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Recent Articles from Alissa Skelton
NAKIA MADRY-SMITH
Few people can say they sing in a choir with Pharrell Williams. Or that they’ve performed on Netflix, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” “Good Morning America” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” But Nakia Madry-Smith has done all those things. Yet, she still finds time to connect with the community, representing Old Dominion University regionally as […]
JENNIFER WAKEFIELD
Jennifer Wakefield is on a mission to turn the greater Richmond area into the top midsize region in the U.S. for business. To accomplish her goal, she is laser-focused on persuading companies to relocate to the area. She aims to create enough jobs to encourage youth to stay, instead of moving to other cities to […]
REBECCA McHALE
Some job applicants might have been intimidated by the opportunity to integrate three information systems into one due to a massive merger of Perspecta Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp.’s federal IT and mission support services and Peraton, a national security contractor. Not Rebecca McHale. Helping Peraton, which is set to move to Reston in September, undergo […]
Taking the reins
To quote the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. … It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.” In Year Two of our Virginia Business Women in Leadership Awards, we received more than 300 nominations — exceeding last year’s nominations by more than […]
JANET GULLICKSON
Janet Gullickson initially didn’t think much about the importance of being named the first woman president of Germanna Community College in 2017, after having worked in higher education in Colorado, Minnesota and Washington state. “I just thought, ‘Well, women should be in these positions,’” she says. “It shouldn’t be a big deal, but I guess […]
BARBARA D. BOYAN
“I decided at age 10 that I was going to cure arthritis because my mother had it,” says Barbara Boyan, and, in the decades since then, Boyan has never really wavered in her search for treatments. Although Boyan holds a doctorate in biology, she early on saw the value of mastering engineering concepts so that […]
LORI GARRETT
When Lori Garrett was studying architecture at the University of Virginia in the 1980s, she recalls, there wasn’t a women’s restroom near her classrooms. “That changed shortly after I graduated,” Garrett says. “But clearly, in the ’80s, it was very male-dominated.” Garrett went on to oversee the design of buildings at colleges and universities across […]
CAROLYN BISHOP
Virginia529 helps families in the commonwealth afford higher education for children by participating in long-term, tax-advantaged saving programs. And as chief operations officer of the independent state agency, Carolyn Bishop helps oversee its $60 billion in assets distributed across more than 2.5 million accounts. The job is about much more than just managing money, though. […]
SUSAN HORNE
From her local government service to building statewide networks of people and organizations, Susan Horne knows how to connect people. Horne has been involved in Lead Virginia since its inception — first as a member of its steering committee and as a board member and then as a member of its second class in 2006. […]
AMY McDANIEL WILLIAMS
In 2011, Amy McDaniel Williams learned she had breast cancer. The hard-driving finance lawyer realized she needed to slow down and take care of herself. “The diagnosis made me realize that every day is a gift,” she says. In 2015, she created a supportive fitness community for cancer survivors, launching Amy’s Army of Cancer Warriors, […]
