Rob Poggenklass ’03: Empowering the oppressed
When he heard a minister tell the congregation that saying prayers over corn seed would produce a more abundant harvest, 12-year-old Rob Poggenklass began to question almost everything he had been taught growing up in Guttenberg, Iowa.
What didn’t change, however, was his ambition to serve others.
“I never questioned the idea of going into public service. It was imprinted on me by my parents,” Poggenklass said. They were both public school teachers involved in many good works.
Seeking answers and direction, Poggenklass enrolled at Cornell College where he majored in philosophy, wrote for The Cornellian, and graduated magna cum laude. He relished classes in ethics taught by Professor of Philosophy Paul Gray.
“I loved how One Course At A Time allowed me to focus all my attention on one subject,” Poggenklass said. “The diversity of the student body opened my mind to a whole range of new ideas. I was very naive. I could see that many of my classmates were far wiser than I was.”
After four years working on weekly newspapers in Mount Vernon and West Branch, Iowa, Poggenklass was still looking for direction. “My world felt small. I went to law school to work out what I should do next.”
He graduated from William and Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 2010 with the clear goal of helping people who are oppressed by the legal system: minorities, the impoverished, the undereducated, those falsely accused.
He worked for four years as a public defender in Virginia, representing defendants in criminal cases ranging from misdemeanors to murder. He spent two years with the ACLU chapter in Virginia, lobbying and writing. He worked for legal aid groups first in Iowa and later in Virginia, helping hundreds of low income clients deal with problems in housing, family matters, personal finance, and court debt.
Along the way, he taught law classes at Des Moines Area Community College, William and Mary, and the University of Virginia.
Poggenklass is president of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, a group dedicated to abolishing the practice. The death penalty was outlawed in Virginia in 2021, but opponents are working to restore it.
“Our goals are to preserve and protect the law,” said Poggenklass, who lives with his wife, Serena Matuk, and their two children in Earlysville, Virginia. “Progress in civil rights isn’t linear. There are two steps back for every three steps forward.”
In September 2022 Poggenklass turned his focus from the civil rights movement to the advocacy arena. He is now interim executive director of Justice Forward Virginia, a nonpartisan advocacy organization for criminal justice reform.
“I once thought the criminal legal system was broken,” Poggenklass said, “but I’ve learned that isn’t the case. It’s working exactly as designed as an instrument to oppress minorities and poor people. The system isn’t broken, but it sorely needs reform.”
Dan Kellams ’58 is a member of the Cornell College Alumni Association Board of Directors. His career spanned nearly 50 years in public relations in New York City, where he worked as a corporate and agency executive and, later, as a freelance writer and editor. He has written two books set in his hometown of Marion, Iowa.
