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Best Places to Work in Virginia

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byline: Gary Robertson

Positions with perks

When employees of the Best Places to Work in Virginia talk about what their companies do for them, a lot of interesting perks float to the top.

Nexus Services in Verona, which provides services to immigrants in detention, hosts private concerts for its employees.

Shows have included performances by the band Fall Out Boy and singers Nate Ruess and Prince Royce.

Nexus also hosts a family movie night at a local theater, inviting employees and their families to watch a film with popcorn and free drinks.

Free drinks of another type are available at Virginia Distillery in Nelson County. Employees are entitled to a bottle of whisky  every month, along with regular tastings.

Airrosti Rehab Centers, a San Antonio-based company with centers in Virginia, gives employees and their dependents free treatments.  “We fix pain fast,” the company says on its website.

If you work in Northern Virginia at the government division ALKU, a national security defense contractor, you can receive up to $7,500 to help pay down your college loan. Also, on Thursdays the company provides bagels.

The Arlington Community Federal Credit Union offers a series of celebrations and contests. Its event list includes: a chili cook-off and summer barbecue, Thanksgiving Potluck and Gala, dessert exchange and Halloween soiree, Valentine’s Day celebration, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day celebrations, baby and bridal showers.

The company also reports that it “just started our second Biggest Loser Challenge for the year because everyone enjoyed the first one so much.”

Bart & Associates, a technology firm in McLean, celebrates wins and successes with social and teambuilding events that don’t seem to fit the standard model. To name two, Wine & Painting and Escape Room Murder Mystery.

On a more traditional scale, the firm acknowledges a job well done with club-level Washington Nationals tickets, among other thank-yous.

At the Business Benefits Group in Fairfax, you can celebrate at the annual chili cook-off and maybe win a trophy. If you stay with the company for your 10th anniversary, the prize gets a little better: a Rolex watch.

If you missed breakfast, you won’t have to worry if you work at CBRE, a real estate and investment service firm with multiple Virginia offices.

Each morning, fresh cut-up fruit, yogurt, granola bars, bagels and fresh fruit juice are provided to all staff. In addition, the company has a fully stocked coffee bar that includes various coffees, teas and hot chocolate to have throughout the day. In other words, you can skip Starbucks.

Want to chill out? There’s a room for that. Employees at Concept Solutions, a technology company in Reston, have access to a room outfitted with pool, air-hockey and foosball tables plus a big-screen TV.

It’s always nice to get something on your birthday. At Cortek Inc., it’s even more special. The Fredericksburg-based engineering, technology and security company gives its employees money on their birthdays.

Here’s the special part: the money is folded in origami.

Endurance IT in Virginia Beach last year took employees and their families to a Hampton Roads Admirals hockey game at the Norfolk Scope. Salty and Hat Trick (Admirals’ mascots) came to say hi.

All the kids received goodie bags that included hockey pucks and cowbells.

Providing ‘a better opportunity’

Burke Estes, the starting quarterback on Randolph-Macon College’s football team and a presidential scholar, described the defining difference between going to a large state university and attending the Ashland school.

“My best friend is at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill [which has an enrollment of more than 30,000 students]. He walks across campus every morning with his headphones on and never sees anyone he knows.

“At Randolph-Macon [with an enrollment of about 1,500] I’ll walk across campus every morning and see at least five people I know, right away,” including some of his professors, says Estes, a 19-year-old from Wilmington, N.C.

When Estes was looking at colleges as a high-school senior, he asked himself a crucial question: If he got hurt and couldn’t play football, where would he still be happy? Where would he still feel comfortable?  “Randolph-Macon,” Estes concluded.

That assessment is music to the ears of Robert Lindgren, now  in his 12th year as president of the school, the oldest Methodist-related college in continuous operation in the U.S.

His previous positions included serving as vice president for developmental alumni affairs and chief development officer at the University of Florida and vice president for development and alumni relations at the Johns Hopkins Institutions (which includes The Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System).

“I think one of the challenges we face today is helping young people, prospective students and families understand that just because you don’t have thousands of students walking around and large flashy buildings, it doesn’t mean you can’t provide the kind of educational experience that will be meaningful to them,” Lindgren says.

“In fact, we think we have a better opportunity of providing that, because if a student knows who his professor is and the professor knows who his student is, there’s a better opportunity for good learning to take place than in a large anonymous lecture hall or online,” he says.

Lindgren adds that every year the college surveys seniors to determine what they valued most about their experience at Randolph-Macon, now in its 187th year.
Invariably, he says, what rises to the top of the survey is the student’s relationship with a faculty member.

$125 million campaign
Lindgren, 63, with the help of major donors, has transformed the college’s campus through an ambitious $125 million fundraising campaign that was highlighted recently with the dedication of a new $17.5 million science building.
It was named for the college’s major donor, the late Macon F. Brock Jr., a member of the class of 1964. Brock, a co-founder of the Chesapeake-based Dollar Tree Inc., was a Latin major at his alma mater.

Brock’s name also is on other major buildings, such as the student center and the sports and recreation center.

“If you look at the history of higher education … the most successful places have had a major benefactor or benefactors,” Lindgren says, noting that Macon Brock and his wife, Joan, set an example that led other donors, large and small and 12,000 in all, to contribute to the college’s comprehensive campaign.

Brock died in mid-December, after building Dollar Tree into a retailing juggernaut with more than 14,000 outlets in the U.S. and Canada.

“He was a constant, warm and vibrant presence on our campus and a friend to everyone he knew. The impact of Macon and Joan’s generosity can be seen and felt everywhere on our campus,” Lindgren says, in reflecting on Brock’s passing.

The college’s successful fundraising campaign, which included construction of new residence halls, athletic facilities and a student center, was ultimately focused on a single theme.

“Growing the college,” says Lindgren, who emphasized throughout the campaign that every gift counted, noting that Randolph-Macon ranks 15th in the country in alumni loyalty.

Creating ‘a little more commotion’
For about 20 years, Randolph-Macon held steady at approximately 1,100 students. But Lindgren says that to operate successfully and compete against large public institutions and private competitors, the college needed to scale up enrollment and “create a little more commotion on campus.”

That push also included adding majors including engineering/physics, behavioral neuroscience and communication studies.

Lindgren says the college also improved its pre-med program, adding a pre-med coach for students and providing scholarship opportunities, all thanks to a donor who left half of his estate to Randolph-Macon.

The past few years have been upbeat for Randolph-Macon as new buildings and new programs have sprung up.

It’s also been a a successful time for  chemistry professor April Marchetti, R-MC ’97. In 2015, she led a team that won the largest grant ever received by the college, nearly $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation, to establish a program to train STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) teachers for high-need local school districts.

The program will support 16 to 18 full scholarships for the students, who then agree to teach for at least four years in area high-need school districts, where STEM teachers have been hard to recruit.

Marchetti says she was adamant that the students get full scholarships, so they wouldn’t graduate with student debt  — a major deterrent for students who might want to go into teaching, which historically provides only modest salaries.

“There’s a shortage of STEM teachers, especially in high-risk school districts,” Marchetti observes, adding that  teachers are the conduit for capable students who can fill much-needed STEM jobs.

This year Marchetti and her team won a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to recruit and identify Hispanic girls in their freshman year of high school who show an interest in STEM disciplines. The program is known as “Pathways to Science.”

Students go through a competitive selection process. Those who were chosen and had completed a science-based summer program last year received a $2,500 scholarship that will go toward the college of their choice. The science camp will be offered again this summer, and students who attend both camps receive $5,000 scholarships for college.

Marchetti says having those programs shows that a small school like Randolph-Macon can compete successfully for major grants from the National Science Foundation.

One of the payoffs: “Maybe they’ll think of us again, because now they know we can do it,” Marchetti says.

Battling misconceptions
Fraser Mayberry, a 21-year-old Randolph-Macon senior from Midlothian majoring in psychology with a minor in elementary education, says a lot of her friends went to big research universities. She’s had to battle some misconceptions about what a liberal arts education at a small college means.

“I think a lot of people [believe] that a small liberal arts school means ‘easy.’ That you sit out under the trees all day.

“What I try to show them is that we have a focused, rigorous academic program. It’s not easy,” Mayberry says.

The success of the college’s most recent strategic plan — involving new and renovated facilities totaling $80 million and a 25 percent jump in new student enrollment — prompted the college to extend the plan until 2020.

Lindgren says the intent is for Randolph-Macon to grow even larger, in enrollment and facilities, though the exact goals have yet to be announced.

“The key is we want to grow, but we don’t want to change the culture of Randolph-Macon,” Lindgren says.

That means adding more faculty, so that students continue to interact with their professors in classes. Students in these classes are called on frequently, write more extensively and are monitored for measureable outcomes.

The Randolph-Macon president says he has the job he had often thought about, and he wants to remain in that position as long as he is able, and as long as the college wants him.

“I always had in mind that a college like this, a residential liberal arts college, would be a great place to be because of the impact, the kind of personal impact it has on students. And that happens at every level,” Lindgren says.

Boundary quandary

The San Andreas Fault is an earthquake-producing formation that runs for 750 miles through California, producing often devastating shocks.

Does Virginia's form of local government have its own systemic San Andreas Fault, quietly waiting for a cataclysmic reckoning at some future date?

That was the primary question tackled by a panel of local government authorities speaking Friday at a Virginia Bar Association conference.

The meeting took place was in Williamsburg, where Virginia's system of local government had its colonial roots.

“We are prisoners of our history to some extent,” former Gov. Gerald L. Baliles said, striking an ominous tone about the current state of local government operations.

Baliles, who took a lead role in the discussion, said that in Virginia's earliest days, and for many years afterward, local government rested in the formation of counties whose boundaries were created by a simple rule.

“The courthouse had to be within a day's ride on horseback within any point in the county,” he said.

Today, the former governor explained, Virginia's counties and independent cities operate different systems of government, often with different laws and local priorities.

When regional problems arise – such as opioid addiction, transportation snarls or inequitable public education – Virginia's form of local government creates barriers to possible solutions.

“If we have regional problems, we got to have a regional approach. That requires us to consider boundary changes, which is a hard-rock political problem,” Baliles said.

By boundary changes, he was speaking of the boundaries between Virginia's 95 counties and the 38 independent cities – a rare form of local government division.

James D. Campbell, former executive director of the Virginia Association of Counties, enumerated a long list of commissions and advisory councils whose work often resulted in recommendations for improving regional cooperation.

Those recommendations, he observed, were often consigned to the dust bin.

“We create some of these regional efforts or cooperative incentives [that} should be funded through the General Assembly. But often that funding disappears. And, the regional efforts lose their momentum,” Campbell said.

R. Michael Amyx, retired executive director of the Virginia Municipal League, said the latest regional initiative is GO Virginia, a program described as an effort “to restore Virginia's position of economic leadership by growing and diversifying the state's economy.”

Amyx said the program tries to match job skills by each region, where the economic development opportunities often differ.

Robert C. Bobb, CEO of the Robert Bobb Group, a financial turnaround and management firm working with local governments, most recently in Petersburg, warned that Virginia is losing some its financial clout as a result of an outmigration of residents in recent years.

Bobb, a former Richmond city manager, said that Virginians are moving to states further south – such as North Carolina and Georgia.

Research indicates that the exodus has been prompted by retirees, as well as those looking for better employment opportunities. But most important, people are moving to lower their overall cost of living.

“They are less expensive to reside in than in Virginia,” Bobb said, speaking of metropolitan areas such as Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C.

Following, their formal presentations Bobb, Campbell and Amyx responded to a question from Virginia Business: “If you could change one thing about local government, what would it be?” Their answers can be seen below.

 

New identity

Kenneth Garren, at 77 one of the oldest college presidents in the nation, recalls the admonition of a history professor in describing the challenge facing Lynchburg College.

“He said it wasn’t the fastest or strongest who survived through the ages. It was the one who changed with the environment. Well, folks, the environment is changing, and we need to be changing with it,” Garren says.

Next summer, Lynchburg College will become the University of Lynchburg. With the name change, Lynchburg will become the third Virginia private college to become a university recently.
Mary Baldwin in Staunton changed its name last spring, and Virginia Wesleyan in Norfolk switched to university status at the beginning of the academic year.

What’s afoot?
At each school, academic offerings, especially graduate programs, have expanded and become more comprehensive, qualifying the institution for university status.

Garren, in his 17th year as Lynchburg’s president, says it has been functioning as a university for a long time, with more than a dozen master’s degrees and three doctoral programs.

The name change, he says, only reflects that reality. “They say we’re a well-kept secret. I don’t want us to be a well-kept secret. That’s why we’re doing this,” he says, speaking of the college’s transition to university status.

Fierce competition
The Lynchburg president says it is also no secret that there is a fierce competition among colleges for students.  Studies project that the pool of high school graduates will decline about 10 percent nationally over the next decade.

Profound demographic shifts also are changing the way colleges recruit students.

Minority high school graduates, especially Hispanics, are on the ascent while the number of white high school graduates is dipping.

International students also have become the focus of a growing number of institutions who are trying to fill the seats in their classrooms.

Garren says he knows through research and personal experience that most international students believe that a college is like a high school, not an institution of higher education.

Becoming a university, he says, will give Lynchburg a better opportunity to recruit international students.

Garren also believes the years ahead will be a trial for many colleges. “Some of the schools are going to go out of business. And, I’m not the first person to say it, and not even the most recent probably,” he says

The Lynchburg president keeps up with how his Virginia private school competitors are doing by tracking student deposits through the Council of Independent Colleges in Virginia.

“Of the 17 [institutions] who had reported their numbers this last time [in September], more than 50 percent of them had a drop in deposits. Ours were up 4 percent.

“There were nine that had gone down. Of those nine, six had double-digit [percentage]drops in their deposits,” Garren says.

Vision 2020
Lynchburg’s transition to a university, and to a larger student body, is riding on an ambitious strategic plan — Vision 2020.

The plan encompasses an increase in enrollment, from about 2,800 students now to 3,500, including a graduate population of 1,000, by the end of 2020.

Sally Selden, the college’s vice president and dean for academic affairs, says creating more graduate programs and recruiting more graduate students in areas that serve the region — such as health sciences — are important initiatives in the Vision 2020 plan.

During the past five years, Selden says, the number of graduate students has increased about 40 percent, with a 20 percent jump this fall compared with a year ago.

“We don’t want to change the heart of who we are,” Selden says, referring to the exponential growth of the graduate student population. “We want to remain a very student-centered institution.”

Building projects
A cornerstone of the college’s strategic plan is construction of new residence halls, science labs and athletic facilities while making technological upgrades to maximize student engagement.
Garren says an upcoming feasibility study will determine what the plan will cost, including a possible boost in Lynchburg’s current endowment of $108 million.

After that, the college’s board of trustees will decide how big a fundraising campaign it’s willing to take on with the help of alumni and friends.

The board already has approved construction of a residence hall currently estimated to cost $20 million, Garren says. It will provide space for a new honors college, with living arrangements for about 270 students.

The residence hall will complement recent improvements. They include an upgrade of the college’s principal athletic field (for $3.7 million in 2012), a new student center ($12 million in 2014) and a floor-to-ceiling renovation of the dining hall ($1.5 million in 2015).

Natalie Deacon, 23, of West Chester, Pa., a graduate student in nonprofit leadership studies who also earned an undergraduate degree from Lynchburg, says it was not facilities that drew her to the college.

 “I don’t think the school attracts people because of the buildings. I think it attracts people because of the tight-knit community and the relationships,” Deacon says.

“If we start building these elite high-caliber buildings [in the Vision 2020 plan], I think that’s going to really enhance our ability to attract good students here and give students the very best possible experience.

“We always use the line that we’re ‘a college that changes lives.’ Maybe we need to build a building that’s going to change a life, and I don’t think we quite have that yet.”

Transformative effect
The son of a bus driver whose parents never got beyond the seventh grade, Garren has experienced firsthand the effect that education can have on a person’s life.

His eyes teared as he recalled how his older brother, a student at Highland Springs High School in Henrico County, won a college scholarship when a school principal urged him to take a competitive exam offered by the University of Richmond.

“My brother would not have been selected for that exam, otherwise. He was working 20 hours a week in a grocery store, because we were poor. But the principal said, ‘I saw something in that young man, I want him to take the test.’”

Awakened to the transformative aspects of higher education, Garren followed in his brother’s footsteps, majoring in physics and mathematics and earning advanced degrees. Garren worked in the space program at NASA before shifting to higher education.

He believes every student who has the will and ability — no matter his or her family’s finances — should be able pursue higher education.

“That’s what motivates me to go out and talk to people about why Lynchburg College needs their money. Because when it’s about endowment and scholarships, it’s not a theoretical discussion,” Garren says. 
 

The enrollment roller-coaster

At the opening convocation of J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in late September, President Gary Rhodes listened to the school’s alma mater, introduced and recognized other guests and college board members gathered on the college’s Henrico County campus.

Rhodes noted that the college foundation had, among other moves, awarded $500,000 in student scholarships while raising money for a new IV pump for the health-care programs, a 3-D printer for engineering and a drone for horticulture studies. He also went over some improvements at the college’s three campuses in Henrico, Goochland counties and Richmond.

Then, under a PowerPoint slide headlined “Challenges,” Rhodes dropped a bombshell. “Enrollments are down 25 percent over the past five years,” he said. The audience greeted the revelations with silence.

Later, Rhodes said that, while he was not offering excuses for the drop in enrollment, the dynamics under which community colleges operate explain a lot about what happened.

In 2012, when Virginia’s economy still was clawing its way out of the Great Recession, Reynolds hit an enrollment high of more than 20,000 students. Many sought workplace skills to help them find new jobs or careers.

Now, with Richmond’s unemployment hovering at 4 percent or less, enrollment has dipped to 16,800 or so. People are less likely to enroll in college when they have jobs and things are good, Rhodes notes.

He says the formula for the roller coaster that community colleges ride in enrollments is simple. “Weak economy equals strong enrollments. Strong economy equals weak enrollments,” he explains.

Every year, Rhodes says, the college makes “a conservative guesstimate” of what its enrollment will be. If enrollment falls, and the cash flow from tuitions is lower than expected, faculty and staff are not replaced if they leave or various programs are merged.

“Ultimately, we want to have healthy enrollment, and it’s not just the money side. It’s the workers,” Rhodes says. “Pick any industry out there, and they’re just screaming that they can’t find trained workers.”

Students from 42 countries
Preparing those workers is a top priority for Reynolds and other community colleges. Students obtain industry certification, earn associate degrees or transfer to four-year institutions for more education. On average, about 900 students transfer each year from Reynolds.

Rhodes, a former board chair of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce (now, ChamberRVA), says his favorite data point — one that nearly always gets an audience’s attention — is this: “One out of every four workers in the Greater Richmond region has attended Reynolds Community College, and one in every three health-care workers,” Rhodes says, citing a study by the Richmond-based SIR consulting firm.

Since Reynolds opened in 1972, it has become the third-largest community college in Virginia (behind Northern Virginia and Tidewater community colleges), and officials say that more than 310,000 students have enrolled in for-credit courses.

Today, half of Reynolds students are taking one or more classes online, and 17 percent are earning all of their credits online. This fall, the student body included representatives from 42 foreign countries, including war-torn Afghanistan.

Besides fluctuations in the economy, Rhodes cites other factors that affect enrollment.

Low birth rates 18 years ago led to fewer U.S. students entering college in 2017. Also, state funding has dwindled over the years from 60 percent to 35 percent of Reynolds’ operational budgets, Rhodes says. As a result, tuitions are higher, and students have to shoulder more of the costs.

To boost its student body, Reynolds is making the enrollment process simpler and engaging more students while they are still in high school or middle school, through programs such as Advance College Academies. Under that program, outstanding high school students can earn associate degrees while completing their high-school diploma requirements.

The program has set up an interesting dynamic for its high school seniors. They are awarded their associate degrees in May before they receive their high-school diplomas in June. “They graduate from college before they graduate from high school,” Rhodes says with a laugh. In 2017, 63 high school students graduated from the program.

Students typically apply to an academy program in the eighth grade through their local school division, enroll in advanced high-school courses in the ninth and 10th grades and take the required college coursework for their associate degrees during the 11th and 12th grades. “They will stay together all four years,” Rhodes says of students in the program.

JLARC report
Community colleges are likely to come under scrutiny at the next session of the General Assembly as the result of a report issued in September by the state Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC).

Among other findings, JLARC reported that only 39 percent of Virginia’s community college students earned degrees or other credentials, a trend in line with patterns seen across the nation.

JLARC also says that the process and resources enabling community college students to transfer to four-year institutions are difficult to use.

JLARC adds that rising tuition rates and fees at community colleges could affect access, affordability and student success. During the past 10 years, tuition and fees have grown from 6 percent of per-capita disposable income to 11 percent, the report says.

Echoing comments by community college Chancellor Glenn DuBois, Rhodes notes that, while there is room for improvement, many of the issues raised by JLARC can be traced to the different populations served by community colleges and four-year institutions. Generally speaking, community college students are older, poorer and attend college part time, Rhodes says. “Seventy-five percent of our students are part time,” the Reynolds president says, “and 75 percent work.”

Workforce development
While Reynolds has seen an overall drop in enrollment, students have been rushing to enter the college’s workforce development program for high-demand fields, such as welding, manufacturing and health care.

“The Community College Workforce Alliance, which is a partnership of Reynolds and John Tyler [Community College], was No. 1 in the state for workforce credential attainment, No. 1 for the number of people we have enrolled in the program,” says Elizabeth Creamer, vice president for workforce development at Reynolds.

As of mid-September, more than 900 students have been through the program under the Reynolds/Tyler alliance. The principal driver of the program has been the Workforce Credential Grant, established by the legislature, which has just completed its first year.

Under the grant, the state pays two-thirds of the tuition costs directly to the college, with students responsible for the other third. But requirements are stringent. The college is paid a third of the cost only when a student successfully completes the course, and the final third is received only if the student successfully obtains a credential or certification from an industry or certifying agency.

The bar also is high even before the first dollar is paid. “You can only get a credential through the state at greatly reduced or no cost if it’s aligned with a regionally available job for which there is a documented shortage of workers,” Creamer says.

Besides preparing students for high-demand occupations, the program also certifies teachers.

Those teachers, who must already possess a bachelor’s degree before they enter the program, are largely destined for public schools in subject areas where instructors are hard to find: technical education, science and technology, engineering technology and mathematics.

“We’re not going to get the teachers in the fields we need through the teacher education programs at the universities,” Creamer says. “So, we have expedited programs for those who have a baccalaureate and who are willing and able to go into teaching. They can access that job now and get their teaching credentials in a matter of months, not years.”

Transfer students
Reynolds also transfers about 900 students annually to four-year institutions. One of them was Sofia Duarte, whose parents operate a small residential cleaning service in the Richmond area.

Duarte, now 21, says she chose to go to a community college to save on higher-education costs — about $20,000 less when a student first goes to a community college and then transfers — and to help ensure that her parents had enough money to help her younger sister.

Duarte, an honors student, earned scholarships at Reynolds, worked a variety of part-time jobs, and then transferred to Virginia Commonwealth University where she is now a senior in the School of Engineering, earning a degree in electrical engineering. “Honestly, for me Reynolds opened a lot of doors to meet amazing people and have amazing opportunities,” Duarte says. She says Reynolds offered small classes, good teachers and strong academic advising.

And her younger sister, Sabrina, 18, whom she mentored, has done okay, too. She’s now enrolled at the University of Richmond, on scholarship.

Rhodes, who is now in his 16th year as president of Reynolds, says he knows enrollments will continue to fluctuate as the economy fluctuates. But that’s not what concerns him most.

He is worried about many young people and adults — from underemployed baccalaureate degree holders who can’t find jobs in their field to high school dropouts to laid-off workers — who could benefit from the wide variety of programs offered by Reynolds. “Everything we do here at the community college is preparing people for life and careers,” Rhodes says.

The bull market bump

A sustained bull market helped boost executive compensation in Virginia last year.

Total CEO compensation at Virginia’s largest publicly traded companies increased an average of 12.1 percent during 2016 as a bull market continued to deliver higher shareholder returns.

Altogether this group of 43 executives earned an average total compensation of $8.42 million.

At the top of the heap was John J. Haley, CEO of Willis Towers Watson. Haley led Arlington-based Towers Watson before its 2016 merger with Willis Group Holdings of London. He had a pay package last year that eclipsed $28 million.

The merger created a professional services, risk management and insurance brokerage company with 39,000 employees in more than 120 countries.

As CEO of the combined company, Haley received a stock award worth of $24.6 million as part of his 2016 compensation package.

Haley’s pay was included in the findings of an annual study of CEO pay at Virginia-based public companies with annual revenues of more than $1 billion.

Virginia Business worked on the project with Equilar, an executive compensation consulting firm headquartered in Redwood, Calif.  Equilar’s analysis is based on proxy statements filed by the companies with federal regulators this spring.

Total direct compensation includes a CEO’s salary, cash bonus, stock and option awards, and other financial incentives. Equilar calculates equity awards on company-disclosed valuations made on the day the awards are granted. The financial incentives include the value of perks such as executive physicals, the use of a corporate jet and financial and tax planning services.

Six Virginia CEOs on national list
While Virginia’s average of $8.4 million in total compensation falls below the 2016 national average of about $13 million, six of the state’s executives earned enough to be ranked on Equilar’s list of the 200 highest-paid CEOs of large U.S. publicly traded companies.

They are: Haley, $28.2 million; No. 19; Martin Barrington, Altria Group, $24.2 million, No.  35; Thomas Greco, Advance Auto Parts, $22.8 million, No. 37; Phebe Novakovic, General Dynamics, $21.2 million, No. 51; Richard Fairbank, Capital One Financial Corp., $16.9 million, No. 102; and Wes Bush, Northrop Grumman, $16.8 million, No. 106.

The highest paid CEO among the top 200 was Thomas Rutledge, CEO of Charter Communications, who earned $98 million.

Missing from the top 200 list was Virginia’s J. Michael Lawrie, the former CEO oComputer Sciences Corp. (CSC). He earned total compensation of $18.7 million in 2016.  The omission was due to the fact that CSC was completing its merger with the Enterprise Services business of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and its data were not available when Equilar was creating its list.

Lawrie now is chairman, president and CEO of the combined company, DXC Technology, which has its headquarters in Tysons Corner.

In Virginia, the second-highest paid CEO behind Haley was Barrington, who heads Altria, a tobacco conglomerate based in Richmond.

His total 2016 compensation, $24.2 million, came with a total shareholder return of 20 percent. That pay package was more than double what he received the year before, $10.7 million.

The only woman in Virginia’s top 10 was Novakovic. General Dynamics, an aerospace and defense company based in Falls Church, had a strong year in 2016, seeing a total shareholder return of 28 percent.  Novakovic also received the highest bonus among all Virginia CEOs on the Equilar list, $5.2 million.

Overall, CEO bonuses in Virginia were up an average of 19 percent. Thomas F. Farrell II of Dominion Energy saw the biggest percentage increase in bonus, at 415 percent. His 2015 bonus was $366,432. In 2016, it jumped to $1,887,126.

The executive seeing the biggest leap in total compensation was George L. Holm, CEO of Performance Food Group. His pay package rose from $1.7 million in 2015 to $6 million in 2016, or an increase of 248 percent.

On the other end of the spectrum was Donald H. Layton, CEO of Federal Home Loan Mortgage, also known as Freddie Mac.  He sustained the largest percentage loss in total compensation, 65 percent, when it dropped from $2 million in 2015 to $701,609 in 2016.

Pay for performance
As in recent years, there increasingly has been an emphasis on tying a CEO’s compensation to achieving performance goals.

Dan Marcec, director of communications for Equilar, says the biggest trend in CEO compensation is pay for performance. “The CEO will be paid in stock or options, contingent on certain performance goals,” Marcec says.

All but about half a dozen of the state’s public CEOs received performance-based equity awards, averaging $5.2 million, or about 62 percent of their total average compensation of $8.4 million.

“The introduction of Say on Pay in 2011, or the right of shareholders to vote on and approve executive pay packages, brought additional scrutiny to CEO pay and its alignment with company performance and shareholder interests,” Equilar says in its survey of U.S. CEO pay.

Salary has become only a small sliver of a CEO’s payday. In fact, the average base salary of the CEOs in the Virginia study declined 2.5 percent in 2016 to $980,160.  In Equilar’s national study of CEOs, median salary climbed about 1 percent and annual bonuses rose about 5 percent.

Across the U.S., Marcec says, CEO pay has been going up consistently for the past eight years since the financial crisis.

Looking over the Virginia list of CEOs, Marcec was struck by the number of CEOs (10) who have not been in their positions two years.  Typically, new CEOs receive a large stock grant to ensure that they will stay with their company rather than jump at the next opportunity.

Competition for talent
While CEO pay may seem excessive to some, Marcec says it all comes down to the criteria involved in hiring any new employee, particularly at the executive level.

“You look at the pool of talent, the competition for that talent and what the market is. Companies want to say our CEO is the best of the best,” Marcec says, noting that a company’s compensation committee makes the final decision on CEO pay.

Although CEO pay is up in Virginia, and across the U.S., Worldat­Work, a Washington, D.C., trade group, has forecast in its 2016-17 Salary Budget Survey that U.S. employers were expected to boost worker pay by an average of only 3 percent this year, the same as 2016.

The disparity between executive pay vs. employees may become clearer next year. That’s when companies will begin reporting the ratio of CEO pay to the median employee in filings with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission. While some companies anticipated that the rule might be amended or repealed after Donald Trump’s election as president, it remains in place for now.  So next year’s proxies may reveal more about CEO pay and how it compares to the average U.S. worker.

A millennial magnet

When the next history of the Richmond region is written, the author may look back on these times as its golden era for development. Driving that change has been the unprecedented arrival of millennials, the members of America’s largest generation.

It’s all in the numbers, says Basil Hallberg, a financial analyst at the Richmond-based commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield |Thalhimer.

“As of May 2017, the region has had 81 consecutive months of year-over-year employment growth,” Hallberg says. “Since 2004, the population in Richmond started growing at a pace that is unprecedented at least since the ‘70s. The 2004 timeline correlates with the first wave of millennials leaving the nest.”

Time magazine recently ranked Richmond second among U.S. cities with the highest rate of millennial growth from 2010 to 2015, with an upsurge of 14.9 percent. (Virginia Beach was first on the list at 16.4 percent.)

Millennials have made a visible impact on the city of Richmond, transforming its downtown into a youth-driven marketplace of loft apartments, shops, restaurants and craft breweries. The city also has become a venue for athletics in many forms, including running (annual marathon and 10-K races), cycling (UCI Road World Championships held in 2015) and kayaking (Class IV rapids in the James River).

As if to accent its reputation as a millennial magnet, the city has a new mayor, Levar Stoney, who is 36.

But will urban-centric single millennials choose to live in the city once they marry, buy homes and begin families? 

Affordability counts
Citing Virginia Employment Commission figures, Thalhimer’s Hallberg notes that, the number of establishments in (mostly businesses) in the city increased by 10.4 percent from 2010 to 2016.

Moreover, since the beginning of 2016, the arrival of new companies and the expansion of existing companies in the city have added 1,400 jobs.

Making the biggest splash is CoStar Group, a major Washington, D.C.-based real estate data firm. In October, it announced plans to establish a research center employing more than 730 workers in downtown Richmond near the James River.

Many executives who have brought companies to the Richmond area have cited its affordability for their employees. Thalhimer reports that the cost of living in the Richmond metro area is 5 percent below the national average, and housing costs are 11 percent below the national average.

Those factors have helped the region retain a well-educated workforce, a major attraction for new employers. In the Richmond area, more than 30 percent of adults age 25 or older have college degrees, and 60 percent of working adults have some college experience.

Navy veteran finds a home
Aaron Metrick, 33, is one of the millennials who has flocked to the region. “We did a national search of where we wanted to live… and we picked Richmond, and then we tried to find a job,” says Metrick, a nine-year Navy veteran from Annapolis, Md. At the beginning of 2015, Metrick and his wife, Kathy, moved to the area with their two small children.

Metrick, now a vice president at Bank of America, says he was attracted by the region’s surging economy, well-regarded local employers and lower housing costs.

But perhaps the most important factor for the Metricks were the intangibles. They believe the Richmond area offers big-city amenities without the hassles.

“We have access to stores, but without the headaches of D.C. traffic and high expenses,” he says.

Metrick says Richmond’s geographic position — a couple of hours each way from the mountains and the beach — also makes it a good spot for quick weekend getaways.

Area parks and access to the James River are added attractions for the Metricks.  “We go the river just about every weekend,” he says.
Concerns about schools

While the Metricks are big fans of downtown Richmond, they don’t live in the city. Instead, their home is in suburban Chesterfield County. “We did research on the schools, and they seemed better outside the city,” Aaron Metrick says.

That assessment points to a nagging question that has accompanied the surge of millennials: Will the struggles of Richmond Public Schools make young couples hesitant to settle in the city when they have children?

Only 17 of Richmond’s 44 schools currently are fully accredited. Eleven of those 17 are elementary schools. Statewide, 81 percent of public schools are fully accredited.

In mid-August, the Richmond City School Board and the Virginia Board of Education were putting the final touches on a memorandum of understanding aimed at moving city schools toward full accreditation. The Virginia Department of Education will announce new accreditation ratings for all public schools in mid-September.

Meanwhile, the city’s debt capacity is maxed out through at least 2021, restricting its ability to renovate or replace Richmond school buildings needing millions of dollars of repair.

A Circuit Court judge has ordered that a proposed change in the city charter addressing the funding issue appear on the November ballot in Richmond, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The judge’s decision came in response to a petition signed by more than 10,000 city voters.

If voters approve the charter change and it is passed by the General Assembly, the mayor would be required, within six months, to develop a funding plan for school facilities without a tax increase. The measure would require Stoney to inform city council if he is unable to develop such a plan.

While Metrick and his wife chose to live in the suburbs, he notes that many friends and colleagues living in the city appear pleased with the elementary school education their children are getting. But, he says, some of these parents are not sure what choices they will make for middle school.

One parent with a child in the Richmond school system is Jenny Tremblay West, a private contractor. She and her husband, who works for the city, have two young sons and live in the city’s Church Hill area. One son is entering first grade at Chimborazo Elementary after attending city preschool and kindergarten programs. The other son is not yet in preschool.

“We’ve had an extremely positive experience,” she says. “We’ve lucked out with really great teachers.” But, she adds, many parents in her neighborhood have opted to send their children to private schools or Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts, an elementary charter school that selects pupils in a lottery. 

“Richmond has attracted so many younger folks,” West says. “But it’s going to take every person, pushing hard, to make [the school system] better. I’m very hopeful.”

School system officials did not respond to requests for comment.

An April report by the Greater Richmond Partnership, an economic development group,  found that enrollment in Richmond schools has been growing.

Between the 2011-12 and 2016-17 school years, “enrollment at the city’s schools increased by 1,532 students, with 89 percent of this increase, or 1,357 students, being at the elementary school level,” the report says.

Questions about where millennials ultimately will settle aren’t confined to the Richmond area. Several national studies have shown that many millennials want to buy homes but are putting off the decision longer than their parents did.

“The median age of a first-time home buyer is 33 years old, compared to 29 a generation ago,” according to the Zillow Group Report on Consumer Housing Trends, which found that half of millennial home buyers live in the suburbs while 30 percent live in cities.

Building boom
The GRP report notes that from 2010 to 2016, 12,817 new residents moved into the city, bringing its estimated population to 223,170.

The report also says that households with incomes of $75,000 to $150,000 in the city increased by 40 percent during the six-year period, and the number of residents with bachelor’s degrees rose by 25 percent.

A flood of new housing has accompanied the city’s population growth. Between 2009 and 2015, the latest year available, the partnership says the number of housing units — including apartments, townhouses and single-family homes —increased by 5,318.

“There’s a tremendous influx of people moving to the city, and it’s something you can see across the city’s skyline. Cranes and new buildings are being erected to keep up with the increase of families,” Chuck Peterson, vice president of business information at the partnership, said in remarks accompanying the report.

Colliers International, a global commercial real estate services firm, says that there are about 3,000 new apartment units in “lease up” — the time period for a newly available property to attract tenants and reach stabilized occupancy — and an additional 4,800 new apartments are in some stage of construction.

The firm estimated that the Richmond region would add 10,800 jobs this year and well over 12,600 next year.

According to Colliers, the entire Richmond region, which it defines as 16 localities, grew by 190,000 residents between 2000 and 2013 and is forecast to grow by an additional 852,000 between 2012 and 2030.  “Out of the top 10 absolute growth markets in the U.S., Richmond was forecasted as the highest growth rate (68.4 percent) followed by Atlanta (45.6 percent) and San Antonio (36 percent),”  Colliers says.

Andrew Florance, the founder and CEO of CoStar, already sees much more room for growth in the regional housing market. At an annual Downtown Development Forum in April, Florance identified a shortage of 20,000 housing units in the Richmond region, with only six new residential units for every 10 new households.

As the region’s population grows, an effort is underway to transport people through the city of Richmond more efficiently. A 7.6-mile bus rapid-transit system, called The Pulse, will travel between Richmond’s east and west ends. The idea is to provide the advantages of a rail transit system without the cost.

“It’s the first piece of high-quality, reliable, rapid-transit service that will pave the way for what we envision will become a world-class, regional transit system,” says David Green, CEO of GRTC, the city’s transit system.

Boost in tourism
As more people have moved to the Richmond area for jobs, there also has been a surge in the region’s tourism. “Richmond is on fire,” says Jack Berry, president and CEO of Richmond Region Tourism.

Berry notes that the area has been setting tourism records for the past three years, based on hotel occupancy and hotel tax records. “You can’t find a hotel room on Saturday night,” he says.

History once was the biggest draw for Richmond tourism. Now, Berry says, it’s food and craft beer. “Two years ago, National Geographic said two cities to visit for food were New Orleans and Richmond. We’ve become the food destination,” he says.

California-based Stone Brewing Co., the nation’s 10th-largest craft brewer, has its East Coast brewery in Richmond. The region also is home to a growing list of local craft breweries and cideries, now numbering about 30.

Growing logistics center
The Richmond region also continues to burnish its image of a logistics center.

Seattle-based retail giant Amazon has leased a 328,000-square-foot building in Hanover County as a package sorting facility employing 300 people. It is expected to open in September.

Amazon already operates massive fulfillment centers  in Chesterfield and Dinwiddie counties.

Also, Newport Beach, Calif.-based Panattoni Development Co. has bought 62 acres in the city near Richmond Marine Terminal for a 1 million-square-foot distribution center.

25-year turnaround
Lucy Meade, director of marketing and development for downtown promotion group Venture Richmond, says recent developments in the city have been in the making for decades.

“A handful of people had a vision that we couldn’t let downtown go down. We had to figure out a way to turn it around,” she says.

Meade recalls the 1990s when the city’s crime rate climbed and many of its major downtown stores closed. Richmond’s population declined by more than 20 percent from 1970 to the early 2000s.

In those days, Meade says, people promoting the city were happy with even minor progress, when, for example, artists began filling empty downtown buildings because of their cheap rent.

In time, developers and preservation groups joined forces to take advantage of historic tax credits and other incentives to revitalize old buildings.

Today, Meade says, the city has an unmistakable vibrancy. “There has been this cumulative effect, sort of like compound interest,” she says. “Sometimes, it takes 25 years to turn an urban area into an overnight success.”

Meade expects millennials to continue coming downtown no matter what part of the Richmond region they choose to live.

“We love seeing young people getting married and settling down in one of the city’s cool neighborhoods and definitely want to see continued growth in this area,” she says. “But we are realistic and know that some young families will want to raise their children in the suburbs.”

Money matters

They are the numbers people, often out of the spotlight but always in the game.

Chief financial officers are the heartbeat of their organizations. Having the right one at the right time can make all the difference in a company’s growth.

To recognize the contributions of chief financial officers, Virginia Business has sponsored the Virginia CFO Awards since 2006. This year, the magazine received

50 nominations for awards in five categories: small and large nonprofit organizations, small and large private companies, and publicly traded companies.

Nearly half of this year’s nominees, 21, were women.

The judges for this year’s competition were the five winners from the 2016 Virginia CFO Awards. They were:

  • René Chaze, CPA, of Edelman Financial Services in Fairfax.
  • Mike D. Griffin of Tucker Griffin Barnes PC in Charlottesville.
  • Julie Hovermale, CPA, of the Better Housing Coalition in Richmond.
  • Dave Keltner, interim group CFO, Wolseley Group Services in Newport News.
  • Jeff Reed of Community Housing Partners in Christiansburg.

The five winners are profiled in the following pages. In addition, Virginia Business talked to other nominees from four regions throughout the commonwealth about the issues they face on the job. The CFOs also reveal what they believe Congress could do to make the job easier.

The ‘vision guy’
Here’s what Jake Schrum, president of Emory & Henry College in Southwest Virginia, says about his CFO: “Rick Gaumer is more than a numbers guy, when it comes to the management of finances at Emory & Henry; he is a ‘vision guy.’

“He is a CFO with a dream for how educational mission and numbers can work together to create the best possible results for a college,” Schrum said in nominating Gaumer for the Virginia CFO Awards.

When Gaumer, a certified public accountant, arrived at Emory & Henry in December 2014, he faced a budget crisis, because of what college officials say was an extraordinarily high level of debt service. The college, in fact, faced a budget gap of $3 million in fiscal year 2016-2017.

Working with regional banks and in a special arrangement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture available only to rural areas, Gaumer developed a debt refinancing plan that shaved about $1 million off the college’s annual debt service.

In addition, he was able to secure an additional $20 million to finance construction of eight apartment-style residence halls and an additional student center.

The college expects the new residence halls to improve retention and recruitment at the college, which has about 1,000 undergraduate students and 150 graduate students. “We’ll have a 40-year amortization with a relatively low interest rate,” Gaumer says.

The CFO, who also has worked in private industry, says he respects the value of a liberal-arts education offered by a small college. That’s one of the reasons he took the job at Emory & Henry.

But Gaumer says he’s also looking for results from investments the college makes. That’s why he spent $50,000 on the creation of a marching band, which is helping the college attract students from throughout the region.

Gaumer also supported the acquisition of a highly successful equestrian program from Virginia Intermont College in nearby Bristol. (Virginia Intermont closed in 2014 because of financial problems.)

That program likewise helped broaden Emory & Henry’s brand and boost its recruiting efforts, Gaumer and Schrum say.

If Congress could grant Gaumer one wish, it would be to increase the Pell Grant program so that more low-income students can be helped.

In Southwest Virginia, where the decline of the coal industry and other economic problems have hurt already struggling families, Gaumer says low-income students need all the help they can get — to gain an education and be job-ready when they graduate.

Dealing with downturn
For Dawn Wright-Lawson, CFO of Henry County Public Schools in economically hard-hit Southern Virginia, finding funds in tight budgets for school improvements is an ongoing challenge.

Jared Cotton, Henry County’s school superintendent, praises his CFO for producing annual savings of about $1 million for the school system, which serves 17,000 students.

“This achievement has allowed for infrastructure improvements to the division’s aging schools that would not have otherwise been possible,” Cotton said in his nomination of Wright-Lawson, a CPA.

She was the controller of a furniture components manufacturer in the area before it went out of business. That has been the fate of many furniture and textile manufacturers in the region.

Southern Virginia’s economy already was struggling when Wright-Lawson  came to work for the school system in 2008. Then the Great Recession made things worse.

In 2010, Henry County had an unemployment rate of 14.7 percent. By April, it had dropped to 5.2 percent but that rate is still above the state average of 3.8 percent.

When Wright-Lawson started her job, she says, the school system had a $2.5 million capital improvements budget. But that soon evaporated amid overall budget cuts, and ongoing costs haven’t allowed the capital improvements budget to be rebuilt.

“Our [overall] budget was reduced $2 million in the first year and $8 million in the next fiscal year,” she says.

Some savings have been achieved by modifying programs that don’t align with the school system’s strategic plans and the attrition of teachers at the top end of the pay scale.

Those savings are used to address unanticipated problems such as a boiler going bad or a leaky roof.

The CFO’s most important request for congressional action focuses on school mandates in the schools.

“If they’re going to have these mandates, they need to provide enough money to cover them,” she says.


Prepared for hard times
Matt Lanzer was out of a job in 2003 when his previous employer consolidated its circuit board manufacturing operations in China.

Lanzer, a CPA, landed a position at a startup in Prince George County, Service Center Metals, which is now a major aluminum extrusion manufacturer. The company’s founders credit him with helping it grow into an enterprise with $133 million in annual revenue and nearly 200 employees.

But the path to this point hasn’t been easy. The company initially had difficulty getting financing. Also, demand fell by more than 40 percent during the Great Recession of 2007-09, forcing the company to lay off some employees.

The challenges Lanzer has faced helped shape his philosophy as a CFO.

“My view of the world is that you should always treat the times as if they are difficult times,” he says. That approach prepares him for downturns, so they’re not great shocks, Lanzer explains.

Lanzer’s personal experience with hard times made him an ardent supporter of the Central Virginia Food Bank. “I remember my own roots,” he says. “I was living with my mother, and we were very poor. I know what it’s like to be without.”

Lanzer says the most important action Congress could take would be to repeal or change the Affordable Care Act.

“We used to be able to differentiate our health benefits by employee group.  This was done to attract and retain skilled employees. After the ACA, we had to reduce the benefits offered to those groups,” he says.  “It had a direct impact on our business, and we started losing our maintenance employees.  Similarly, we were challenged to attract new ones.  We now pay a higher wage to compensate for the loss in benefits.”

Herding lawyers
A financial career can involve a series of jobs in different types of workplaces.

Anna Lenz knows about that. In Troy, Mich., she oversaw 30 people in the accounting office of Kelly Services, a staffing agency. Lenz moved to the Washington, D.C., area when her husband, Edward, was named general counsel of the American Staffing Association.

Her first job in the Washington area involved working for an environmental services firm as a controller on a government contract. Then someone in her neighborhood told her husband that an Alexandria firm needed some accounting help.

Today, Lenz is chief financial officer for the Redmon, Peyton & Braswell law firm in Alexandria. For more than 20 years, she has “herded cats,” says managing partner Gant Redmon. That’s his description of handling the finances of the firm’s 18 attorneys.

“Sometimes the attorneys think they know more about accounting than I do,” Lenz says with a laugh. “They are a bunch of good attorneys, but I tell them ‘I know accounting. What you’re doing is not right. Trust me.’ ”

Under the firm’s financial system, each attorney represents a separate profit center. Keeping up with their trial hours, billings, 401(k)s and various fees — standard rate, retainers, referrals, individual client agreements and the rest — can be a challenge.

“It’s very detailed. Things can get out of control quickly,” Lenz says.

If keeping up with the numbers wasn’t enough, Redmon says, Lenz also functions as the firm’s office manager, overseeing everything from the office kitchen to flowers in the reception room to decorations for the holidays.

Those duties are not included in her job description, but Lenz believes that helping to keep everybody happy is important.

“You can’t be grumpy,” she says, especially when it comes to discussions about someone’s paycheck.

Lenz says she doesn’t have any special requests of Congress — well, maybe one.

“They can send somebody over to take my job for two weeks, maybe a month,” she jokes. “I think that would be great.”

2017 Virginia CFO Award winner profiles by Joan Tupponce

Supply-side economics

What do you do when a program exceeds its goals? Pop the cork on a bottle of champagne?

That’s not the case for the Virginia Department of Veterans Services, the state agency running Virginia Values Veterans (V3), a program that helps employers recruit and hire former military personnel. In keeping with the focus of the veterans it serves, the agency’s attitude is: Soldier on; the mission is not over.

V3 is not a charity. The commonwealth has identified veterans transitioning out of military service as a much-needed source of skilled labor to fill Virginia’s workforce pipeline. V3-certified employers in Virginia are coached on identifying military skills that can be valuable in the civilian workplace.

In 2012, when the first V3 conference was held, representatives from more than 50 companies attended. Today, more than 800 companies are V3-certified, and the number is climbing.

When Gov. Terry McAuliffe entered office in 2014, he challenged V3 to help businesses hire 20,000 vets by the time he left office in January 2018. V3 reached that benchmark late last year, so the governor immediately raised the goal, now set at 25,000, by next January. So far,

Virginia employers involved in the program have hired 22,000 veterans.

While aiming at a higher target, the Department of Veterans Services began scrutinizing the program, looking for ways to improve it.

“What we’ve learned about highly successful programs is that sometimes they will reach a plateau,” says Veterans Services official Annie Walker. “We did a deep dive before we reached that plateau. We asked the question: What next?”

Walker is a former Army drill sergeant and social worker who heads the department’s Veterans Education, Training and Employment directorate (VETE). “I’m the gentlest drill sergeant you’ll ever meet,” she says with a deep, rolling laugh.

In taking a hard look at V3, Walker and her colleagues came up with a revelation: “We needed to expand our vision. We needed to go beyond the businesses,” she says.

Boosting the supply side
If hiring represents the demand side of the veteran employment equation, preparing veterans for employment is the supply side. That side needed a boost.

Veterans Services had only one person in its Virginia Transition Assistance Program (VTAP) to meet with veterans before they left military service. Veterans Services also had only one person to advise vets about employment options once they laid aside their uniforms for civilian clothes.

“Now, there’s a whole team …  a program manager, two coordinators and an operations manager,” says Charlie Palumbo, director of transition and employment programs for Veterans Services.

“In the last month and a half, they’ve been to [military] installations 33 times to work with transitioning service members,” she says. “Virginia is a unique state in that we have so many installations and so many transitioning service members, and we also have a governor who sees them as a talent pipeline for the state.”

Too often vets’ first contact with V3 or other employment programs was six months or more after they had left military service.

“We knew that we had to get to them sooner,” Palumbo says. “We’re finding the sweet spot is between 12 and 18 months before you separate from the service. If we can get to you … we can get you [prepared for a civilian career] … It’s when you come to us six months out … that we’re finding people falling off and [winding up] in the unemployment line.”

Military Medics and Corpsmen
To help expand the number of veterans moving into the civilian workforce, Veterans Services also has added programs.

One is the Military Medics and Corpsmen Program (MMAC), which focuses on helping former military medics and corpsmen get jobs in the health-care industry.

MMAC is the first of its kind in the nation, Veterans Services officials say. The program does not grant licenses or certifications, and it also doesn’t provide financial assistance for transitioning military personnel. But it does open the door to possible employment at several health-care institutions participating in the program.

Michael Bluemling Jr., an Army vet who is V3’s new program manager, remembers working with a veteran who had been a physician’s assistant in the military. The vet had no way to transfer his skills to a civilian health-care environment. “This is an example of how this program is going to be able to meet that need,” Bluemling says.

One of the employers participating in the MMAC program is the Richmond-based Bon Secours Virginia Health System. “We’d already had veterans working for us, and we knew the value they brought to the work force,” says Paul Junod, the health system’s administrative director of human resources.

He says MMAC creates another pipeline of candidates for health-care positions in clinics, physicians’ offices and hospitals. If the newly hired veterans hit a snag in their transition to the civilian health-care workforce, they can seek help from fellow veterans in the Bon Secours system. “It’s the Stars and Stripes group,” Junod says.

Bon Secours so far has hired five veterans through the MMAC program, which is still in its infancy, but the health system intends to recruit more.

Veterans, Junod says, “come from an environment where they’re expected to be leaders, they work in teams and they’re good at problem-solving,” all of which fits in well with the kind of employees Bon Secours wants.

State officials hope that hospitals and other health-care institutions participating in the program will mentor qualified veterans, helping them pursue degrees and licenses as they improve their skills.

Nationwide, about 11,000 medics and corpsmen transition out of the military every year.

V3 Educator
Another new Veterans Services program is V3 Educator. Its intent is to help colleges, universities and other educational institutions better understand how they can help veterans tackle challenges in furthering their education.

Of the 2.6 million-plus post-9/11 veterans, fewer than half are using their GI Bill benefits, studies have found.

Walker says the aim of the V3 Educator program is to help veterans overcome problems assimilating to the classroom and making progress toward graduation.

As of early spring, only a handful of colleges had been certified by the V3 Educator program, but Veterans Services officials say more than 140 people have received training, including more than a dozen representing educational institutions and nearly as many from licensing and credentialing agencies.

Tidewater Community College (TCC) in South Hampton Roads has been certified by V3 as both an employer and educator of veterans. In addition to TCC, John Tyler and Germanna community colleges also have received the V3 Educator designation.

About a third of TCC’s 37,000 students are active-duty military personnel, retired veterans or family members of veterans. “We happen to be in an area where all branches of service are represented,” says Bill Brown, executive director of TCC’s Center for Military and Veterans Education.

Established in 2012, the center’s primary goal is to help its veterans and their families gain the skills they need to become employable. Brown says center students’ most popular majors include engineering, business administration, science and information technology.

Veronica Cianetti, TCC’s director of military student services support, says the overwhelming majority of center employees have military backgrounds. That common bond gives veterans a sense of ease right away, she says. “We’ve done it; we’ve been there.”

Boots to Business
When their military service is over, many veterans want to start businesses.  Nationally, they run nearly one in 10 small businesses, according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey.

Helping vets fulfill that dream are two programs offered by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

One is Boots to Business, which began in Virginia about three years ago. Its training helps vets learn how to establish and manage a company. Boots to Business is part of the Department of Defense’s Transition Assistance Program for separating veterans.

“Virginia was one of the leaders, very proactive in setting up programs at all the major military installations,” says Carl Knoblock, director of the SBA’s Richmond District Office.

The program includes an introduction to entrepreneurship. After that, veterans and their spouses can take an eight-week online course to learn the principles of creating a business plan.

“Spouses are looking for a business they can pick up and move, so wherever they go they don’t have to go looking for a new job,” Knoblock explains.

As the Boots to Business program expanded, he says, SBA turned it over to a resource partner, Veterans and Business Outreach Centers.  Currently, Virginia has three participating outreach centers.

During the past 18 months, more than 2,500 people have been trained under the Boots to Business program, and 300 businesses have been started, Knoblock says.

Although the SBA relinquished some of its duties to the outreach centers, the agency still helps veterans start businesses through another program, Boots to Business: Reboot. That program targets veterans who left active duty a number of years ago or have retired.

Knoblock says the SBA now is starting another effort to help veterans. “The third phase is working with veterans who served their country and were honorably discharged but have been incarcerated,” he says.

In addition, the SBA learned that many veterans want to become farmers. “So, last year, we had an agricultural reboot, the first one in the country,” Kn­oblock says.

Nonpartisan issue
John Newby, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Veterans Services, says there are nearly 800,000 veterans in Virginia. That number is expected to grow by another 30,000 during the next three years.

With all the political discord that exists in the country, Newby says, he has been lucky to work on an issue — employing veterans — that is nonpartisan.

“There is a not a single legislator I’ve met with who has not said, ‘This is the right thing to do,’” Newby says.

Related stories:

A voice for veterans

Taking the leap

Staying on the move

Shipshape instruction

List of Virginia Values Veterans (V3) certified companies

Shipshape instruction

Ed Horton says one thing he enjoys about his work is the opportunity to help veterans find good jobs.

Horton was a master chief petty officer, the highest enlisted rank in the U.S. Navy. Today he is a department head at the Mid-Atlantic Maritime Academy (MAMA) in Norfolk. Some of its students train to qualify for jobs in the civilian maritime industry. Others are active-duty service members who are trying to upgrade their skills.

“We’ve had several who got out of the service as an E-6 [Navy petty officer first class], got their credentials here and were making twice as much money 30 days after separation,” Horton says.

The academy is a Virginia Values Veterans (V3) company that works with the Virginia Department of Veterans Services in helping former military personnel find roles in the civilian workforce.

“Mid-Atlantic Maritime Academy’s V3 story has a few layers to it,” says Capt. Ed Nanartowich, the academy’s president. “V3 promotes the hiring of veterans, and MAMA seeks veterans as a premier human asset in delivering deck and engineering courses to mariners nationwide.”

Nanartowich is a retired federal employee with the Navy’s Military Sealift Command. He also served as a Navy reservist for 30 years.

The Maritime Academy trains about 3,000 students a year, including transitioning veterans, active-duty service members and others interested in a life aboard a ship. School officials say word of mouth, from graduates and the companies that have hired them, is one of the best recruiting tools they have.

Since its founding in 2007, the academy’s facilities have grown exponentially. “Our school was built for one thing: maritime students,” says CEO Arthur Goldman. “When we first started, we had 1,200 square feet, and now we’re at 35,000 square feet. We have more certifications from the Coast Guard than any school in the country.”

Last year, the academy was named the Hampton Roads Chamber’s Small Business of the Year. It holds classes during the day and at night to accommodate the various schedules of students.

About 40 percent of the students are using the GI bill to pay tuition, which varies according to the course. 

Many of the academy’s more than 20 instructors are veterans.  “Having vets on staff is critical to our success since tapping into their expertise of actual ship operation is the stock-in-trade of our school mission,” Nanartowich says.

“With senior chiefs and master chiefs, you’ve got people who have great leadership skills, good presence in the classroom and a level of expertise that goes beyond the norm,” he says.

With current service members, the school trains and certifies active Navy, Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sailors and recently separated sailors.

Officials say all of the academy’s graduates go on to work on ships in various maritime industries. “There are a lot of jobs in the oil patch in the Gulf,” Nanartowich says.

But the petroleum industry is not the only place graduates can go. The head of the U.S. Maritime Administration has told Congress that the industry will need 70,000 new employees by 2021.

Horton says he’s seen a lot of young veterans use the academy as a bridge to a good job on the civilian side. “We’re always in contact with them; we’re always tracking them,” he says of the school’s graduates. “They’re out there living the ultimate dream, because they found us, and we trained them properly.”

Former Master Chief Adrian Batchelor, who heads the academy’s engineering department, reiterates V3’s message to transitioning veterans: They need to start early in preparing  themselves for life as civilian workers. “The guys starting 12-18 months out are doing better,” he says. “They can get additional training before they separate.”

The academy runs on a compressed academic schedule to help students save time and money. “We work with them before they get into school … so they’re not taking courses they don’t need and aren’t paying for courses they don’t need,” Goldman, the school’s CEO, says.

Students are generally run through a series of 40-hour, intensive one-week courses as they work toward attaining their maritime credentials. Some courses can be as short as a day, while others can last for weeks or months.

The academy also has a boot camp that involves four weeks of classroom and basic training, followed by a four-week internship with a maritime company.  The boot camp program helps students with job placement skills, smoothing their transitions to full-time jobs.

The academy was the recent recipient of a V3 grant totaling several thousand dollars, 75 percent of which officials says was used to provide bonuses to instructors, while the remainder was devoted to marketing educational materials to veterans.

While the grant was relatively small, Nanartowich says it was the thought that counted. “The end result is the clear perception that both our company and the veterans are held as relevant in V3 objectives.  That, in a fashion, sums up the V3 program,” Nanartowich says.