My thesis is simple:

If you take the most luxurious and beautiful girl’s trip and turn it into a business trip, invite incredibly kind and accomplished women, structure days with blocks of unstructured time, movement in nature, leadership sessions grounded in spiritual practices, self reflection and connection, daily massages, have nourishing and delicious food, add sunshine, have the group create a high vibe playlist, host a dance party with summer spritzes and mocktails, breath work, sound bath, meditation, burning ritual to release what no longer serves, work with gorgeous wellness and beauty brands to create a weekend filled with delights and surprises, plus remove all barriers we place on ourselves to allow for exactly what it is we want, the result is verifiable magic.

My first retreat was undeniably special and my gratitude to the women who said yes is hard to articulate.

26 women who are leaders in their profession and homes, who connected with parts of themselves long forgotten in between cleaning the kitchen, starting the company, defending the client, healing the patient, writing and marketing the book, managing the team and P+L, guiding the board of directors, packing school lunches, getting the birthday party present and checking in on aging parents. We had the entire property to expand into, which created a container for ease and community. When women give themselves the space to allow for what it is they actually want, unapologetically, there is an unlock personally that leads to the leveling up professionally.

The simplicity of prioritizing what you want is disruptive to outdated models of leadership. There is power found in taking space to rest, embracing beauty for the sake of beauty, putting in the time for energy and emotions to move to allow for the version of yourself you have not met yet to emerge. The Verifiable Magic happens when you do this with women you admire.

The systems that women operate in professionally were not designed for them to thrive, so changing the rules of engagement, albeit terrifying, is mission critical to keeping women in the workforce in meaningful and fulfilling ways.

Thank you to all the brands that partnered with me on this first retreat:

• The Ranch Hudson Valley

• Danucera Skincare

• Saie

• Miru

• Mingle Mocktails

• Apothekary

• Tea Botanics

• Harmonia Anointing Oils

• Phosis

• Five Springs Bourbon

• NNABI

• Dove Serum + Radiance

• Dr. Meredith Elkins (Parenting Anxiety)

• Fran Hauser (The Myth of the Nice Girl)

• Annie Wright, LMFT, (The Cost of Capacity--On The Women Who Become Necessary)

• Vital Proteins

• CSG Law

I cannot say enough good things about the team at The Ranch in the Hudson Valley and I look forward to partnering with them again.

Here is what people had to say:

I feel like I am on to something and I love this work—so let me know if this landed for you and if you want to join the next one!

Learn More About Unapologetically First and Working with Danielle Corcione for Speaking Engagements + Workshops

A Waitlist is Growing, be the first to know about the next retreat

Let’s Re-imagine how we make business connections and start writing our own rules of engagement. My intention for 2026 is to be in rooms that I never knew existed in order to learn and expand my personal and professional network.

This week I attended POSSIBLE Miami, a marketing conference that my brilliant and beautiful friend Casey DePalma McCartney, the Chief Strategy and Brand Communications Officer, for Unilever US recommended I attend.

I am so glad that I did! The conference delivered on the expected panels and networking but attending alongside a good friend in a completely different industry offered a glimmer into another world.

I have always known that Casey is a superstar, but it was truly so much fun to see her in her element. She was outstanding on every panel she participated in and her warmth and expertise were on full display.

I met her remarkable and inspiring network. I participated in a Roundtable with and Chief Marketing Officers at major brands. I was able to offer my lens as a former federal prosecutor on AI, where innovation may be moving faster than governance and internal guardrails to protect it.

I was likely the only lawyer in every room I entered while at POSSIBLE Miami and I found myself introducing my practice and how I work with brands and companies. Turns out that is not as easy as it sounds! Thankfully, being introduced by a friend who understands the media and marketing space intimately made it easier. While Casey’s expertise can help elevate any brand, it was our decade plus friendship that made all the difference for me in the room. Where I may have understated my 21 year law career, Casey, my incredible friend, framed my capabilities and experience in a way that I would not. And, in doing so, making my conversations richer and my impact in the room greater.

Likewise, because I have witnessed Casey’s work ethic, creativity, leadership and commitment to her teams and company firsthand, I was able to promote her in casual conversations with authority and authenticity. I was able to celebrate her in a way that she would never.

Casey and I met when our now 13 year olds were toddlers. We have had a front row seat to the sacrifices it takes to be a working mom, supporting and cheering one another on when times were challenging. The ROI on this conference blended the business with the personal. It was a window into a friend’s professional world, which made me understand her better, strengthening our friendship and our ability to open doors for one another.

I highly recommend you try attending a conference with a friend in a different industry. Let’s continue to disrupt the outdated leadership models that were not designed for women. You might even find time for a morning walk by the ocean with a friend and a cup of coffee before the day begins—something that is hard to come by.

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I officially started my legal career during a time when 2300 billable hours was the baseline and a bottle of wine at a work lunch was the norm. Where a young associate needed to navigate the expectation to day drink with the partners hosting lunch against the reality of deadlines looming (irrespective that many were false, but fatal to your reputation if missed). It was a time when women in leadership with children pretended that their children did not exist. I can only suspect out of fear they would not be viewed as committed or taken as seriously. Early in my career a wildly successful female partner told a room full of female associates that motherhood and law firm partnership could coexist—but it required staffing a morning and an afternoon nanny. From my vantage point in 2005, the working moms worked longer hours and put in more facetime to prove their undivided loyalty to the firm than their male counterparts. “All-nighters” were routine and unhealthy takeout reigned supreme. It was a flex to be so busy you had to cancel personal plans and martyr energy was omnipresent.

It never felt aligned and I intuitively believed that I would find a different way. Now, after more than 20 years of practicing law, through personal challenges and tragedies, trial and error, I have cultivated a different path for myself. I work daily to embody leadership that is centered on kindness, well-being, excellence and ambition. Where motherhood is celebrated rather than tolerated and an abundance mindset and attention to individual energy culminate in outstanding teams doing great work. A leadership model that creates trust with clients because self trust is the framework.

Last week I announced my collaboration with The Ranch Hudson Valley for a women’s leadership retreat, an invitation for women to embrace the promise and beauty of their own life, to put themselves Unapologetically First.

The Response Has Been Overwhelming

So many women have already met the announcement with a resounding yes, this is exactly what I need and a swift registration. These women are incredible and I am loving seeing this group come together knowing that the right blend will sign up and it will be for a reason greater than my intentions.

It has also been met with many conversations with women in my network intrigued, inspired and dare I say it afraid to make a choice that is purely for their own well-being.

Well those conversations hit me hard because at one point they were me—I truly felt like I needed to earn time off and the needs and expectations of others meant more than my own. I could never take any time away from work or my family obligations because those two demands were never ending and I often felt like I was failing everywhere, so how the hell could I take a minute away?

Long before I was an adjunct Professor of Law at Seton Hall Law School teaching Mindfulness and Wellness for Law Students helping the next generation of attorneys, I was an over-functioning, highly responsible, people pleasing type-A lawyer dealing with a cancer diagnosis. That diagnosis in 2008 stopped me in my tracks and put me on a spiritual path towards self discovery and a desire for an abundant life. When I started allowing for time for myself after cancer, it was incredibly fragmented—there was my “self care side” and then there was my “all things to everyone side that never said no”—and they never met.

I wanted a successful career that was aligned and that felt good, not just accomplishments that looked good. And, for many years, including through early motherhood I flirted with ways to put myself at the top of my own to-do list. I tried to cultivate something new.

I did alright, until I did nothing. Death does that to you.

After my brother died in 2023, I found myself at the bottom of the ocean—alone in my grief—until the only way out was through. Old stories of lack and self-sabotage were front and center. Drawing on decades of spiritual practices and the excellence of my professional background, I knew what to do. I put in the work, the hard work to heal, which required time and care for my soul.

I knew what to do, I just needed to do it.

For the first time, I completely allowed my ambitious type-A perfectionist side to fully integrate with and embrace my hippy beach loving and divinely connected side. It was the unlock that allowed for my deepest healing and alignment. AND, going forward, never the two shall part.

Unapologetically First, A Women’s Leadership & Wellbeing Retreat with Danielle Corcione is personal. It is for every woman who knows there is a better way to achieve her goals, who knows that when she is at her best, everyone else benefits, it is for the woman who embraces her beauty and vitality and understands that each leveling up is accompanied by a lightening up. It is also for the woman who knows all of this and can’t allow good things for herself because she feels guilty.

I am more confident than ever that the paradigm shift is real and now.

The Ranch is an extraordinary place—thoughtfully designed, deeply restorative, and known for setting the standard in results-oriented wellness. It’s an ideal setting for the kind of work I care deeply about: helping women create clarity, resilience, and sustainability in full, demanding lives. We are not talking about well-being from the sidelines, we are doing the work in the office and at home, some of us in both spheres, and we need the scaffolding to succeed.

Together, we’ll combine The Ranch’s signature experience—movement, nature, nourishment, and restoration—with guided sessions that invite honest reflection, grounded inquiry, and space to reset both mind and body.

Because the conversations about this retreat have been so illuminating for me, let me explain what we are going to do. We are treating well-being as a professional capacity, as the antidote to motherhood that feels dense and exhausting at times. We are going to benefit from 6+ hours outside, laughing and connecting with one another in nature, we are going to take some time out for pleasure and enjoyment, for rest and indulgence—I know, I know, it sounds a lot like a golf outing—but this one is for you my loves. Imagine three days to take the time you need to have fun, rest, sleep, connect, eat well, move your body, sit in the sun, read a book and work on yourself?? How about while making meaningful relationships that will move the needle professionally and personally?

Session One: It Is Good to Feel Good - Reconsider what it means to lead and live well. You will explore how tending to your own well-being allows you to stay present in difficult moments, navigate complex emotions, and respond rather than react.

Session Two: Signing Your Own Permission Slip: Many women are waiting for permission—often without realizing it. This session is about offering that permission to yourself.

This retreat is for the woman who will allow for the business conference that might have an ROI, the mother who will say yes to the play-date because she is socializing, but not with someone she would ever choose, it is for the woman who has denied herself ease because there is always something else to do—maybe this retreat is for you?

Put Yourself Unapologetically First!

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When I was an AUSA, I was responsible for investigating federal crimes. It was my job to investigate the allegations. It was my job to present the facts to the grand jury for an indictment. It was my job to prove the crime beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury trial.

But before any of that, I often spent months and sometime years corroborating the evidence.

To corroborate means to “confirm or give support to (a statement, theory, or finding).” Without corroborating evidence I would not bring charges.

For the last 7 years, I have been a partner at CSG Law and I am dedicated to contributing to the culture as a member of the firm's Executive Committee and as the Chair of the Litigation Department. I love opening doors for others and working with Corporate Boards and companies to conduct internal investigations to help strengthen their governance and culture. In my work every day, I corroborate allegations or find that there was no wrongdoing if I cannot.

You Are Always Where You Are Meant To Be

My brother Ryan died in December 2023 and I found myself at the bottom of the ocean—alone in my grief, unable to connect with anyone, including myself—I was a shell of myself and felt the grief of losing him and every other grief I had encountered in life and never felt.

Through unwavering love and support from my husband and children, and my law firm's extraordinary understanding, I had the space to heal and I took it. I intuitively knew that I needed help, even if it looked like I had given up from the outside.

So, if you had a service to sell that even touched on healing, I was buying it. Since my brother passed, I have sought the support from a therapist, an energy healer, a nutritionist, a functional nutritionist, a personal trainer, and a doctor focused on hormones in mid-life. I tried acupuncture, massage, getting my hair blown out, manicures, pedicures, meditation, prayer, crying, listening to music, moving my body.

I was still working, still mothering, still pretending I could do it all. I was desperate to feel better. I could no longer run on coffee and adrenaline and power through for results. I was in every sense of the word, exhausted. AND, I did not want to be.

I needed to calm my nervous system so that I can embrace my ambition. I leaned into my spiritual practices and my professional background. For the first time, I completely allowed my ambitious type-A perfectionist to fully integrate and embrace my hippy beach loving and divinely connected side. It was the unlock that allowed for the deepest healing and alignment.AND, going forward, never the two shall part.

Every experience I have been through, every professional and personal learning has brought me to this moment—I am adding a new title, Professor of Law.

While objectively adding another responsibility does not make any sense, I am buzzing with enthusiasm for this opportunity to teach. I am following my intuition and allowing excitement to expand.

Professor Corcione

Summer 2025 is the opening I never knew I needed, but absolutely adore.

This summer I am teaching “Law Student Mindfulness + Wellness” at Seton Hall Law School. The expectation for my students is to be open minded and the invitation is to explore what modalities work for each of them and to corroborate for themselves what will allow for abundance and well-being.

Required reading includes The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. We are reading Into the Magic Shop by Dr. James Doty and The Life Brief by Bonnie Wan.

We have practiced different types of meditation in class, including teachings from Sharon Salzberg Gabrielle Bernstein and Jaycee Gossett and the class discussions are genuine and powerful.

The books, meditations and teachings have guided me on my own path and it is a pinch me moment to teach this class and to share their work.

If you are interested in following along, please get reading and let me know what you think!

Investigate your own truth—only you know what will align for you—Corroborate the evidence to live the life you deserve.

With so much love and gratitude,

Danielle

After my brother died, a friend gave me Healing After Loss, daily meditations for working through grief by Martha W. Hickman. This little book understands me. This little book provides comfort and support and companionship when I feel the most alone in my grief. This morning, like most mornings, I read the short passage for the day. It brought me to tears, but not the sobbing ones that I have shed this week over and over again, but rather for the first time tears of hope. December 29, 2024 was the year anniversary of Ryan’s death. The lead up was awful, but the actual day was startlingly worse.

Here we are on the eve of a new year, 2025 is upon us.

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness—unknown

I took a deep breath and thought about how I can let the light in just a little bit more. Grief is an elixir that I never wanted to take, but it has irrevocably changed me. I am not the same. And, maybe that is a good thing.

With so much love and gratitude for the unknown, I welcome 2025 by searching for opportunities to light a candle rather than curse the darkness. It is on me.

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When I was 28 I had cancer.

I was a third year associate at Linklaters LLP, a global law firm where I spent pretty much all of my time. The day that changed everything was like any other before it. Unremarkable. I was clicking through and tagging documents by subject and relevance to help the senior lawyers on the team identify “hot docs.” The task was arduous and boring and also necessary and important.

My landline office phone rang.

I answered in my most professional voice “this is Danielle” —to a kind “hello, is this Ms. Randazzo?” “This is she” I answered. And, then the news. The pathology report had come back with “atypical cells that upon analysis are cancerous” and it was necessary to have another surgery imminently because the cancer was close to my lymph nodes and if they spread further it could be “problematic.”

The next call I made was to my husband (we were married the year before). He met me right away and I cried in his arms on a NYC street corner. Unsure how to begin to process this news, I took action. I walked right into an overpriced NYC Deli and ordered a freshly squeezed green juice. It was 2008 and the juice cost $13. I meant business. I was not going to let this news take me out. With time and reflection I recognize that being diagnosed with cancer was the opening for my deepest healing and the beginning of my spiritual path. I am grateful I was faced with the opportunity to redefine.

The first book I read after I was diagnosed was You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. I was introduced to concepts that changed my life and expanded my awareness in every way. The notion is “if we are willing to do the mental work, almost anything can be healed.” Louise Hay believed that limiting beliefs and ideas are often the cause of illness. This meant that I could take control of my own healing. I became a student of intention, always searching for the good. I began meditating daily. I started practicing yoga. I became disciplined in positive visualization, vigilant about the foods I ate, and the energy I put out into the world. I learned how to love myself.

Cancer did not take me out. Grief did.

My brother Ryan had a fatal fentanyl overdose last December. The news of my brother’s death came on December 29, 2023, but I do not know for sure when he actually passed. Fentanyl is lethal every day.

Siblings are lost in the hierarchy of grief, often overlooked. The pain of never speaking with my brother again has been debilitating. I have experienced loss before, my father passed 14 years ago—but losing my brother is achingly different.

We are coming on the anniversary of Ryan’s death. Since he died I have been in incredible pain, retreating inwards often missing out on what is right in front of me. Unable to find joy in the day to day. Frustrated and angry, sad and despondent at times. Sobbing when I am alone in the car. Furious really. At my brother. At the time we lost. This year I have completely succumbed to the grief. It has been a year of inaction and when I did make moves it was often in the wrong direction.

But it cannot be this way forever. I am blessed with friends who love me enough to hold up the mirror and force me to see the truth of how lost I’ve been—reminding me of my strength. Loving me through it all.

I am a mother. My children need me back in the world. Now is the time to do what I know how to do—take action.

To start:

• I will reread You Can Heal Your Life—it won’t be the first time this year, but maybe this time it will land differently.

• I will start taking care of myself again, nourishing my mind, body and spirit. Allowing for the spaces in between to whisper what I need to know in order to evolve.

  • Once I articulate a plan, I will share here in case it sparks something for you. One thing I will do for sure is take The Class regularly, which is an incredibly special methodology that always leaves me feeling lighter and clearer.

• I will a Take a Deep Breath and Drink Water and listen over and over again to Jon Batiste’s music because it helps me exhale.

Perhaps you may have felt a bit lost this year--in the final weeks of 2024, what can you hold a mirror to and really look at?

What are you ready to dissolve in order to evolve? 

With so much love,
Danielle 

“I am out with lanterns looking for myself” —Emily Dickinson

I fell in love with the writing of Emily Dickinson as a college freshman at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She lived her life and found her resting place in Amherst. I admire the simplicity of her writing, how she aptly captured the melancholy and delights in the world. My admiration for Emily Dickinson runs deep, as a college student, I routinely left my handwritten poems crafted on notebook paper at her grave site.

Dramatic and true.

As much as I believed in my ability, I have equally been afraid to actually be seen. As a college freshman I wished to be brave and cool enough to share my work at one of the countless open mic nights. By senior year, I attended many readings at local bookshops and coffee houses, but I never added my voice. Something always held me back. I never really felt like I was good enough to be out front.

I always wanted to be a writer. I proudly declared English as my major in college and believed that one day I would be a published author. I still dream of publishing a book of honest essays offering all the truths that brought me back to myself when I was lost.

A little over a month ago I posted my first Substack—which to me was the most vulnerable and terrifying thing I have ever done—I shared my writing. I wrote about my brother.

First, I panicked. I called my best friends for reassurance, and they promised that what I shared resonated and was beautiful. I was so proud of myself for telling my truth about how Ryan and I left things. After he passed I made myself the villain. If I was the only one to blame I could turn on myself. I hated myself after he died, for his addiction, for our distance, for his choices and my own. But the truth is more nuanced than that. Love was the invisible thread that kept us connected. Despite the years of physical distance, which were exasperated by the pandemic and his multiple stints in rehab, when my brother died he knew that I loved him. He knew because I told him.

My brother’s death will not be what takes me out, although for most of 2024 it has. Somehow I have this incredible block to taking care of my own needs, unless I am in the middle of a crisis—cancer, pandemic, grief—if the world is crumbling and I absolutely have to, then and only then, will I put my needs first.

I am great in a crisis. Always have been. But I am tired of operating on overdrive and over functioning. I am ready for beauty, I am ready for the promise of this one life I am blessed to live. I am ready to step into a new alignment and belief that I matter too. So, I am writing my own permission slip.

Dear Danielle, you are allowed to put your needs unapologetically first, to feel good and to rest and to have fun, to take exceptional care of your own heart and soul—I am counting on you....xoxo, Danielle

What are you ready for? No one is going to tap you on the shoulder and say, come on, it's time for you now. You must do that for yourself.

I invite you to write your own permission slip—

Dear [ your name ], you are allowed to [      ], [      ], [     ], to take exceptional care of your own heart and soul-I am counting on you....xoxo, [ your name ] 

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Me: “Hey, I love you. Hope you are doing good.

Ryan: “Hey I’m well thanks, i love you too.”

This is the last communication, a simple text message, that I had with my brother Ryan before he died. He was in rehab again and we had not spoken or seen one another since our sister’s wedding in June 2018. I sent this text, with an intuitive hit in September 2023, just three months before my 34 year old hilarious and handsome brother died of a fentanyl overdose. Ryan had struggled with addiction for most of his adult life, and as such I loved an addict for most of mine. It is incredibly complicated to have a relationship with someone that has been stolen by drugs, it is even more complicated to grieve a ghost.

I’m not broken, and neither are you

It took the darkest season of my life to embrace the truth that I am the light. It took me 44 years to unlearn the limitations that were never mine to carry. I am eternally grateful to the past versions of myself—the one who worked so hard to prove her worth, who achieved great academic and professional success and did it with an enthusiasm for others and a deep commitment to doing good in the world. I am grateful to the version who moved to the burbs with her husband with a six month old and never gave up her dreams to be a federal prosecutor. I am grateful to the mother I am growing into with two beautiful children that are my greatest teachers. I am grateful to the version who feels deeply aligned and accepts all the mess and leans into her ambition and faith. I am grateful for the grief, for the lessons and the opening to what is to come.

I intend to show up here honestly.

It took getting cancer at 28 years old to begin my spiritual path. It took the death of my brother to remind me what I know to be inherently true—that we each have a unique purpose and that we are all being guided and protected.

I am here to make sense of losing a sibling to addiction, to share the challenges of being a full-time working mom. I am a lawyer who loves her career, but celebrates being a mom and being a woman. I am learning to put myself unapologetically first in big and small ways. It is not always popular or easy, but prioritizing my well-being allows me to show up for my family, my work and most importantly, myself. I hope to inspire you to do the same.

Let Things be Easy, Especially When they are Hard

Grief is hard. My hope is that by showing up for it all and sharing from a heart centered place, I can be of service to someone else drudging through the same mud. Let’s explore healing and light, allowing things to be easy, especially when they are hard.

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