December 16, 2022
Diversity Conference Leaders Win Big Awards at VSB Annual Meeting
Pictured: Daniel Frankel, Providence Napoleon, and Courtney Frazier
Compiled from VSB Press Releases
Two current members of the Diversity Conference’s Board of Governors plus a past chair of the Diversity Conference were honored for their work and dedication. This trifecta of award winners is the first time that this many Diversity Conference leaders have won as many VSB Annual Meeting Awards. Daniel Frankl was the CLSBA’s Local Bar Leader of the Year while Providence Napoleon was the posthumous recipient of the Diversity Conference’s Clarence Dunnaville Award, and Frazier was the recipient of the Edwin Burnette Young Lawyer of the Year Award from the Young Lawyers Conference.
Frankl served as the 2021-22 president of the Roanoke Bar Association (RBA), a role that was preceded by years of service to the Roanoke Bar and the Roanoke Law Foundation, which serves as the charitable arm of the RBA.
Frankl was nominated by Eugene M. Elliott Jr. of Roanoke who commended Frankl for his leadership during “the heart of COVID-19.” During this time, Frankl contacted the Roanoke City Schools to see how the RBA could assist them and learned that they needed clothes washers and dryers to assist homeless children who had no way to wash their clothes. Frankl and the RBA worked to obtain washers, dryers, and laundry supplies and worked with the community to raise $32,580 for 20 schools.
Napoleon began her bar service as Co-director of the Oliver Hill/Samuel Tucker Pre-Law Institute, a weeklong program that introduces students to the legal profession. She was a young lawyer delegate representing Virginia to the ABA House of Delegates and to the ABA Young Lawyers Division Assembly. She was Chair of the Virginia State Bar Diversity Conference in the 2015-2016 bar year. She served on the Board of Governors for the Young Lawyers Conference from 2014-2018.
Napoleon was recognized as a rising star in the legal profession. She was named a Rising Star by The Legal 500 in 2019 and was named by Legal Bisnow’s Trending 40 as one of the top 40 lawyers under 40 in Washington, DC.
In 2019 and 2021, Frazier received the Virginia State Bar Young Lawyers Conference Significant Service Award. Within the VSB, Frazier has served as a co-director of the Oliver Hill/Samuel Tucker Pre-Law Institute, a joint project between the Bar’s Diversity Conference and Young Lawyers Conference, which encourages diversity in the law by exposing high school students to the legal profession at a week-long event at no cost to the students.
In 2019, under Frazier’s direction, the Oliver Hill/Samuel Tucker Pre-Law Institute won first place in the Embracing Diversity Challenge hosted by the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.
Frazier has also served as a co-director of the Professional Development Conference since 2020. Each year, the Professional Development Conference committee organizes a low-cost CLE program, usually on topics of particular interest to young lawyers. The program is open to all Virginia lawyers and has been well attended by attorneys of varying ages and practice experience.
In her community, Frazier participates in the University of Richmond Mentor Network, mentoring undergraduate students interested in legal careers, in addition to the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity Success in Law School Mentoring Program, a national organization that challenges “the legal profession to prepare future generations of diverse talent for the highest positions of leadership.”