Law360 and Virginia Business covered the news that McGuireWoods Consulting has named Senior Vice President Laura Novey as head of the firm’s wide-ranging national education team.
Both outlets noted that Novey served as the former Virginia Secretary of Education and in leadership roles at both Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia.
“I had worked with McGuireWoods Consulting when I was secretary of education, when I was at Virginia Tech, as well as when I was at UVA, and they had an outstanding reputation,” Novey told Law360 Pulse. “And they were doing some work in higher education policy that I thought was very interesting, and [I] saw an opportunity to potentially grow that higher education work that they had done.”
MWC’s education team assists clients with policy and legislative matters, advising on a variety of issues, including relationship development, issue advocacy, communications strategy, coalition building, design and implementation of appropriations requests and legislative initiatives, analysis, and government relations support.
“I’d also say we’ve got a little bit of blend between health care and education and providing supports for children,” Novey added. “I work with a client specifically that provides vision screenings as well as eye exams through a mobile clinic. And so oftentimes where maybe state policy or regulation doesn’t allow for some of those supports to be accessed very easily.”
The firm’s education clients include Fortune 500 companies, school districts, state education associations, state, and private universities, edtech startups, national charter school networks, private specialty schools and state and national nonprofits, both large and small.
Notably, in addition to Novey, MWC boasts two other former Virginia Secretaries of Education as members of its team, Jim Dyke and Fran Bradford.
This team works collaboratively with McGuireWoods’s education industry team led by Farnaz Thompson to identify opportunities to support a wide range of client needs.
“[Thompson] has a very good sense of consulting and our capabilities and really trying to see when there are opportunities with law firm clients to support them at either the state or federal level with certain policies,” Novey said. “And vice versa. If we have clients that may need legal support, then we can bring those two things together.”
