President, Velvet Ice Cream Company
Luconda Dager is the president of the Velvet Ice Cream Company and the fourth generation of her family to lead the Utica, Ohio-based ice cream manufacturer.
Dager oversees all aspects of Velvet Ice Cream, which employs 125 people and produces & distributes more than five million gallons of ice cream each year.
Before joining the family business in 1994, Dager spent three years in New York working in the retail clothing industry as a buyer.
Serving on the Board of Directors for the International Dairy Foods Association; the Ohio Grocers Association; the Midwest Dairy Foods Association; Licking County Chamber of Commerce and the Knox County Convention and Visitors Bureau, Dager also is a Trustee for Hervey Memorial Library in Utica, OH.
Dager and Velvet Ice Cream give back tirelessly to their local community through a number of efforts, including: hosting and supporting the annual Utica Sertoma Ice Cream Festival; promoting, raising funds for and riding in Pelatonia, which directly benefits cancer research at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center; and in support of the Stefanie Spielman Fund for Breast Cancer Research.
In 2007, Dager was named to the Columbus Business First “Forty Under Forty” list for influential business leaders.
Dager attended St. Frances De Sales Grade & Middle School and graduated from Newark Catholic High School in Newark, Ohio. She studied business at University of St. Frances in Ft. Wayne, IN and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1991 from Xavier University in Cincinnati. She and her husband, Bill, live in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, and have a daughter, Lauren, 9.