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byline: Courtney Mabeus-Brown

Markel Corp. names new CIO

Glen Allen-based insurance and investment firm Corp. has named as its chief information officer for the company’s insurance operations.

Taylor joined Markel in 2018 and served as its head of global . He previously spent two decades at Capital One working in a variety technology leadership roles, according to a news release.

In his new role, Taylor will lead Markel’s global functions and build on partnerships across the company’s insurance operations.

“Morris is a recognized leader in , who understands the critical role the function plays in the overall operational effectiveness and success of a global corporation,” Markel Chief Financial Officer said in a statement. “He has been instrumental in defining our IT vision to provide exceptional services and support across our insurance operations to help Markel execute on its strategic priorities.”

GDIT awarded $661M EPA contract

Falls Church-based Information Inc. has received a $661.6 million contract to modernize and manage IT services for the .

The award, announced April 28, includes developing and operating the ‘s enterprise IT infrastructure and applications. Services include cloud computing, platform management, network operations, enterprise identity access management and cybersecurity. The award has a one-year base with six one-year option periods.

“Technology and ingenuity are critical to furthering the government’s environmental mission,” GDIT said in a statement. “GDIT will partner with the EPA to deliver a reliable, secure and technologically advanced IT infrastructure that will support agency initiatives fundamental to protecting human health and the environment.”

GDIT will also standardize the agency’s IT to add emerging technology, provide scalability to support the EPA’s future workforce and enhance customer experience.

“Supporting the EPA’s mission has been a focus of GDIT for more than 40 years,” said Darby Chellis Bade, GDIT vice president for EPA programs and executive lead for climate change initiatives. “We are thrilled to continue this partnership and enable the EPA to operate its IT infrastructure more efficiently.”

GDIT is a subsidiary of Reston-based aerospace and General Dynamics Corp.. The parent company employs more than 100,000 worldwide and generated $38.5 billion in revenue in 2021.

 

U.Va. Medical Center, UVA Health hire new execs

University of Virginia Medical Center has appointed Min Y. Lee as its next chief operations officer.

Lee, who is vice of operations at Reading Hospital in Reading, Pennsylvania, will oversee the Charlottesville-based medical center’s day-to-day operations. Her first day will be June 27, according to a news release.

Lee succeeds Wendy Horton, who joined the medical center as COO in April 2020 and was promoted to in November of that year. A search committee was involved in the COO hiring process, said spokesperson Eric Swenson.

Lee’s current role involves oversight of Reading Hospital’s cancer services, imaging, laboratory and pharmacy services, as well as emergency management and security, clinical , transport and construction management. She previously served as vice president of operations for Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare at Hospital Midtown, an academic medical center.

“Min is a strong, engaged leader with a tremendous background as a leader,”  Horton said in a statement. “Her knowledge and skills make her an ideal fit to serve as the medical center’s next chief operations officer, and I’m excited to have her join our team.”

Lee earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Georgia and master’s degrees in business administration and health care administration from Georgia State University. She is also certified in health care operations leadership and is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives.

“I am honored to join the team during such a pivotal time in our industry,” she said. “I appreciate the magnitude of this role and responsibility, and I am looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and working alongside Health’s extraordinary team members in service of our community and those who entrust us with their health.”

In addition to Lee’s hire, Ross Snare, who has served as chief operating officer of the Prince William Chamber of Commerce, is joining UVA Health as its associate chief external affairs officer as of May 31.

UVA Health encompasses the Charlottesville-based medical center, which includes a cancer center and level 1 trauma center, as well as the university’s and medical schools and an integrated network of primary and specialty care clinics throughout the state.

Snare joined the chamber, which has 1,200 members, as director of government affairs in 2018. His work included advocating for incentive packages for semiconductor manufacturer Micron and e-tailer Amazon during the 2019 General Assembly session as well as an effort to pass a $355 million county infrastructure package, which included $200 million for the Route 28 Bypass near Manassas.

Snare, who previously also worked for Prince William County government, said he’s most proud of the work he did for the chamber to become an information hub during the COVID-19 pandemic on behalf of the business community. That included consolidating and sharing news about grants and loans, unemployment benefits and more.

“Probably my biggest accomplishment, or the thing that I’m the most proud of, is working to make sure that our business has stayed afloat through – I hate to use the word unprecedented times – but through an unprecedented time,” Snare told Virginia Business.

AIA’s top Va. exec moves to national role

Corey Clayborne, who has served as executive vice and of the American Institute of Virginia since 2017, is moving up to the national organization.

Clayborne will serve as senior vice president of knowledge and practice at the AIA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. His last day with AIA Virginia is June 17, according to a news release.

“AIA Virginia has been extremely blessed to have benefited from Corey’s leadership and vision,” AIA Virginia President Robert Easter said in a statement. “We wish him great success in this new position of professional leadership.”

Clayborne earned his degree in from and spent 13 years in practice before taking the helm at AIA Virginia in 2017. He received the state organization’s for Distinguished Achievement in 2016 and the AIA’s Young Architects Award in 2017. In 2020, he was elevated to the AIA’s College of Fellows, its highest honor, for his efforts to create a more diverse and sustainable leadership pipeline to the profession.

“This is a tremendous opportunity to work alongside a dedicated and dynamic staff team to equip and position architects around the globe with the resources to lead in the fight against the climate crisis while maintaining a commitment to shaping healthy equitable communities,” Clayborne said of his new position.

Clayborne launched the Blueprint for Better Communities dinner series to promote relationship building between architects and government leaders.

A search committee is being formed to fill Clayborne’s vacancy.

 

Execs honored by Va. Credit Union League

UVA Community Credit Union and Alison DeTuncq was presented with the James P. Kirsch Lifetime Achievement , the ‘s highest honor, during the league’s 2022 annual meeting in Roanoke on April 21.

The Kirsch award, which recognizes individuals who help improve the future for , is named in honor of the late James P. “Jimmy” Kirsch, a longtime credit union volunteer who served in leadership roles at the state, national and international levels.

DeTuncq plans to retire this year after 32 years with the credit union, including 23 years as its president and CEO.

“The success of her own credit union and the tremendous impact it’s had on the greater Charlottesville community is a testament to Alison’s leadership, her commitment to innovation and service excellence, and her dedication to credit unions’ ‘ helping people’ philosophy,” said Virginia Credit Union League President and CEO Carrie Hunt. “Her service to the credit union industry speaks to her selflessness and the passion she has for credit unions. We proudly honor Alison for a remarkable career as a leader and as a champion for our industry.”

is among the largest credit unions headquartered in the state. Serving more than 72,000 members across 25 counties and cities, it has assets of more than $1.4 billion.

“I’ve really loved working for a financial institution that embraces its social mission and which believes the needs of its members must always be the priority,” DeTuncq said in a statement. “It’s such a wonderful group of peers managing Virginia’s credit unions as well. I feel fortunate to have made lifelong friends within the credit union system.”

DeTuncq has served various volunteer roles with the Virginia Credit Union League. She also served on the for the Mid-Atlantic Corporate Federal Credit Union and was the the first chairman of the of VIZO Financial Corporate Credit Union following the merger of Mid-Atlantic and First Carolina corporate credit unions in 2016.

She is a member of the board of directors for the Piedmont Virginia Community College Foundation and the Shenandoah National Park Trust.

Patsy Smith (right), recently retired CEO of Petersburg-based , has been recognized by the commonwealth’s credit unions with the Eugene H. Farley Jr. Award of Excellence. Presenting the award is Virginia Credit Union League President and CEO Carrie Hunt.

In addition, the credit union league  also honored Patsy Smith, who retired last year as CEO of Petersburg-based Peoples Advantage Federal Credit Union, with the Eugene H. Farley Jr. Award of Excellence.

The Farley award recognizes a credit union professional or volunteer for their contributions to an individual credit union or to the industry. It is named in honor of the late Eugene H. “Gene” Farley Jr., who led the league and served Virginia’s credit unions for more than 40 years until his retirement in 1999.

Smith became CEO of Peoples Advantage in 2014, following its merger with Peoples Advantage and Resources Credit Union, a Richmond-area institution that Smith had led since 2007.

“Patsy exemplifies true leadership,” Hunt said. “She has a gift for identifying a need and marshalling the people and resources necessary to meet that need. She has spent the past 15 years helping those around her succeed and we’re proud to honor her work, leadership and vision.”

Smith has served on the credit union league board and helped form its Virginia Sister Society of the Global Women’s Leadership Network.

“Throughout my career, I always looked for ways to empower and motivate other credit union professionals to reach their full potential and grow their careers,”  Smith said. “Networking groups such as the Virginia Sister Society provided a forum to learn from colleagues and other professionals. No matter where I was in my career, I never stopped learning and listening. It was one of my keys to success.”

Next stop — civilian life

“About every 15 minutes,” Shawn Avery’s phone at the Hampton Roads Workforce Council rings with an employer calling to find skilled workers to fill vacancies, he says.

Avery is and CEO of the council, which oversees federally funded workforce programs and links employers and workers. In the present tight labor market, he says, employers in ship repair, manufacturing, construction, , hospitality and health care have the greatest need for employees.

Veterans are among the most valued workers, Avery says, because of the skills they gain and hone during years of service, including punctuality and the ability to collaborate with co-workers.

“They come with those soft skills and those workplace skills that everybody is always looking for — the ability to follow leads and communication skills,” says Avery. “We continually hear, ‘If you get us connected with veterans, that’d be fantastic.’ So, is always on top of mind when we’re talking with businesses.”

As many as 12,000 service members separate from the military annually in Hampton Roads, which has branches from every service but is Navy-heavy. Avery and other workforce officials say they follow a rule of thirds when thinking about veterans: About a third will stay, a third will return to their home states, and another third is undecided about their futures.

Retaining transitioning service members to help fill the many manufacturing and -related jobs available across the region is a “sweet spot” that’s become a focus for Avery and others.

In just the first two months of 2022, there were more than 106,656 unique job postings across Hampton Roads, according to data from the workforce council. More than 6,500 jobs were in manufacturing, and 943 of those were at Huntington Ingalls Industries, which builds and repairs naval vessels and is Virginia’s largest industrial employer.

And other labor needs exist, too. During the same time frame, there were 3,284 construction openings listed and another 2,993 in transportation and warehousing.

President Roger Giesinger says he’s recently hired more than 100 longshoremen and is continuing to seek more. The represents various shipping lines, agents and terminals and works in concert with the local longshoremen’s union to fill positions. He says he may also have a need for crane operators in the future.

Next on board

One program that aims to help employers and veterans find jobs is Operation Next, a national manufacturing workforce development initiative for military veterans and their spouses. The federally funded program, with presences in Kentucky, Michigan, Florida and other locations, expanded to Hampton Roads late last year and is a part of the at Old Dominion University.

Operation Next is one of many programs in Virginia designed to link veterans with skills training and jobs, as well as internship opportunities and apprenticeships.

Russell Czack is a retired Navy commander and senior program manager for Operation Next, which is based in Hampton Roads out of ODU’s Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center in Suffolk. He says the program fills a critical need by offering retiring service members and their spouses training for skilled jobs, including welding, numerical control machining, and mechanical and electrical trades, all intended to meet the needs of the region’s maritime industry, including ship repair.

“If you just look just at that group of trades, there’s over 300 positions right now in Hampton Roads listed for those [jobs],” Czack says. Operation Next offers service members and spouses free training opportunities through community colleges and hands-on training that can lead to transferable certifications and, finally, jobs. So far, Czack has talked with about 50 potential program participants, and about 20 have signed on.

Beyond soft skills, veterans bring other pluses that tend to put them in high demand from employers, including the ability to adapt and learn on the job.

“You can train somebody to do the actual work that you want them to do,” Czack says. “It’s a little harder to instill within them the importance of being on time, to work as a team, to be a leader, to take care of other . These are traits that the military is very good at instilling and training their people.”

Roger Giesinger, president of the Hampton Roads Shipping Association, says there are many maritime jobs needing to be filled. Photo by Mark Rhodes
Roger Giesinger, president of the Hampton Roads Shipping Association, says there are many maritime jobs needing to be filled. Photo by Mark Rhodes

While Operation Next doesn’t require participants to stay in the region after finishing its trainings, it can help root them to their communities, Czack notes. That’s also a major goal of the workforce council, which has veterans’ employment centers in Newport News and Norfolk, linking vets to jobs and other services.

Sultan Camp, director of Hampton Roads’ veterans’ employment centers and a Navy veteran, says he has a waitlist of employers wanting to attend weekly sessions to meet prospective workers.

Czack notes that the Department of Defense, which has backed Operation Next since 2019, is demonstrating its realization that it needs to help service members departing the military for the civilian world, as well as the needs of defense contractors in manufacturing.

“In a way, the Department of Defense [is] putting their money where their mouth is, saying, ‘Hey, we need to make sure that America continues to build its workforce to support manufacturing.’”

West Falls Church on track for $1.2 billion transformation

Developers are expected to break ground this month on the first of three mixed-use projects near the West Metro station with a total investment of about $1.2 billion.

Each piece comes together to complete a puzzle that will transform about 40 acres of vacant land, parking lots and ‘s Northern Virginia Center into a live-work-play destination comprising more than 3.2 million square feet that officials say will ease traffic, increase pedestrian safety and boost the economies of Falls Church and .

A 2020 presentation estimated the projects could generate $17.5 million in annual state taxes while creating 3,600 jobs. 

Falls Church’s George Mason High School was demolished and replaced by the nearby Meridian High School to make way for the first , which is scheduled to break ground in mid-May. Bordered by State Route 7 and Haycock Road, the 10-acre, 1.4 million-square-foot project is being developed by Washington, D.C.-based Hoffman & Associates and Bethesda, Maryland-based EYA LLC. will include 326,100 square feet of office space, a 146-room hotel, 215 senior housing units and as many as 647 condos and apartments. It also will feature more than 140,00 square feet of retail, including a grocery store.

The second project aims to transform 24 acres owned by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority abutting Route 66 at its West Falls Church station into 900 housing units, along with 110,000 square feet of office space and 10,000 square feet of retail, comprising more than 1 million square feet. Hoffman and EYA are developing it with Falls Church-based Rushmark Properties LLC. If it receives expected county approval, construction could begin in 18 to 24 months.

“This was a station losing money, didn’t have enough using it, and now it will have an identity,” says James Snyder, Falls Church’s director of community planning and services. 

The final project received the green light in April when Virginia Tech announced it would convey its Northern Virginia Center, home to administrative offices and several academic programs, to Falls Church’s city government for redevelopment. While details remained undetermined as of press time, it will include a new corporate headquarters for Falls Church-based national construction firm Inc. and a Virginia Tech innovation lab for testing smart city technologies. The project is being developed by Rushmark.

A previously proposed redevelopment plan for the site included 275,000 square feet of office space, 450,000 square feet of residential and 100,000 square feet of academic space.

U.Va. School of Nursing names new dean

The has named as dean of its School of . She will start Aug. 1, said in a news release Wednesday.
Baernholdt comes to U.Va. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Nursing, where she has served as associate dean of global initiatives, interim dean of research and as a founding director of the school’s Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization-Collaborating Center in Quality and Safety Education in Nursing and Midwifery.
This also marks a return to U.Va. for Baernholdt. She previously served as director of global initiatives for U.Va.’s nursing school, directed its Rural and Global Center, and served as a faculty member in the School of Medicine’s Department of Public Health Sciences.
Baernholdt’s research focuses on how quality of care should be defined and the factors that affect care in rural areas globally. She has expertise in using large databases to track organizational, patient and clinician outcomes.
“Dr. Baernholdt will provide the School of Nursing a holistic, global perspective on the most important issues in nursing,” said , of and executive vice president for health affairs at U.Va., in a statement. “She is a scholar, a thought leader, an exceptional educator and an innovator in patient care and safety. She is everything we could ask for in a dean.”
Baernholdt succeeds Pam Cipriano, who has spent more than 40 years in nursing and has focused efforts to increase nursing’s influence on health care policy.
“I’m deeply grateful for Dean Cipriano’s years of outstanding service to the School of Nursing, and thrilled to welcome Dr. Baernholdt back to ,” said U.Va. President Jim Ryan. “She is truly at the forefront of her field, and brings a tremendous scope of knowledge and experience. ‘s a wonderful homecoming.”
In addition to her time at UNC and U.Va., Baernholdt was founding director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Langston Center for Quality, Safety and Innovation. Baernholdt earned her Ph.D. in nursing from the University of Pennsylvania, master’s degrees in nursing and public health from Columbia University, a bachelor’s in nursing from Pace University, and her diploma in nursing from Bispebjerg Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Google to invest $300M in Va., announces workforce grant

Google will invest $300 million in Virginia in a plan that includes data centers, the technology giant announced Tuesday during a press conference at its office.
That’s in addition to a $250,000 grant to Richmond-based nonprofit to develop a network of lab schools to expand professional for teachers, resources for students and for . Google will also partner with the state’s 23 community colleges and five regional higher centers for professional certificates, according to a release from Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office.
CodeVA, which was formed in 2013 to train K-12 teachers to educate children in coding and other computer science skills, is expected to build its network of schools based on the Regional High School in Richmond, which opened five years ago. CodeVA is an affiliate partner of Code.org, the national computer science education nonprofit organization, and has alliances with Google and Amazon.com Inc.
While details about the company’s $300 million investment in Virginia were scant, Google and Alphabet Sundar Pichai announced April 13 that the company would spend $9.5 billion in 2022 to expand offices and data centers in nearly two dozen states and add as many as 12,000 jobs. Virginia was named as a target for data centers.
Youngkin said Tuesday that the $300 million is an investment in “jobs in much-needed infrastructure across the commonwealth in their data center network.”
Google currently employs more than 480 across the state, including at data centers in Loudoun County and its office in Reston. According to the company, has donated more than $20 million to Virginia nonprofits since 2012 and helped provide $8.84 billion in economic activity for businesses, creators and organizations throughout the state. That figure includes more than 475,000 businesses that received requests for directions, phone calls, bookings and other connections to customers from Google in 2021.
“Virginia is a shining example of the work we’re doing across the United States with a growing office right here in Reston Station, and continued investments that we’re making in a our data centers in Northern Virginia,” Google Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf said during Tuesday’s announcement. “And, as you and I talk, maybe we should be thinking about the southern part of the state, too.”

Chantilly-based American Systems adds board member

Chantilly-based has appointed its vice of human resources, Chris Braccio, to the employee-owned federal and contractor’s of directors.

Braccio, who has worked for American Systems since 2007, will take over a board seat vacated by Joe Kopfman, who retired after 43 years of service, according to a news release.

“I am delighted that Chris is joining the Board,” Board Chair Bill Hoover said in a statement. “Her passion for her profession and deep commitment to the employee-owners will undoubtedly prove to be an asset to the board and the company.”

Braccio has more than 25 years of experience in human resources and has worked in leadership roles at World Kitchen, StarBand Communications, Sunrise Assisted Living, GTE (now Verizon), Eaton Corp. and National Semiconductor. She received a master’s degree in human resource management from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree in business management from the University of Connecticut.