Linsey Hogg ’12 knows injustice. She was raised in it. Now that she’s grown, Kentucky’s assistant attorney general takes aim at her childhood nemesis by protecting the state’s most vulnerable.
She knows vulnerability, too. In Rock Spring, Georgia, just over the mountain from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Hogg bounced from women’s shelters to friends’ couches to her grandmother’s house, where her teen aunt offered as much assistance as she could.
“A kid raising a kid,” she remembered.
Hogg was fleeing domestic violence in a home where she was told she would never amount to anything. And as far as she knew, it was the truth. Her whole world had been this little mountain town, and the only college graduates she knew were teachers, who had placed her on a remedial learning path. One day, a math teacher understood what a mistake that was.
“I was good at math,” Hogg said. “That was the one thing I could control. A couple of my teachers said, ‘Not only should she not be in remedial, she needs to be in advanced.’”
Photo by Ehku Say ʼ26
Eventually, her calculus teacher and a guidance counselor paid for Hogg to visit Berea College.
“I had no idea about anything college-related,” she said. “I didn’t know what was out there. I’d never really traveled, much less two states away. But for the first time, I didn’t feel alone.”
The most successful people she knew growing up were teachers, and Hogg’s talent with math led her to a logical conclusion that she would become a math teacher. But soon she took her first philosophy course, and it changed everything.
“I had never even heard the word ‘philosophy,’” she said. “But logic, like math, just inherently made sense to me. Philosophy gave me a framework to think critically; I had no framework before that. I couldn’t write worth anything. Philosophy taught me how to write.”
She discovered ethics as well, as a whole classroom of students grappled seriously with right and wrong. Hogg declared a major in philosophy and one day left Berea with a powerful sense of direction. Though law school was on the horizon, she measured the expense of going, and she took a job in the managed healthcare field to save money while considering whether healthcare fraud was a path she wanted to pursue.
I had no idea about anything college-related. I didn’t know what was out there. I’d never really traveled, much less two states away. But for the first time, I didn’t feel alone.
Linsey Hogg ’12
“I wanted to work in healthcare because I never had healthcare,” Hogg said. “I wanted to give back
to people like me who didn’t have a voice.”
That voice was rooted again in her logical, mathematical mind.
“I did a lot of the data-driven stuff,” she said, “medical billing and coding. You can see the natural progression.”
After a few years in the managed care industry, Hogg entered law school at the University of Kentucky, where she focused on federal criminal law and healthcare fraud. She worked with professors on federal jury instructions and built relationships with the legal community and judges.
Before she finished law school, Hogg already knew where she wanted to go next. She called the state government’s executive director of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit and asked how to get there. The executive director did not hide her astonishment and told her the path was quite easy.
“No one seeks out the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit,” Hogg said. “I did.”
And now, in her work as assistant attorney general, Hogg protects Kentuckians who are too often unheard: low-income patients, children denied eyeglasses because a provider billed fraudulently, elders mistreated or exploited by caretakers.
“I’ve prosecuted attorneys. I’ve prosecuted providers,” she said. “If you commit the crime, I will uphold justice.”
In addition to her work holding fraudsters accountable, Hogg considers her nonprofit efforts to have equal weight. She founded Kentucky Animal Tales, dedicated to animal rescue and welfare.
“Animal welfare is a passion just as important to me as my work within the attorney general’s office,”
she said.
When asked what she took from Berea above all else, Hogg didn’t choose grit or determination. She chose humility. It is, though, a kind of humility with tinges of pride.
“I am proud of what I do every day, but in this world, there’s so much arrogance,” she reflected, lingering on the stereotypes she often faces. “Sometimes I tell people, ‘You know that poor Appalachian hillbilly you’re talking about? That’s me.’”
Their faces, she said, often change.
