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Lawyer Danielle Koger serves as vice president of the Network of Enterprising Women in Richmond (NEW), a nonprofit organization with a strong Facebook following that aims to encourage women in business as well as foster the exchange of knowledge and methods for success in establishing and maintaining a business.
The organization’s public service is granting annual college scholarships to graduating high school senior girls in the Richmond region to help them pursue continuing education.
“We strictly focus on raising funds to help young women,” Koger says. “As vice president, I am able to participate at a different level. It’s all about being about being able to empower someone else.”
NEW also offers professional development programs, and throughout the year, the group fundraises through events such as a holiday bazaar and a spring fashion show supported by Wear RVA. They then host a scholarship winner celebration.
Koger’s own journey to becoming a business owner began with serving eight years in the U.S. Navy before attending Temple University to study business law and international business. About 20 years later, which included several years spent working as a legal secretary at Reed Smith LLP in Philadelphia, Koger began law school at Western Michigan University. After a year, she transferred to Michigan State University College of Law, and she graduated a year later in 2015.
“I became interested in law at a young age, specifically to help women,” she says. “It’s always been my goal to defend women and children in domestic relations issues. I was always an advocate against domestic violence, and that springboarded into my legal career.”
Koger moved to Abingdon, Virginia, in 2016 to work for the Virginia Education Association (VEA), and she transferred to Richmond several months later. After passing the bar exam in Virginia in 2017, she left the VEA to form Koger Law Group PLLC, offering legal representation in family law, estate planning, criminal defense, employment law and civil litigation.
“I wanted to be able to give back to the community more,” she says. “I wanted to educate more people about legal law. My slogan is, ‘Legal knowledge is power.’ It’s important to me that people understand the legal process and everything that’s involved.”
Koger derives satisfaction away from work and volunteering by spending quality time with her family. “We go to festivals, we travel, we watch movies — that’s my fun stuff,” she says.
