100 People to Meet in 2025: Builders

These Virginians are building the future in bricks and mortar with major development projects in communities across the commonwealth.

Barbara Benesh

Founder, B. Grace Design, Norfolk

Barbara Benesh has her eye on the prize for 2025: an expansion of her firm, B. Grace Design, to London. An architect, certified interior designer and watercolorist, Benesh will focus on consulting and being a representative for her clients.

Splitting her time between London and Norfolk will help her position B. Grace Design as a global business, Benesh says. She works with residential and commercial clients, such as hotels and restaurants, to help them design spaces that emphasize health, wellness and environmental responsibility. She’s expanding to London because of its sustainable building practices and focus on decarbonization. The Columbia, South Carolina, native studied architecture at Auburn University and has lived in Norfolk for about a decade.

Samia Byrd

Director of community planning, housing and development, Arlington County

With such major economic developments like Amazon’s HQ2 and CoStar’s new headquarters coming up in Arlington, the county needed a strong leader to step in to help shape the strategy for one of the biggest challenges it would face: adequate housing for an influx of workers.

Samia Byrd, the county’s first and former chief race and equity officer, stepped into her new role to help support and guide how Arlington changes and grows physically, socially, culturally and economically, she says. Byrd has been with the county since 2007 and has also served as a principal planner, planning coordinator and deputy county manager.

Through land use, development, building, housing and neighborhood and community services, her biggest focus is to create “whole communities,” where both businesses and individuals can thrive.

Sydney Covey

Senior manager, energy and sustainability, Structr Advisors, Virginia Beach

Sydney Covey wants her great great grandchildren to experience polar bears in Alaska, not learn about them in history books — hence, her sustainability career. Starting out as a sustainability intern for Hourigan Construction while working on the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Brock Environmental Center, she’s now a senior manager at the consulting firm Hourigan Group CEO Mark Hourigan started.

Covey has worked on more than 3 million square feet in buildings that third parties like LEED have certified as sustainable space, and her team is involved with Lego Group’s $1 billion Chesterfield County manufacturing facility under construction.

Structr is also helping pilot the Design for Freedom by Grace Farms — a design standard to eradicate modern-day slavery in the building materials supply chain — at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy.

Ross Litkenhous and Nick Over

Co-founders, Oasis Digital Properties, Falls Church

With political winds shifting against data centers in Northern Virginia, Ross Litkenhous and Nick Over launched Oasis Digital Properties in May to bring data centers elsewhere, including in King George, Greensville and Wise counties. Litkenhous and Over each have real estate backgrounds — Litkenhous also serves as vice chair of Falls Church’s economic development authority — and bring extensive partnerships to their new project, which has also set its sights across state lines.

Oasis doesn’t only target building new data centers; the co-founders say they are also focusing on the communities they are working in, including bringing a workforce development component to each project. They’re also looking into alternative sources to power and cool the centers in the future.

Oasis has two projects in early developmental stages in Wise and King George, totaling about 900 million square feet and 1.2 gigawatts of power, with several more deals in the works.

Maritza Pechin

Director of development, Thalhimer Realty Partners, Richmond

Maritza Pechin joined Richmond-based Thalhimer Realty Partners in August, but she’s no stranger to the city. Pechin worked as a consultant and then full time for the City of Richmond as deputy director for the office of equitable development, where she was involved in the $2.44 billion Diamond District project, in which Thalhimer is now the sole principal developer. 

After a short stint working for the U.S. Department of Transportation, Pechin was lured back by the opportunity to again work on the Diamond District project, this time in a more direct role with Thalhimer, where she’s helping shape the growth and future of Richmond.

“I want people to think of like, ‘Oh, you’re coming to Richmond? I have to take you to the Diamond District,’” she says.

Daniel McCahan

President, Peterson Cos., Fairfax

Daniel McCahan joined family-run real estate developer Peterson Cos. in September, after working in executive roles, including as chief operating officer, for Washington, D.C.-based real estate investment firm Madison Marquette, where he helped manage day-to-day operations as co-developer of The Wharf. In his newest role, McCahan works directly with CEO John Peterson and helps oversee the company’s other senior directors.

In 1985, after graduating from the University of Virginia, McCahan visited western Europe and came home with the idea that he wanted to learn how urban environments worked, setting him on his career path. Peterson’s development portfolio includes Fairfax Corner and Maryland’s National Harbor, and McCahan says he looks forward to relearning the Northern Virginia region after having spent much of his focus on D.C. projects.

Jonathan Provost

Owner, Provost Construction, Norfolk

Jonathan Provost started Provost Construction in 2009 when he was just 22, but he has been unofficially part of the construction industry since he was 9, when his father started another construction business.

An Old Dominion University civil engineering alumnus, Provost was the youngest Class A contractor in Virginia. Provost’s company is licensed in 46 states and has grown to 45 employees, with clients such as Domino’s, Urban Outfitters and Burger King, and he’s completed several historic adaptation projects in downtown Newport News, including a row of old warehouses that Provost turned into a mixed-use development and a brewery. The company also takes part in local service projects, including backing a softball team for the Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters’ fundraising tournament.

Rich Ricciardi

Owner, Footprints Floors Blue Ridge, Bedford County

After 26 years serving in the Marine Corps Reserves, the Navy and the Secret Service, Virginia native Rich Ricciardi relocated from his last duty station in Estonia to Bedford County, where he opened Footprints Floors Blue Ridge, a franchise of Footprints Floors.

The flooring and tile and bath business serves customers in Roanoke, Lynchburg, Charlottesville and surrounding areas. Ricciardi had been searching for opportunities with faith-based companies when Footprints Floors captured his attention with its commitment to customer service and family-like atmosphere at the corporate and franchise levels.

Ricciardi’s wife, Hannah, who retired after a career with the U.S. Embassy, joins him in Footprints Floors Blue Ridge. The couple is excited to grow their franchise and support local charities.

Patrick Y. Shim

Managing director, LS GreenLink USA, Los Angeles/Chesapeake

In July, LS GreenLink USA, a subsidiary of South Korea’s LS Cable & System, announced it would build an $681 million, 750,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Chesapeake for subsea power cables, typically used for offshore wind. It expects to create more than 330 jobs.

Managing the project is Patrick Y. Shim, who will oversee the facility’s operations. Shim has held management roles at multiple financial institutions. He resided in Los Angeles as of early November but is planning to move to Hampton Roads by the end of the year.

LS GreenLink anticipates starting construction in the first quarter of 2025, depending on the permitting process, and completing it by the third quarter of 2027, with the goal of having the facility operational by 2028’s first quarter.

Agnes Sullivan

Deputy director of engineering, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington County 

Agnes Sullivan oversees the largest cemetery in the U.S. National Cemetery System, which includes three divisions of the 639-acre Arlington National Cemetery, where more than 400,000 service members and eligible dependents were laid to rest. It’s also the site of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Eternal Flame, which is part of President John F. Kennedy’s memorial.

An Old Dominion University engineering alumna, Sullivan started her job at the cemetery in February 2020, where interments and construction continued despite the pandemic, she says.

She’s also overseeing a $500 million expansion project, as the cemetery stands to run out of space by 2041 without changes to eligibility. Sullivan also serves as assistant treasurer of the Northern Virginia Post of the Society of American Military Engineers.

Derrick Ziglar Jr.

Founder, Ziglar Properties, Martinsville

Martinsville native and real estate investor Derrick Ziglar is about building community as much as he is about building wealth. A self-proclaimed “generational game changer,” the 32-year-old Virginia Military Institute grad has acquired two commercial buildings in his economically distressed hometown, transforming them into vibrant spaces for local businesses.

Ziglar built his own business from scratch, using money saved while working as a Target executive to purchase his own home (then shared with his mother so she could finish school) and a starter investment property, later sold for capital to purchase the Martinsville buildings.

In addition to serving on nonprofit boards, Ziglar mentors fellow entrepreneurs through his consulting business, Generational Game Changers, and through his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi.

Check out the rest of our 100 People to Meet in 2025.