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2025 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards: Deirdre C. Gonsalves-Jackson
Trained as a biologist, Gonsalves-Jackson leads Virginia Wesleyan’s online, Japanese, evening and weekend programs under the umbrella of the VWU Global Campus. She’s been recognized for STEM outreach and has received multiple teaching and community engagement awards. In 2024, she was promoted from dean to vice president. FIRST JOB: My first job after graduating college […]
2025 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards: Yvonne Allmond
Allmond joined TowneBank in 2005 and has more than three decades of experience in banking and finance. Although she moved around in her youth as part of a military family, Allmond is today settled into Hampton Roads civic life, having served on boards for Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University Foundation and the Virginia Center […]
The 2024 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards
This February, during Black History Month, Virginia Business is pleased to honor 17 distinguished leaders from across the commonwealth in our second annual Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards. This year’s cohort of honorees represent industries ranging from advertising, architecture, defense contracting, finance and health care to higher education and nonprofits. Our editors chose this year[...]
FRED THOMPSON JR.
Thompson is partially retired as Thompson Hospitality’s CAO, but he’s stayed busy by starting two nonprofits: Opportunity Scholars, a Winchester-based organization that provides mentorship opportunities to underserved middle and high school students; and The Global Good Fund, which supports young adults from around the world in entrepreneurial endeavors that have social focuses. The Hampden-Sy[...]
GILBERT BLAND
Hall of Fame member Born in Jim Crow-era Harrisonburg, Bland launched his career in Chicago as a commercial lending officer before becoming a vice president for the largest Black-owned bank in the country, Independence Bank of Chicago. Bland found himself surrounded by Black entrepreneurs who “were tremendous role models.” He took an entrepreneurial leap himself […]
RICHMOND VINCENT JR.
“Being a CEO is attainable,” Vincent says. “You just have to have the confidence of knowing that you can do it.” That can-do attitude has taken Vincent steadily up the ranks at Goodwill Industries International chapters from Arizona to Mississippi to Virginia, where last spring he assumed the stewardship of a Goodwill serving 35 counties […]
VICTOR BRANCH
Hall of Fame member The first African American president of Bank of America’s Richmond region oversees almost 2,000 employees at 25 locations, but Branch began his career as a sociology major, earning his bachelor’s degree in the subject from William & Mary. He credits Mary DePillars, a longtime executive at regional banks (and wife of […]
FLOYD E. MILLER II
Before taking over the leadership of Metropolitan Business League, a nonprofit association that supports small, women- and minority-owned businesses in Richmond, Miller worked in human services, education and criminal justice and spent 17 years as director of urban programs for Special Olympics Virginia. Those seemingly diverse jobs shared one commonality: They all gave him the […]
AISHA BOWE
The daughter of a Bahamian immigrant who worked as a taxi driver in Michigan, Bowe was told by a high school counselor to become a cosmetologist. She decided instead to listen to her father’s advice and took a math class at a local community college. Somewhat to her surprise, she excelled and earned degrees in […]
CATHY T. WILLIAMS
In her two decades at the U.S. subsidiary of British heating and cooling supply distributor Ferguson plc, Williams has made the economic inclusion of women and minorities her mission. “I’m most proud of knowing I had a hand in their success,” she says of those that she has brought into the Ferguson fold of about […]
JOSEPH D. WILKINS
In Halifax County, where Wilkins grew up, people took care of one another, he says. That compassionate culture, plus seeing his father go through rehab after a car accident, inspired him to become a physical therapist. But Wilkins wanted to do more to help people be well and safe, so he went back to school […]
MARCIA CONSTON
Conston saw early on the value that education has for marginalized communities. She knew her goal was “to become someone to effect change in the lives of young people. And I knew that education would be the path to do that.” Conston began her career as a college administrator at her alma mater, Mississippi’s Jackson […]
