100 People to Meet in 2024: Angels

Helping the sick, giving the disadvantaged hope and protecting the environment, these Virginians put others’ needs ahead of their own, making the commonwealth a better place.

Dr. Victor Agbeibor

St. Francis Family Medicine Residency Program director, Bon Secours
Midlothian

Dr. Victor Agbeibor has trained 300-plus residents over his career. In June, he also started consulting for the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Residency Program Solutions, helping to develop new residency programs.

A Ghana native, Agbeibor completed medical school in Russia, participating in a Soviet Union scholarship program for people from developing countries before completing his residency in Oklahoma, choosing a program focused on medical missions training. He then completed general surgery training in Nashville, Tennessee.

Now living in Williamsburg, he and his wife met during their residencies. In 2005, they founded their Amani Medical Foundation, through which they’re building a not-for-profit 125-bed children’s hospital in Ghana. In October, Agbeibor took eight Bon Secours doctors and residents on a medical mission to Ghana.

In 2024, he will lead the St. Francis program’s expansion into Bon Secours Richmond Community Hospital, and he plans to lead missions to Bolivia and Haiti.

Maureen McNamara Best

Executive director, Local Environmental Agriculture Project
Roanoke

Maureen McNamara Best has been interested in all aspects of the food system since she gardened alongside her mother as a child. Today, as executive director of Roanoke nonprofit LEAP, she focuses on how people interact with food availability and how to nurture an equitable food and farming system that prioritizes health and abundance for everyone. A Bloomberg Fellow, Best studies food, community and health at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her organization runs a mobile farmers market that stops in 16 area neighborhoods that have limited access to fresh produce, offering 50% discounts for SNAP and Medicaid participants. “With more visibility in the community,” she says, “we finally have space to grow.”

Dr. Neal Kassell

Founder and chairman, Focused Ultrasound Foundation
Charlottesville

Previously neurosurgery co-chair at the University of Virginia’s medical school, Dr. Neal Kassell created the Focused Ultrasound Foundation in 2006 to advance the development and adoption of focused ultrasound, a noninvasive medical treatment that has more than 180 clinical uses, including treating Parkinson’s disease and prostate cancer. By the end of 2022, the foundation provided $14.9 million for 131 completed preclinical studies, and as of 2022, it had 24 research partner institutions and organizations across seven countries.

In 1988, Kassell operated on future President Joe Biden’s two life-threatening brain aneurysms. In 2016, the University of Pennsylvania double graduate joined the Blue Ribbon Panel for Biden’s Cancer Moonshot, and in 2019 declared his former patient was “every bit as sharp as he was 31 years ago.”

Amy Sampson

President and CEO, Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters
Norfolk

Although she is CHKD’s new CEO, Amy Sampson is no stranger to the children’s hospital, having worked there 34 years. In 2024, her priorities include four key areas, she says: quality and safety, workforce development, growth and innovation and financial stability.

In 2022, the pediatric hospital system opened its Children’s Pavilion in Norfolk, a 60-bed inpatient mental health facility for children and adolescents. It’s the most important effort she’s been involved with in recent years, Sampson says: “That is really going to transform mental health services for children in our region and beyond, and I think we’re going to become a beacon for mental health care for children around the United States.”

Mark Uren

President and CEO, United Way of South Hampton Roads
Norfolk

Although he’s a newcomer to Hampton Roads, Mark Uren has been with the United Way since 2013, previously serving as vice president of resource development in Forsyth County, Georgia, in the exurbs of Atlanta. Over the next several months, Uren’s plans include examining how the organization can focus on kids and education, as well as making a bigger regional splash. “What are the needs in the community where are we best positioned to make an impact? And how can we really double down in those areas?” he asks. Away from work, Uren has been a daily runner for the past 20 years, noting that it’s not only how he decompresses; it’s also when he does his best thinking.

Check out the other 100 People to Meet in 2024.