Sign In
Free Newsletter
Recent Articles from M.J. McAteer
CATHY UNDERWOOD
Cathy Underwood says her greatest strength is her ability to build relationships in the construction industry. She’s done that while working her entire 22-year career for Branch Builds, a subsidiary of The Branch Group, a Roanoke-based construction company. As president, Underwood leads Branch Builds’ commercial construction projects across Virginia and in neighboring states. In 2000, [...]
JOANIE EILAND
Joanie Eiland recalls wishing she had a woman mentor in the early days of her career — so she became one. “I think we process things differently and experience things differently. And there’s nobody to talk to,” Eiland says. On mentoring others, she calls it a joy “to be there for the firsts — whether […]
JESSICA BUTTERWORTH
There are male-dominated industries, and then there’s Jessica Butterworth’s office, where she is in charge of 145 engineering workers for Colliers’ Real Estate Management Services (REMS). Every last one is male. “It’s very different to be a female lead of engineering,” Butterworth says, in a gentle understatement. Her job entails overseeing 750,000 square feet of [&hell[...]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
