71)
Athens, Georgia, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
SpouseZola Fletcher
ChildrenMikaya
EducationPaine College (BA)
University of South Carolina (JD)

Michael L. Thurmond (born January 5, 1953) is an American author, attorney and politician serving as the chief executive officer of DeKalb County, Georgia. A Democrat, he was previously a representative in the Georgia Assembly.

Thurmond served as the interim superintendent of the DeKalb County School District, the third largest district in the state of Georgia from 2013 to 2015. The district serves nearly 99,000 students with over 13,400 employees. Thurmond was the Democratic Party's nominee for United States Senate in 2010. He was also one of the last Democrats to win statewide in Georgia until 2020, when Joe Biden won the state in the 2020 presidential election.

Prior to becoming DeKalb's Schools Superintendent, Thurmond was an attorney at Butler Wooten Cheeley & Peak LLP, a nationally known civil trial practice that has four times set the record civil jury verdict in the State of Georgia and also obtained for its client the largest collected judgment in U.S. history.