Verda Colvin 1987

Years before Verda Colvin ’87 was appointed to the Georgia Supreme Court—where she considers such weighty matters as abortion law, election provisions and death penalty cases—she went viral for a speech she gave to a room full of troubled teens.

Dressed in her judge’s robes in her Bibb County courtroom, Verda laid out the bleak future, showing the juvenile offenders a jail jumpsuit and a body bag. “One of two things,” she told them. “What do you want to do?” She also reminded them they were special and exhorted them to focus on finishing school.

“Doing things like that is the reason I went to law school,” says Verda. “I wanted to make a difference. I wanted inspire, encourage and really promote all that’s supposed to be positive in our world.”

Verda learned about Sweet Briar College at a college fair near Atlanta, Ga. and was impressed when the admissions representative followed up with a handwritten note. She saved her money for a flight to visit the College and, after a weekend on campus, she was sold. As the first person in her family to go to college, “I wanted to go to a place that cared about me and would ensure I got through college.”

She majored in government with an eye toward law school, but added a second major in religion, inspired by the coursework she took with Professor Gregory Armstrong. Mostly she developed a keen sense of herself and her goals.

“That’s what a woman’s college allows you do. It allows you to concentrate on yourself and grow in a way that is different than when you’re at a co-ed school,” she says. “At a woman’s college, the only thing you have to concentrate on are your studies and becoming the person that you’ve always envisioned yourself being, becoming your own dream.”

She attended law school at the University of Georgia and initially worked as a defense attorney in private practice. Later she switched sides, working as a prosecutor in state and federal venues. “I never thought I would be a prosecutor because for me, at that time, that was working for the institution that sometimes reigns terror on innocent people,” she says. “And then when I started as a prosecutor, I realized I can really ensure fairness and justice from the start of the process. I could make sure defendants were properly charged—if they should be charged at all.”

She became a trial judge in 2014, a position she says gave her the opportunity to consider a defendant’s life experience and fashion a sentence accordingly. In 2020, she was named to the state’s Court of Appeals and, a year later became the second African-American woman named to the Georgia Supreme Court—the first appointed by a Republican governor. Her work on the state’s highest court is less about evaluating people and more about interpreting the law, she says. “If you’re a fair-minded jurist, you have to follow the law despite your personal opinion.”

She still speaks publicly, whether before inmates in prison, state social workers, at a gala for Black men or a STEM program for girls. “Being a public servant means you make yourself available to the public.”