Rochelle Goodwin

By Megan Darlene Milam

Rochelle Goodwin grew up in a family-restored Victorian home—which she called a tiny castle—located in a small town with one stoplight. Since starting her career, she has worked hard to serve and transform the lives of many Appalachians. Goodwin can be classified as a life-long learner and helper, focusing her time on serving her community and others.

Goodwin’s service to others did not begin with her career as a lawyer. Instead, it began in a family that encouraged helping others. Her family moved to West Virginia to teach and work in glass industry design. Her parents introduced and reinforced the idea of community service to their children. She internalized this concept of service to others, and it is evident throughout her career. Today, she serves as the director of strategic initiatives for the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.

Goodwin says she did not intend to go to law school. She graduated from Marietta College with degrees in psychology and leadership. She spent the summer after graduation working for the Women’s Commission and editing the Women and the Law handbook. At that time, Judge Irene Berger and West Virginia State Bar president Barb Baxter encouraged her to consider law.

“I had not thought about going to law school, but after mulling over their advice for a year while working in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and AmeriCorps, I applied,” she says. “I did not grow up with lawyers or watching legal TV shows. Sorting all of the legal terms and readings as a first-semester student was an adjustment, but the three years flew by.”

Goodwin’s peers in law school knew intuitively she was focused on service. In her final year at West Virginia University (WVU) College of Law, she received the tongue-in-cheek class superlative “Most Likely to Make the World a Better Place but Not Be Able to Pay Student Loans.”

Goodwin’s first job after law school was at Legal Aid of West Virginia. She had a high case volume and job satisfaction, but she also understood the stakes for clients
were high.

“Knowing that a client left the courtroom with a life-changing judge’s order was incredibly gratifying, but knowing the scope of need was daunting,” she says. “Not everyone who deserved and needed a lawyer got one.”

With that recognition, Goodwin continued her legal career in public service as director of West Virginia’s Pro Bono Program, facilitating lawyers as they volunteered their services for clients who needed help.

During this time, she caught the interest of Senator Jay Rockefeller and was invited to join his team.

“Having the chance to lead Senator Rockefeller’s offices for nearly a decade was like receiving a master class on the intersection of people, place and policy,” Goodwin says.

Her work for Rockefeller instilled a love for policy as she discovered how one policy could have incredible power.

“While the policy wins were fewer and farther between than a high volume of individual court orders, a good policy can change the lives of millions to provide safety, health, education and economic opportunity,” she says.

From the U.S. Senate office, Goodwin moved into academia, taking the role of senior associate vice president for academic and public strategy at WVU and later as a vice president at WVU’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (RNI), where she continued helping others by supporting the RNI’s development of patient care and world-class research.

In 2023, after leadership roles at the RNI and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s Community Investment Council, Goodwin was offered an opportunity to work with the largest charitable foundation serving West Virginia: Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.

“The offer to join this high-impact foundation was a great fit,” she says.

Goodwin explains how each public service job built into the next with a focus on people, place and policy. She gives credit to the foundational value of a law degree, which she uses every day, and amazing mentorship within every opportunity. She believes her success has been built by having the chance to learn from smart, passionate people doing incredible work.

Goodwin has served on multiple committees and has a distinct approach to life and work: give back. From courtrooms to board rooms, she believes understanding how place-based policy affects communities has helped her.

“Rural places have challenges, but the belonging of community helps our kids focus on the here and now, anchor roots and build resilience,” she says. “This place also has a grounding authenticity that seems to create a sense of accountability to each other.”

While Goodwin has lived elsewhere, she returned to West Virginia because of the people, nature and close-knit relationships. Because of her public service focus, she supports others through work with the Benedum Foundation and beyond. She serves as an American Bar Foundation fellow, and a trustee at Marietta College. She provides advice to students seeking information about law school and service.

Living in West Virginia has cultivated the helper and leader within her. Goodwin has an innate sense of accountability that she will continue to foster in her career and life here in West Virginia.