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byline: Gary Robertson

The ‘iron triangle’

The governing boards of Virginia’s public colleges and universities can face a vexing choice.

Should they keep tuition low to make the school accessible to the public or build the university’s financial strength so that it can attract top faculty and build state-of-the-art facilities?

Peter Blake, director of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), says there’s a name for the challenge facing boards of visitors. “It’s what we describe as ‘the iron triangle of affordability, access and quality.’ As one one of those increases, the other decreases.

“If you increase access, it could impact on quality. Those are the trade-offs trustees make,” Blake says.

Perhaps the conundrum might be better understood in the context of two landmark actions in state higher education, one passed by the legislature in 2005 and the other, in 2011.

In 2005, Virginia profoundly changed its relationship with its public colleges and universities through the Restructuring Act. The law gave institutions greater autonomy in setting tuition and managing their finances during a period of wide swings in state funding for higher education.

Then, six years later, the legislature approved the Higher Education Opportunity Act, or “Top Jobs Act.” Its primary objective was awarding 100,000 additional degrees between 2011 and 2025, while increasing access and affordability.

The ripple effects of those two laws are being felt in nearly every aspect of college operations, in decisions about tuition, enrollment and finances.

In August, top officials of the University of Virginia were summoned to the state Capitol, in part to see whether U.Va. was upholding its end of the deal public universities had struck with the state.

U.Va., Virginia Tech, the College of William and Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University have been granted the greatest autonomy (Level 3) under the Restructuring Act in handling their finances and other aspects of governance.

On the hot seat
The money committees of the House of Delegates and the state Senate put U.Va. on the hot seat in reaction to accusations by Helen Dragas, a former rector, of the existence of a secret “slush fund.”

In an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, the Hampton Roads real estate developer said the university’s governing board created the $2.3 billion fund for “pet projects” instead of using the money to reduce tuition.

Dragas noted in her opinion piece that, since 2009, tuition at U.Va. has increased 74 percent.  Tuition for students entering U.Va. in the 2009-10 school year was $7,496. In 2016-17, it was $13,060 for first-time students.

SCHEV officials, however, stress that the cost of going to college will vary because of multiple factors, including the incomes of students and their families.

Nationally, since 1990, the average tuition at public four-year public institutions has skyrocketed more than 160 percent, according to the the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Virginia’s four-year comprehensive colleges are now the sixth most-expensive public institutions in the nation, and its doctoral institutions are 12th most-expensive, according to SCHEV’s most recent tuition and fees report.

U.Va. says its $2.3 billion fund, which goes up or down depending on market conditions, is best characterized as a “strategic investment fund,” which can generate as much as $100 million annually to improve the university without the use of tuition or tax dollars.

In mid-September, the board approved $26 million from the fund for 13 projects that ranged from increased financial support for doctoral students to the acquisition of a suite of tools to help faculty and students pursue large-scale research opportunities.

It is not surprising that U.Va.’s fund became a political issue. In an era of high student debt, college tuition has become a focal point for many members of the state legislature.

A college education has become progressively less affordable for many Virginia families. State funding has been one of the culprits. As state support decreases, tuition almost invariably rises.

Virginia has a long-stated target goal of providing 67 percent of the cost of a student in public higher education, but it has missed the mark time and again.

In 2017, the state is expected to pay only 47 percent, while students (and their families) pay 53 percent, according to SCHEV.

The General Assembly had increased appropriations for higher education last year with the hope that tuition increases could be held to a minimum.

No ‘inquisition’
At the joint legislative hearing, Tommy Norment, the Republican majority leader of the state Senate, offered an assessment of what was to come for U.Va. officials.

“The tone of the presentations should be factual. [It] will not devolve into an inquisition,” he said.

Eric Sandridge, director of higher education in the office of the state Auditor of Public Accounts, swiftly threw cold water on accusations of mismanagement. “I didn’t see anything that would indicate a slush fund of any kind,” Sandridge says. “As far as hiding assets, there is none of that there.”

He added that there were no general funds or tuition income in the fund. Instead, it is a pool of money drawn from cash reserves, as well as investment gains that had accumulated over the years.

U.Va. President Teresa Sullivan told legislators that, besides making the best use of its financial resources, the university was keeping its bargain on moderating tuition increases and providing access to more Virginians.

She noted that U.Va. had reduced a previously announced tuition increase of 3 percent for continuing students to 1.5 percent, thanks to a higher appropriation from the state.  (In-state freshmen at U.Va. pay varying tuitions depending on whether they take an option that will secure a guaranteed four-year tuition rate.)

According to the university, the state’s contribution of $144.7 million represents about 10 percent of the university’s academic division budget of $1.39 billion in fiscal 2016-17.  Of the university’s total approved operating budget of $3.2 billion for all divisions, including the University of Virginia at Wise and the university’s medical center, the state money amounts to less than 5 percent.

More spots for Virginians?
On providing greater access at U.Va. to more Virginians — a sticking point with many legislators about Virginia’s elite public institutions — Sullivan said that as a result of an enrollment growth plan implemented in 2011 (as part of the “Top Jobs Act”) the university has awarded undergraduate degrees to an additional 938 state students in the past five years.

Under the growth plan,  U.Va. expects to enroll 1,673 more undergraduates by the 2018-19 academic year, an increase of 11.9 percent from 2010-11. Of these, 1,171 (70 percent) will be Virginians.

By 2019, Sullivan says, the university, which now has a student body of nearly 22,000, would be awarding degrees to an additional 385 in-state students annually. (About a third of U. Va. students are from outside the state. However, in-state students represent 69.3 percent of this year’s entering class, exceeding existing enrollment goals.)

U.Va. officials say they are committed to maintaining excellence alongside access and affordability. The U.Va. board of visitors will hold a one-day, called meeting on Nov. 11 to discuss possible uses of the strategic investment fund.  College affordability is expected to be on the agenda. 

“U.Va.’s dual roles as a public university and as a state flagship should never be contradictory or mutually exclusive. U.Va. must be public and excellent, affordable and excellent, accessible to Virginians and excellent,” Sullivan asserted before the money committees.

Looking at other schools
Other public institutions also could find themselves under intense scrutiny by the legislature.

The money committees have asked SCHEV, in conjunction with state auditors, to examine how other institutions are managing their finances with additional autonomy.

The current pacts between the state and its public colleges and universities point to a big issue for former state Sen. Edd Houck. He served in the Senate for 28 years and helped guide the creation of the Restructuring Act.

“Historically, higher education in many ways has been a stepchild of state funding in the commonwealth, and it’s gotten worse and worse. K-12 has been at the head of the line,” Houck says.

Virginia’s constitution does not mandate state support for higher education.  K-12, on the other hand, has had since 1999 a committed source of funding: profits from the state lottery. (A constitutional amendment confirming that commitment passed in 2000.)

In fiscal year 2016, those profits totaled $588 million, the best results in the lottery’s 28-year history.

Houck says, however, declining state support is not the only thing making colleges expensive. He also cited rising institutional spending.

“I have been resistant to tuition increases, because you have to give up some things,” he says. “Even during the most difficult days of the recession, college and university budgets were growing.”

Houck, a member of the University of Mary Washington’s board of visitors, emphasizes that he is in no way speaking for the university or its governing board. Instead, he is expressing his frustration at what he views as overspending by colleges and universities generally.

Houck echoes some of the concerns expressed by the members of other college governing boards to the Joint Legislative  Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) in a 2014 survey of college costs: “About half of the current board members responded that they have a limited ability to influence decisions about institutional efficiency or non-academic spending.”

U.Va. Rector William H. Goodwin Jr., a man known for his financial acumen and philanthropy, was careful when asked what the university’s governing board should have as its top priority: Keeping tuition low or building its financial strength?

“With all honesty, I can’t answer that,” Goodwin says. “You’re asking two different questions with a broad range of strategies.”

Ready for a close-up

Ted Ukrop sips a cup of coffee in the vaulted lobby of his design-driven Quirk Hotel on West Broad Street in Richmond where the ceiling towers 20 feet above his head.

“I always felt that Richmond needed a cool hotel. I always knew somebody was going to do it, and I would regret it if it wasn’t me,” says Ukrop, a scion of the Ukrop family that for decades operated the most successful group of grocery stores in the region.

Housed in a century-old building that once was a luxury dry-goods store, the hotel has 74 guest rooms, with art in all of them. Half of the rooms are painted an eye-popping color — a Benjamin Moore “Love and Happiness” pink.  Each hotel floor features a papier-mâché portrait of an animal or a person.

Ukrop and his wife, Katie, co-own the hotel with a group of investors. The couple also own an art gallery next door.

Ukrop says his family and other investors spent more than $20 million in transforming the building into a hotel, including the addition of a seventh-floor to accommodate four terrace suites and a two-tier rooftop bar.
Condé Nast Traveler has named Quirk one of the best new hotels in the world, with one of the best rooftop bars in the U.S.

Quirk made its debut a year ago, just in time for the UCI Road World Championships in Richmond. The international cycling races, which had not been held in the U.S. for nearly 20 years, proved to be  something of a coming-out party for the changing culture and economy for a region once known as a staid cigarette manufacturing center.

International impact
A study estimated the 10-day event, which drew cycling fans from around the world, had an economic impact of $161 million in the region. More important, however, was the exposure the area received from international television coverage.

“Almost 70 percent of our prospects are currently international companies looking at Richmond.  Only 30 percent are domestic,” says Barry Matherly, president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Partnership, an economic development organization that markets Richmond and Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties. “International sporting events are better for us to market this region with than the NFL, NBA and baseball combined, as far as the viewership.”

Edwin Gaskin, economic development director for Hanover County, concurs. “When we are courting international companies, our chief challenge is just being known … To have that TV coverage, to have citizens, consumers, business owners, managers, employees say, ‘Oh, Richmond, that’s where that cycling event was.’ That’s priceless.  You can’t put a value on that.”

The region’s international close-up came at an opportune time. In several areas, the region has been on a roll.

Foreign investment announced in the Richmond area in recent years has included: Mavalério, a Brazilian candy and confectionary product company, which has established its first U.S. production operation in Hanover; Polykon

Manufacturing LLC, a French joint venture that will make cosmetic and pharmaceutical ingredients in Henrico; and the biggest of all, Tranlin, a Chinese company subsidiary that plans to build a $2 billion paper plant in Chesterfield County.
“We’ll see dirt fly in the spring of ’17 when the weather gets right,” says Garrett Hart, Chesterfield’s economic development director.

Growth in jobs, retail sales
The Richmond metro area saw net growth of 26,121 jobs last year, an increase of 4.1 percent compared with 2.7 percent in Virginia and 2 percent nationwide.

Chesterfield’s employment, for example, last year grew 6 percent to more 140,000 jobs, ranking it fourth in the nation in employment growth among large counties. The county expects to add another 76 jobs soon. Niagara Bottling plans to invest $95 million to establish a manufacturing and bottling facility at the Meadowville Technology Park.

Retail development also continues, especially in Henrico. Wegmans, an upscale grocer, recently opened its first stores south of Fredericksburg in Midlothian and Short Pump. “Henrico is basically the number one locality in the state in terms of sales per capita,” says Gary McLaren, executive director of the county’s economic development authority. “We’re number two in terms of total retail sales behind Fairfax [County], which has over a million people.”

The Richmond area also now has eight Fortune 500 companies, up from six last year. Goochland County-based food service company Performance Food Group and Henrico-based specialty insurance company Markel Corp. joined Altria Group (Henrico), Dominion Resources (Richmond), CarMax (Goochland), Genworth (Henrico), Owens & Minor (Hanover) and WestRock (formerly MeadWestvaco, Richmond).

Back from the dead
Ted Ukrop has been a witness to the revival of downtown Richmond, now one of the fastest-growing areas in the region.

In the 1990s, his family bought eight buildings around the Quirk site, creating loft apartments in some of them while hoping for a revival throughout the Broad Street corridor.

At the time, vacant and deteriorating buildings in the area were like tombstones. Downtown’s decline was driven in part by waves of suburban flight and the closing of the city’s two landmark department stores, Miller & Rhoads (in 1990) and Thalhimers (in 1992).

From 1970 to 2000, the city lost more than a quarter of its population, shrinking from nearly 250,000 to fewer than 200,000, according to the U.S. Census. Today, the population has rebounded to an estimated 220,000.

In 2000, there were only 6,000 people living downtown. By 2010, there were 15,000.  Now, there are more than 20,000.

In 2014, a study by VCU and Venture Richmond, a promotion and marketing group, found that various parts of downtown experienced dramatic growth in recent years, fueled in part by state and federal tax credits as well as the city’s tax abatement program for rehabilitated properties.

Lucy Meade, Venture Richmond’s director of marketing and development, estimates that overall investment during the past 10 years totaled about $4.5 billion.

Recent downtown development, completed last year or underway this year, has amounted for more than $1.04 billion, the organization says.  That includes 2,149 loft apartments, 369 hotel rooms as well as more than 2.1 million square feet of commercial and arts and education, and medical space.

One reason for downtown’s comeback is a renewed interest in urban living, especially among millennials, taking place nationwide. Forbes magazine last year ranked Richmond as the fastest-growing rental market for millennials in the country. Zillow, a Seattle-based real estate and rental research firm, recently reported that more millennials live alone in Richmond than in any other U.S. metro area, in part because they have the income to support themselves.

New landmarks
Quirk is not the only talked-about property on Broad Street. East of the hotel, at North Third and East Broad, is one of Richmond’s most dramatic Art Deco landmarks, the 87-year-old former Central National Bank building. Now known as the Deco at CNB Apartments, the 23-story tower has begun renting  200 apartments after a $36 million, multiyear renovation project.

In the other direction, at the corner of West Broad and Belvidere streets, construction is underway at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.  The $37 million building at one of downtown’s main gateways is expected to become a cultural linchpin when completed next year.

The city also is getting its share of new skyscrapers. The $124 million, Gateway Plaza, an 18-story tower in the financial district, was completed last year. Its main tenant is the law firm McGuireWoods LLP.

A few blocks away, a $93 million, 21-story office and apartment building is under construction. SunTrust Banks Inc. will move its Richmond division main office into the high rise, at 10th and East Byrd streets, while much of the remaining space will be used for 187 luxury apartments.

Dominion Resources has begun the demolition of an existing office building, Richmond Plaza, to make way for a 20-story office tower at 111 S. Sixth St., that will replace that existing building.

Existing buildings also are seeing new use. Chester-based Shamin Hotels spent more than $40 million converting a downtown office building into two hotels with a rooftop restaurant and bar.
Used-car retailer CarMax has turned a former music venue on the city’s Canal Walk into a technology and innovation center for 80 to 120 employees.

Cycling and lunching
Jane Ferrara, chief operating officer with Richmond’s Department of Economic & Community Development, says the UCI championships and the newly completed Capital Trail between Richmond and Williamsburg, have put the focus on cycling in the city.

“Millennials are attracted to cities with things like bike lanes and bike trails, different ways of getting to work,” Ferrara says.

People from other generations also are discovering attractions in the city.  At Quirk, Ukrop says some of his best lunch customers are “older ladies” who remember a time when a meal at a downtown department store was an elegant treat.

Quirk’s Maple & Pine restaurant, however, will never be mistaken for the Miller & Rhoads Tea Room.

“The second week we were open we had a really prominent Richmond family having dinner and next to them were these four girls, their arms all tattooed up,” Ukrop says. “That’s what we wanted to have — this diverse, eclectic mix — and I think we’re doing pretty well at this.”

Help wanted

During the recession, many Virginians couldn’t find jobs.

Now, according to chief financial officers across the state, the jobs are there, but not enough qualified applicants are showing up to claim them. That situation threatens not only a company’s growth but the overall economic prosperity of the commonwealth.

Virginia Business talked to Virginia CFO Awards nominees about the biggest challenges they face.  The awards, started in 2006, were presented in June to winners in five categories: small (under 100 employees) and large private companies; small and large nonprofit organizations; and publicly traded companies.

“Finding qualified electricians is a big challenge for us,” says  Becky Jester,  CPA, who is the chief financial officer of Highground Services Inc., a small engineering company in Franklin.

Highground, which has more than 60 employees, has been growing and diversifying, expanding its operations to Newport News and other areas. The company is poised for even more growth, but it needs more skilled workers.

“We have partnered with a local high school to teach basic electrical skills, and we are in conversation with a community college [Paul D. Camp Community College] to relaunch their electrical training program,” Jester says, adding that Highground has established an apprenticeship program to train electricians.

In talking with customers and other businesses, the company has learned of labor shortages in nearly all the construction trades.

Jester has her own idea on why the shortages have occurred. “Perhaps, over time, we’ve let our young people think they need to go to college, to sit behind a desk to be successful. I don’t think a traditional four-year college is for everyone,” Jester says.

Seeking truck drivers
At the InterChange Group Inc., a Harrisonburg-based warehousing, logistics and industrial development company, finding qualified truck drivers is the problem.  “It’s a very competitive environment for truck drivers,” says its CFO,  Kevin Longenecker, CPA.

He notes that InterChange’s services follow the ebb and flow of its customers’ businesses. When one customer ramps up production and needs its help, Longenecker says, his company must be able to hire qualified workers on short notice.  “Our whole industry is built on month-to-month [demand],” Longenecker says.

InterChange expects container business, both import and export, will accelerate with the recent opening of the enlarged Panama Canal. The company hopes to take advantage of that upswing.
In 2005, Longenecker was one of the first 20 employees hired at InterChange, which now has about 100 employees.

He says being CFO is a big change from his earliest jobs. “My father was a butcher. My first job was swatting flies,” Longenecker recalls.

Recruiting tech employees
Michael Bame, controller at Harmonia Holdings Group in Blacksburg, started with the company in 2007 when it had 25 employees. Today, it has more than 300 in seven offices across the country.

“We have to have the financial resources to sustain growth, and you have to have a system to bring in a bunch of people at one time,” he says of the technology company, which handles many federal contracts and sometimes hires in spurts.

Bame, who also is in charge of human resources, says the company sometimes struggles to recruit high-caliber tech workers. He says tech giants such as Google and Microsoft recruit heavily at Virginia Tech, giving graduates a wide range of job choices.

Many new graduates prefer the vibe of big cities to Blacksburg’s small-town atmosphere. Frequently, though, Bame says, Harmonia captures many of these workers when they marry and begin raising families. “They find out they don’t want to go to a big city. It’s better to raise a family here,” Bame says.

Harmonia has contracts with a number of federal agencies, including the Census Bureau, Patent Office and Department of Defense.  One strategy the company has used to retain tech employees is to move them to other contracts if one they have been working on comes to an abrupt end. “We don’t like to lay off people,” Bame says. “It’s hard enough to attract them.”

Long-distance commutes
Rick Welborn, CFO of Mythics Inc., a Virginia Beach-based software company, is another CFO searching for the right workers to sustain growth.

Mythics’ technology is based on Oracle products. That is one reason the company has some really long-distance commuters — from the West Coast.

“People that understand Oracle — cloud, software, hardware — those people are very difficult to find. We’re constantly running campaigns and finder’s fees. It’s one of the costs you have to bear,” Welborn says.

When he joined Mythics in 2008, it had annual revenue of $300 million, and eight people worked in the accounting department. Since then, revenue has tripled and the number of accounting employees has risen to 30. “You fasten your seat belt and hold on,” Welborn says of the company’s growth, which has been fueled by the federal government’s continued spending on IT.

Keeping a top rating
Ellen McIlhenny, executive vice president and CFO of Cobb Technologies in Richmond, has helped guide the company’s expansion since joining it 17 years ago.

Since 1998, Cobb’s annual revenue has grown from $7 million to $25 million. McIlhenny says one of her challenges is helping the company to stay relevant in the fast-changing technology field.

Like other CFOs, McIlhenny also says there are challenges in finding enough skilled personnel, specifically IT workers. But the company also needs more truck drivers to deliver copiers and other office products. “We’re having more trouble finding people who want to come to work,” McIlhenny says.

Mary Blowe, CFO and director of support services for the city of Winchester, can relate to McIlhenny’s concerns. Blowe says she can’t always find enough qualified applicants for financial positions. “I don’t see young students coming into government,” she says. “The money isn’t there.”

Blowe, however, has found a lot of satisfaction in her work, presiding over two major upgrades to the city’s bond rating, which has a crucial impact on its cost of capital.

During her tenure, Standard & Poors raised the city’s bond rating from AA to AA+ in 2010 and raised it again in 2013 to AAA. Winchester is one of only 10 cities in Virginia with the AAA rating.

Health-care talent
Don Halliwill, CFO of Roanoke-based Carilion Clinic health system, says that finding talent — from clinicians to finance professionals and nearly every category in between — is getting more difficult.

People with high demand skills, he says, are more mobile than ever.  “People now feel comfortable going anywhere” at nearly any time, he says. Carilion, which operates eight nonprofit hospitals, has annual revenue of $1.5 billion. With 11,700 employees, the health system is the largest private employer in western Virginia.

Halliwill says Carilion works hard to retain employees.  “We’re trying to create a different environment, more free flowing [so] you don’t work in the same area for 10 years,” he says.

For health care in general, Halliwill believes the biggest challenge can be simply put: finding ways to spend less money while achieving better outcomes. He says physician leadership in health care is critical.

“Administrators are not going to solve the problems. Technology will not solve the problems. Clinicians and patients will solve the problems,” Hall­iwill emphasizes.

Revamping nonprofit
While other CFOs cite finding skilled workers as a one of their biggest challenges, Jim O’Brien says his major task was helping his small nonprofit organization revamp and stabilize.

O’Brien, a retired Air Force colonel, joined the 380,000-member Military Officers Association of America in 2010. The Alexandria-based association, he says, struggled after the recession, with volatile swings in its revenues.

O’Brien — who credits a team approach to problem solving — points to several changes that helped the organization.

It created a subsidiary group, Voices for American Troops, a social welfare organization. Open to people who did not qualify for association membership, the group assists in the association’s advocacy efforts.

The association also works to engage entry-level members, helping to reverse a long decline in overall membership. In addition, the nonprofit started the Military Family Initiative to generate support for the association’s philanthropic endeavors focused on the general military community.

“We created a culture of pursuing ideas and opportunities and getting away from the spreadsheets,” O’Brien says.

 

2016 Virginia CFO Award winners

SMALL NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
Julie Hovermale, CPA
Better Housing Coalition
Richmond


LARGE NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
Jeffrey K. Reed
Community Housing Partners
Christiansburg


SMALL PRIVATE COMPANIES
Mike D. Griffin
Tucker Griffin Barnes PC
Charlottesville


LARGE PRIVATE COMPANIES
René Chaze, CPA
Edelman Financial Services
Fairfax


PUBLICLY TRADED COMPANIES
Dave Keltner
Ferguson Enterprises Inc.
Newport News

Workforce recruits

“We have [approximately] 800,000 veterans in Virginia, the highest percentage of female veterans, the highest percentage of veterans under the age of 25 and the fastest-growing veteran population of any state in America. You want to talk about building a dynamic workforce, these veterans are highly motivated, disciplined, dedicated.”
— Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a December interview with Virginia Business

In 2014, when Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe signed executive order 23 establishing The New Virginia Economy Workforce Initiative, he also unveiled “The Patriot Pledge,” asking 10,000 businesses to commit to hiring more veterans.

McAuliffe said then, and he says now, that the participation of Virginia’s veteran population in its labor force is important to the commonwealth’s economic prosperity.

Citing economic forecasts, state leaders have said that about 500,000 jobs will be created in Virginia by 2022. In addition, 930,000 workers will be needed to replace Virginia’s retiring workers.

Veterans could help fill these new jobs and replace workers who are retiring.

During the next three years, an estimated 30,000 military personnel now serving in Virginia are expected to transition to civilian life. Thousands more who have served in Virginia at some time might be interested in returning and putting down roots, if employment opportunities exist.

Those dynamics have set the stage for a potential windfall of new workers. State officials say the tide of veterans moving into the civilian workforce would not only help fill jobs but also entice businesses to locate in Virginia.

“No matter how many tax incentives you give to a company, they’re not going to come to Virginia unless it has a good workforce,” says Andrew Schwartz, a veteran with 12 years’ service who served as a patrol leader in Ramadi, Iraq, with the 2nd Marine Division.

Schwartz heads the Virginia Values Veterans (V3) program. V3 is a free training and certification program for employers, designed to help them implement best practices in recruiting, hiring and retaining highly skilled veterans.

John Newby, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Veterans Services, says many states have programs to help veterans transition into civilian life and find a job. Virginia has that, too, he says.

“But Virginia was the first state to approach this issue from the employers’ side,” Newby adds. “We said, ‘Hey, we need to help employers hire and retain veterans.’ ”

From the outset, V3 was hailed as an economic development program, rather than a jobs program. V3 has experienced huge growth since its founding in 2012 when representatives from  more than 50 companies came to its first conference.

Today, about 300 companies have joined the effort, becoming V3-certified and hiring more than 16,000 veterans in recent years. Another 200 companies are undergoing V3 training.

Schwartz says one of the biggest challenges facing transitioning veterans and prospective employers is communication. “You really are entering into a foreign culture when you pass from the military world to the civilian world,” he says.

Schwartz explains that many service members do not elaborate on the full breadth of their training and experience. They mistakenly assume that employers already know those details.

On the other side, Schwartz says, employers often trip over a service member’s military occupational specialty (MOS), seeing only the headline for the veteran’s job.

He has a great personal story about that.

Schwartz had been selected for officer training in the Marine Corps and was earning a bachelor’s degree in history at Old Dominion University. However, he suffered a shoulder injury during physical training and received a medical discharge.

Schwartz was fortunate to have a network of friends and associates at Old Dominion, who helped him bridge the gap between military and civilian life.

In the Marine Corps, he had built databases, performed a variety of administrative duties, been project manager on numerous tasks and served in a variety of leadership positions.

But Schwartz says that if a prospective employer looked solely at his military occupational specialty, he might have had a turbulent transition into civilian life. His MOS: clarinet player.

“It doesn’t take into account all the leadership training you gained in the military, all the collateral duties you had in the military, all the program management experience you had in the military,” Schwartz says.

He, for example, led dozens of combat patrols in Ramadi, Iraq., His unit was deployed as an infantry platoon, performing perimeter and interior security, conducting combat patrols and serving as a quick-reaction force. “Every Marine a rifleman,” he notes, quoting the Marine slogan.

Schwartz had no plans to be a professional musician after his military career, and that situation is not unique.  Up to a third of service members moving into civilian jobs are not interested in continuing the jobs they handled in the military. They want to try something new.

Schwartz, who today uses his musical talents to play the organ at his church, says that if he can move from being a Marine Corps musician to running a state government program, then he can help other veterans make successful transitions, too. 

Schwartz credits former Gov. Bob McDonnell, an Army veteran, with being a driving force behind the V3 program, starting in late 2010. He says McDonnell feared that, with the military downsizing and the economy still recovering from a crippling recession, transitioning veterans might face a hard time finding jobs in the civilian workforce.

As part of his efforts, McDonnell charged the Virginia Department of Veterans Services with finding ways to head off the problem. Veterans Services reported back that, while the military had programs for service members moving into civilian life, there was no program on the other side of the equation for potential employers.

“There was nothing to educate civilians — especially employers — on what a veteran is, what their culture is, what their mindset is, and how can they be an asset to [their] organizations,” Schwartz says.

Hiring veterans is a nonpartisan issue, Schwartz emphasizes, pointing out that McDonnell, a Republican, and McAuliffe, a Democrat, both have been enthusiastic boosters of V3 and the Veterans Transition Assistance Program, which aids veterans as they leave the service.

Virginia’s veterans have a strong appetite for work. “Virginia has the highest per-capita labor participation rate among veterans in the nation. Seventy percent of veterans are working or looking for work,” Schwartz says.

During 2009-2014, Virginia added 80,000 veterans to its civilian workforce, a number that state officials say is higher than the combined results of all other states.

Virginia has tried to make it easy for companies to become V3-certified and veteran friendly. V3 training is free, as is state certification and recertification.

The training includes best practices for companies to use in recruiting, hiring and training veterans. These recommended procedures include having human resources staff identify how certain military skills might meet the company’s needs and reviewing job descriptions to ensure that they can be easily understood by veterans.

Discussions about the biggest obstacles to hiring veterans also are part of the training for companies seeking the V3 certification.

Among those obstacles is overcoming “veteran myths” regarding post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says that PTSD —  which can occur after exposure to traumatic or stressful events — occurs in 11 to 20 percent of the veterans involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (the global war on terrorism) and in 30 percent of Vietnam veterans.  About 7 to 8 percent of the general population will have PTSD sometime in their lifetimes.

“You are 17 times more likely to hire a civilian with PTSD than you are a veteran,” Schwartz says, referencing other findings.

He says that one of the biggest values V3 provides to companies is providing a pipeline of veterans that they can consider.

Last year, the Virginia General Assembly created a program under which companies with 300 or fewer employees can qualify for grants to assist in hiring and retaining veterans. Because funding is limited, the grants are available on a first-come, first-served basis. “It’s to help these small businesses with just a little bit more incentive to think outside the box and get them to hire veterans,” Schwartz says.

V3 employers may apply for a $1,000 grant for each veteran that they have hired and retained for one year, up to a maximum of $10,000 per company per year.  Veterans must have been out of the military for one year or less when hired and must be paid at least the prevailing average wage for the locality in which they work.

Cape Henry Associates, a service-disabled, veteran-owned small business in Virginia Beach, was one of the first grant recipients. Cape Henry Associates provides the military with professional services, including training and manpower analysis. About 75 percent of its employees are veterans, with about 45 percent being disabled vets.

The company, started in 2004 with three employees, now has about 150 employees, a company spokeswoman says.

“We hire a lot of Navy subject-matter experts. People who have done it in the military are the best candidates for our services.  It gives us a competitive edge because they are the experts in their field,” says Dawn Dikun, a Navy veteran,  who is Cape Henry Associates’ human resources director.

Dikun says some of the company’s employees retired from the military service on one day and reported for work at the company the next day.

In March, Cape Henry Associates and five other companies were awarded a nearly $152 million contract to provide curriculum analyses and planning services for the Naval Education Training Command’s Naval Training Products and Services Program.

Another company that has hired many veterans is Dynamic Aviation Group in Bridgewater. It has about 600 aviation employees worldwide, with veterans representing 20 to 25 percent of the workforce.

Before becoming involved with V3, human resources director Joel Shank says, the company largely relied on word of mouth in recruiting veterans. “V3 helped us get more structure,” Shank says. Now the company has a more focused approach in finding and recruiting veterans.

While small companies such as Cape Henry Associates and Dynamic Aviation are part of the V3 story, so are large companies such as Norfolk-based Sentara Healthcare. It has more than 28,000 employees and a network of 12 hospitals.

Terry Bond, a Sentara recruitment specialist, is a 23-year Navy veteran, who worked in cryptology, the creation and deciphering of messages in secret code.

Bond says that, like many veterans, he had to further his education (obtaining training in human resources) in making the move to civilian life.

When he’s interviewing veterans, he also looks at the background of their spouses, who also might make good candidates for jobs at Sentara.

Bond says many veterans he has talked with have never considered health care as a second career because they’re not doctors or nurses. “Some can’t stand the sight of blood,” Bond says with a laugh. “But there are as many jobs in health care as there are in a big city: accounting, finance, distribution. There are a lot of transferable skills.”

As a V3-certified company, Sentara has an opportunity to connect with a large number of veterans who eventually may find employment in the health-care field.
At any given time, Bond says, Sentara has nearly a thousand jobs posted.

Goochland County-based CarMax, the nation’s largest retailer of used cars, is a V3-certified company that also supports other veteran-oriented endeavors.

In April, the company announced that it was pledging $1.4 million to provide career opportunities and community support to military veterans and their families.

CarMax has committed:  $100,000 to the Hiring Our Heroes effort; $300,000 during the next two years to The Mission Continues, a national nonprofit that helps veterans adjust to life at home through projects that impact their communities; and $1 million to KaBoom, a program funding playgrounds and other projects in military communities.

Schwartz of V3 says the military hiring program is, at its core, all about helping veterans find jobs and helping companies find talent. “It’s not just the patriotic thing to do,” Schwartz says. “Hiring veterans based on their knowledge, skills and abilities they learned in the military is a good business decision.”

RELATED STORIES

Monster employment effort: Technology council program is aimed at finding talent, by Gary Robertson

Deliberate strategy: Dominion puts extra effort into hiring veterans, by Gary Robertson

A journey of persistence: Combat veteran learns the ropes in a corporate world, by Gary Robertson

Deepening the applicant pool: Security clearances help small business compete for contracts, by Gary Robertson

List of Virginia Values Veterans (V3) certified companies

Monster employment effort

Technology jobs, some with high-pay potential, are among the most sought after in the commonwealth, and Northern Virginia is the state’s technology hub.

The Herndon-based Northern Virginia Technology Council, the largest regional tech group in the U.S., wants qualified veterans to know — please apply.

Since 2013, the council has led an innovative business-driven Veterans Employment Initiative (VEI). The program is designed to help veterans find jobs and to assist technology companies in filling vacancies with veterans who are already qualified or can be trained.

Seven hundred  to 1,000 service members from military bases and installations in the D.C. area transition into civilian life every month. That tide of veterans is not going to get any smaller, says Steve Jordon, VEI’s program manager.
“Companies need talent, and this provides another recourse,” says Jordon, a former Navy captain who retired after 30 years of service.

Stephen Fuller of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis has forecast that during the current decade (ending in 2020), 41 percent of the more than 124,000 new jobs in Northern Virginia will be created in the professional, scientific and technical-services sectors.

The technology council says that finding qualified employees for those new jobs is difficult, adding that workforce development is one of the biggest long-term challenges facing the industry.

The council and Monster.com, one of the most visited employment websites in the world, have formed an online community. It includes a vast, searchable database of jobs at council member firms.

Every council member — about 1,000 companies — can post jobs for free on NoVaTechVets.org and related sites. They also can access Monster’s database of thousands of veterans’ résumés.

NoVaTechVets.org also has “a military skills translator” that can help veterans match their skills with civilian jobs.

Other tools on the site help vets build their résumés and review opportunities for further education. All of these features are designed to help veterans make the sometimes bumpy transition to the civilian workforce a little smoother.

Jordon says that VEI and Virginia Values Veterans began about the same time, and they have close links. “We’re mutually supportive,” he says. “It’s a symbiotic relationship.”

Tech council companies that also are V3-certified have reported hiring 4,000 veterans since VEI began.

But Jordon says that number probably underestimates the number of veterans who have actually found employment, because not every company is V3-certified and reports its hires.

A series of special events established by VEI is called “recruiting days.”

Unlike traditional job fairs where applicants looking for jobs circulate between tables, recruiting days allow employers to pre-screen veterans’ résumés before speaking with them in small groups.

Jordon says an applicant can get up to 20 minutes of face time with a potential employer. “Career speed-dating,” he says.

To aid companies, monthly VEI webinars also provide tips on best practices in hiring, training and retaining veterans.

Although Jordon describes the VEI as “philanthropic and patriotic,” that’s not the bottom line.

“At the end of the day, the decision to bring a veteran on board is a business decision,” he says.

Deliberate strategy

One out of every five new hires at Richmond-based energy company Dominion Resources is a veteran. That’s not by chance.

Dominion, a V3-cerfitied company with 15,000 workers in more than half a dozen states, has a deliberate strategy for attracting qualified veterans.

One element in Dominion’s efforts is a sophisticated website, troopstoenergyjobs.com, that it spent several years developing and testing in conjunction with other energy companies.

Saddiq Holliday, a staffing specialist and military programs coordinator for Dominion, says the website — which is continually being tweaked — tries to make it as simple as possible for veterans to find jobs.

“Now when we launch specific jobs, we put military occupation codes on certain jobs that we know fit right with the military. So veterans can look at a job posting, and they can see this MOS [military occupational specialty] on the job posting, and they can say, ‘That’s for me,’” says Holliday, a veteran who is an aircraft technician with the Air National Guard.

He says that most job descriptions are stripped of industry jargon and are written in ways that veterans can easily understand.

The website also helps veterans determine whether they need more education and training to be eligible for certain jobs. If so, there are tips about getting financial help and finding the right school. There’s also a virtual career coach for online help.

In seeking qualified veterans, Dominion representatives rely on everything from holding career fairs to soliciting recommendations from other veterans.

Company representatives also go to military installations and work with transitioning officers, so they can better prepare veterans leaving the military about what to expect.

“We’re finding that, if veterans who are looking for jobs have a better idea how to align their skills and education with what we’re looking for, they’re a lot more competitive in their job search,” Holliday says.

Daisy Pridgen, a media relations representative for Dominion, says veterans who are transitioning into the civilian workforce sometimes think only about linemen in reference to energy jobs.

But Pridgen says “the people who keep the lights on are backed up by a whole range of corporate functions from IT to accounting” and all things in between.

In March, the energy company staged its first Dominion-only job fair at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk. Dominion had an immediate need for veterans who had a background in nuclear operations. More than 200 veterans with related experience showed up, and Dominion was able to identify those who could start work almost immediately.

Holliday says that although good job candidates can come from any walk of life, qualified applicants who have served in the military tend to have core values that dovetail with Dominion’s.

“We come ready to work every single day with the mindset that we’re going to do the job safe, that we’re going to have good pre-job briefings on everything we do, and that there is going to be a wingman or buddy looking out for the person next us,” Holliday says.
Although Dominion has been working with the Virginia Values Veterans program since 2012, it has been recruiting transitioning military personnel for much longer than that. “We’ve been hiring veterans for a hundred years,” Holliday says.

A journey of persistence

Matt Adams was a Marine rifleman in Iraq.

He was a machine gunner in Afghanistan.

Today, he’s a Dominion Resources employee.

For Adams, a 32-year-old Suffolk resident, it has been a long climb from dodging bullets in two American wars to a suit-and-tie position with a major energy company.

He is part of a stepped-up effort by Dominion and other Virginia-based companies, to employ qualified veterans.

Adams has been with Dominion since May 2012, soon after his deployment to Afghanistan ended.

His has been a journey of persistence and opportunity.

Today, he is an energy assistance outreach administrator, talking with various groups and individuals and providing customer service over a range of Dominion’s offerings.

He first applied to Dominion through its Troops to Energy Jobs program. But he didn’t have a lock on a job just because he was a veteran.

“First time I applied, I didn’t get the position. I applied for the security forces at [a] power station,” says Adams, who had been working with a construction company building bridges.

Then he applied to be a groundsman, who helps with line workers. He made it through a phone interview, and everything seemed to be going well. Then, an existing Dominion employee did an internal transfer and took the job.

“They were taking care of their own, and I respected that,” he says.

Adams finally got an entry-level position, and in 2014 he started taking courses toward an associate degree in business administration at Tidewater Community College. He hopes to graduate in December.

As a Marine reservist, Adams, who is married with three children, says he is sometimes activated for temporary duty assignments and other obligations with his unit.

He says that, when he is on active duty, Dominion makes up the difference between his military pay and what he earns at the company.

As a Reserve staff sergeant, Adams has commanded up to 30 Marines, often under very difficult circumstances.

He says it’s important for him to remember to not be authoritative in his civilian job, because military culture and corporate life are so different.

Adams also is careful about what he says about his combat experiences. People with no exposure in frontline combat often don’t understand what he has seen.

“It’s not like I’m trying to censor myself,” he says. “It’s just out of respect for those who may not have similar viewpoints. The company wants to have a diverse but inclusive environment.”

Deepening the applicant pool

Carol Cornman is not a veteran. But her father was, and she says his work ethic helped mold hers.

So, it was not a big leap for her to decide to implement a program, From Deployment to Employment, in 2013 when she heard the difficulty veterans were having getting jobs once they completed their military service.

As executive vice president and a founder of Prism, a Reston-based IT services company focused on technological innovation, cybersecurity and modernization, she was in a position to put her inspiration into practice.

“Our program has been highly successful,” Cornman says. “Currently, about 13 percent of our workforce are veterans, and we’ve employed more than 75 veterans since we started our program in November 2013.”

Prism competes in a highly competitive market for government contracts and other work. Although she didn’t wish to disclose the number of employees the company has, Cornman says it is a certified small business.

Its program to hire veterans helps the company widen its pool of prospective employees, Cornman says.

A plus in hiring veterans, she adds, is that many of those coming out of the military already have active security clearances. Those clearances help enormously in competing for government contracts where classified information needs to be protected.

“Many of the [veterans] we have understand the missions of the different contracts we employ them on,” she says, adding veterans also have a wide range of experiences with various government agencies.

She says Prism has an equally wide range of jobs, from “stepping-stone positions” to those with more senior-level technical skills.

Prism finds the veterans with the skill sets it needs through a variety of means: career fairs and references from other veterans, as well as the Virginia Values Veterans (V3) program.

Russ Madison, a recently hired veteran at Prism, spent 20 years in the Air Force, working at various posts, including embassies. His assignments ranged from sophisticated communications to anti-terrorism protection. He said those skills have been assets in his current position, although he would not go into detail about what his current duties are.

“I spent 17 years out of 20 years overseas,” Madison said, explaining that he had an urge to travel and see the world, and the military accommodated him.

But when it came time for him to retire and re-enter civilian life, Madison found that working overseas so many years made the transition more difficult because he didn’t have a lot of stateside connections.

His wife suggested that they relocate to the Washington, D.C., area, home to a lot of government contracting firms where he might put his military skills to work.

Madison says he strived aggressively to find a job by attending as many career fairs as he could, and it was at a career fair that Prism found him.

“They looked at my résumé, and they had some positions and they saw some similarities. It’s been a good opportunity for me,” he says.

Madison urges veterans who are preparing to enter civilian life to do a lot of planning. They should not trust to luck that they’ll be able to find a job.

“I would say get as many degrees and certifications as you can before you get out. Have a backup plan and think about a worse-case scenario,” Madison says.

Madison says he’s proud to have served his country. He says walking through Arlington Cemetery makes him realize the sacrifices that military personnel, generations of them, have made for the country.

Cornman says her company, and many others like it, are doing what they can to ensure that veterans can make a dignified return to civilian life with a good job waiting for them.
“We have a passion for the mission,” Cornman says.

Redefining college ties

“At Sweet Briar, The Impossible Is Just Another Problem To Solve”
                                           — posted on a sign at Sweet Briar College

Phillip C. Stone was working at his Harrisonburg law office in March 2015 when he learned that Sweet Briar College, a 115-year-old women’s college in Amherst County, planned to close because of what its administration and board described as “insurmountable financial challenges.”

He was shocked and saddened by the news. A firm believer in the value of a liberal-arts education, Stone was president of Bridgewater College for 16 years before he retired in 2010. The prospect of Sweet Briar’s closure rang like a death knell for a family member.

He also was surprised to hear Sweet Briar’s alumnae were starting a movement to save the college.  “I wouldn’t have given you a nickel for their chances at success,” he says.

Nonetheless, a friend in higher education whom Stone had known for years suggested that he could assist the alumnae in an advisory role. Stone agreed to help because, as a Virginian, he values the state’s great landmarks and the kind of education that young women receive at Sweet Briar. “I took seriously my offer to come and help. But I did think it was a long shot,” he says.

The long shot, however, paid off. After a flurry of lawsuits, a hard-won settlement permitted the college to remain open, under a new board and a new president, Stone.

The school’s financial position was bolstered by  $12 million in cash donations raised by alumnae in over 100 days, with overall pledges totaling $28.5 million, to be paid over several years. Fundraisers had assured donors that, if they were not successful in getting the keys to the college, the donors would not have to fulfill their pledges.

“To actually pull it off in litigation, with terms that were favorable to them, was a shocker. To raise the money they raised, it was amazing,” Stone says of the alumnae.

By the time he became president of the school in July 2015, many of Sweet Briar’s students already had left for other colleges, and every faculty and staff member had been terminated on June 30, except those absolutely necessary to effectuate the closing. Stone rehired everyone in a posting on the college’s website.

Nearly a year later, he says, “I’ve never experienced a more successful academic year in my life. Ours has been a remarkable journey of human exceptionalism and perseverance.”

New president next year
The journey is not over, but the 73-year-old Stone soon will be leaving. He announced in late April that he would step down around July 1 next year after a successor is chosen.

Stone says he always knew that his role in helping to revive the college would not be a long-term assignment.  His wife’s health and his age contributed to his decision to retire along with the achievement of financial and enrollment milestones during the past year that have exceeded  initial expectations.

Until he steps down, Stone says, he will continue to be heavily engaged in raising money and recruiting students.

Higher-education officials from across the nation have told Stone that what Sweet Briar has accomplished — in reversing an impending closure — has been historic, if not miraculous, and will be studied for years.

The Sweet Briar president says that one lesson for him has already emerged: A college must change if its graduates revise the relationship they have with the school.

In Sweet Briar’s case, alumnae took over fundraising, acquired legal counsel, recruited students and even performed many maintenance chores.

In return, Stone says, the college needs to provide its alums with an ongoing abundance of information about all aspects of the college’s operations, its finances, its budget, student recruiting and the like.

“I would expect this robust engagement of alumnae to continue.  I would expect to see volunteer work days,” he says, referring to the surge of alumnae who descended on the college’s campus last summer to paint classrooms, clean buildings and perform a wide range of landscaping chores.

Stone says he once stepped out of his office and found an alumna, a medical school professor, weeding a flower bed. That level of passion and can-do spirit, he says, has become a defining element of the Sweet Briar experience.

A compelling message
Stone has instructed admissions officers to bring every prospective student to him, whether he is in his office, in a meeting or somewhere else on campus. He wants to say hello and encourage prospects to enroll.

Stone believes Sweet Briar has a compelling message to deliver to any student considering the school. “What we are now able to say to young women who are taking a look at us is: Have you seen what the women of Sweet Briar did? Don’t you agree that that represents extraordinary leadership? If you want to be like that, you have to come here to get it.”

He is repelled by naysayers who even now believe Sweet Briar doesn’t have a chance to survive. “Give me a break,” Stone says. “Colleges have faced hard circumstances before. Why are we so wimpish about stuff like this? Let’s have the courage to do the things that are pretty obvious to make it work right.”

The future of Sweet Briar, Stone acknowledges, relies very much on  numbers: more enrolled students and more donations from alumnae and supporters.

According to the college’s 2014-15 fact sheet, the degree-seeking undergraduate enrollment last year at Sweet Briar was 561.  This year, it was 236, a 58 percent drop. The freshman class had only 24 students.

Aiming for 800 students
Stone hopes to have 200 new students  this fall, including freshmen and transfers. Sweet Briar had received deposits from about 125 students by May 1, but more continued to come in after that “soft” deadline. 

“It will take us about three years to get us back to the place where we were,” Stone says, referring to the enrollment at the time of the closing announcement.

In its recent history, the college’s high mark for student enrollment came in 2008, when 647 students were on campus.

Sweet Briar this year received a record number of applications, nearly 1,400, officials report.

To remain financially stable long-term, Stone says, Sweet Briar will eventually need 800 students. He says the space and facilities for that many students mostly exists already.

A renovated and expanded library opened in 2014, for example, and a new fitness and athletic center opened several years earlier, along with eco-friendly residential facilities. An $11 million bond issue in 2008 helped finance the fitness center and the new residence halls.

Sweet Briar’s tuition for the 2016-17 school year is set at $35,800; with room and board and various fees, the total cost of attendance will be $49,060. The school recently was named to Forbes 2016 lists of Best Value Schools and Best Value Private Colleges.

First-year students last fall received an average grant or scholarship totaling $21,032, with all degree-seeking undergraduates receiving an average of $20,052. Similar aid is expected this year, college officials say.

Not a face in a crowd
Amelia Currin, a 19-year-old freshman from Coats, N.C., says Sweet Briar’s small classes and the mentoring provided by its professors encouraged her to enroll last year, a time that could not have been more precarious.

“A lot of people still ask me, ‘What if the school closes, what will you do?’ And I always answer the same way: It’s not going to close. I don’t have to think about what I’m going to do,’” Currin says.

She says that at Sweet Briar she’s not just another face in the crowd, as she would be at a large university. With small classes, she says, everyone has a chance to participate. “Here, the professors say ‘We want to hear your voice,’” Currin says.

Katie Craig, a 22-year-old senior from Fredericksburg, says Sweet Briar’s willingness to meld her interests into a customized program sold her on the school.

“Business major, dance minor,” Craig says. “I’m incredibly happy with all the experiences I’ve had at Sweet Briar. It’s helped me grow so much as a person.”

Craig, who is Sweet Briar’s student government president, says she learned about tenacity, resilience, loyalty and sisterhood at the women’s college.

“It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the alumnae bound together and saved it. The ties are so great,” says Craig, who planned to take a job with a major insurance company after graduation.

$10 million by June 30
Stone says the aborted effort to close Sweet Briar cost the college approximately $40 million in economic damage. Included in those costs is lost tuition from students who transferred and others who were deterred from enrolling because of the uncertainty.

Legal fees, $5 million in severance for faculty and staff, as well as the expense of repurchasing seven faculty homes, under a contractual arrangement, added to the financial burden.

Sweet Briar has a goal of raising an additional $10 million by June 30, the end of its current fiscal year. In late April, the college’s governing board reported that more than $6 million had been raised to that point.

Overall, the college wants to raise $30 million in its “Next is Now” fundraising campaign to carry it through the next few years as it recovers from the attempted closure, rebuilds its faculty and staff, and implements business and enrollment plans.

Among other initiatives, development officials and Stone are asking the college’s biggest donors for major gifts of $1 million each. In addition, those who made pledges in the Saving Sweet Briar campaign will be asked to accelerate payment of their pledges. “Pay them early — get them in this year,” Stone says.

The college is looking for every possible revenue source, including reviving the sale of hay on its 3,250-acre campus — once a standard practice — and renting rooms to travelers, wedding parties and others at its on-campus hotel.

Under the settlement agreement that kept Sweet Briar open, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring freed $16 million in unrestricted funds from the college’s endowment to use for operational expenses. College officials had no plans to tap those funds during this fiscal year.

As of March 31, total value of Sweet Briar’s endowment was $74.5 million, including about $7 million in a perpetual trust that is held apart from the endowment. The trust provides an annual income to the college.

By comparison, the endowment total was $77.4 million at the end of last year and $94 million at end of 2014, according the school.

A Moody’s Investor Service report issued in April last year noted that Sweet Briar had operating revenue of only $27 million in fiscal year 2014, the lowest of 14 women’s colleges it follows. Moody’s said the school relied upon unrestricted funds from its endowment to help it meet operating deficits for at least six fiscal years,  2009-14.

Sweet Briar’s goal is to limit annual spending from unrestricted funds to no more than 5 percent of the endowment’s total value. That spending rate, however, averaged 8.7 percent from 2011-14 and hit 9.4 percent, $8.5 million, in 2014, according to court documents filed during litigation over the school’s closing.

Stone says the school incurred many additional costs last year as a result of the aborted effort to close it.

Nonetheless, because of the closure scare, Sweet Briar has been able to negotiate new contracts with vendors on more attractive terms to the college, Stone says. This year, the college also shaved expenses by not contributing to the faculty’s retirement plan, a move that saved half a million dollars. “That’s a painful thing,” Stone says. “But the faculty knew we had to do some things.”

Alums fill vacancies
Megan Behrle, 28, is among a number of Sweet Briar alumnae who stepped away from their jobs to help the college. In Behrle’s case, she left a position with the International Monetary Fund to become the college’s interim lacrosse coach.

She says that like many alumnae she wanted to give back to a college that had helped shape her life. “At the end of the day, empowering young women is something I’m incredibly passionate about,” Behrle says.

Perhaps no one has done more to mobilize fundraising at Sweet Briar than Mary Pope Maybank Hutson, class of ’83, who left a job as executive vice president of the Land Trust Alliance in Washington, D.C., a national land conservation organization, to lead a major donor task force.

“We mobilized immediately to organize ourselves in what many of us, having spent 20 or 30 years in the working world, or in the volunteer world, knew we needed to do,” Hutson says. “It was a multifaceted approach that included communications, legal leadership and fundraising leadership.”

She says Alexander Haas, a capital campaign consulting firm in Atlanta, donated 90 days to being the alumnae organization’s back office counsel.

Meanwhile, a core of professional fundraisers, public relations executives and web graphic designers and internet marketers were drawn from the ranks of alumnae, and satellite fundraising offices were established in every state and in foreign countries where alumnae lived.

Alumnae also recruited students. Hutson says the college had not had a dean of enrollment for two years before its closing announcement.

“As soon as we were able to regain the keys to the college in June, we trained over 450 alumnae through our office, the alumnae relations office and the enrollment office, to go out to college fairs, high schools and tell the story of Sweet Briar College,” says Hutson, now the college’s vice president of alumnae relations and development.

Stacey Sickels Locke, a senior director of development at the University of Maryland and a Sweet Briar alumna, says fundraisers had no access to the college’s alumnae records or to annual giving or major gift data, as the former administration moved toward a path of closure.

Alumnae created donor lists using donor honor rolls from past issues of the alumnae magazine, and the daughter of a former catering department employee found a seating chart from a fundraising campaign dinner and entered those names onto a spreadsheet.

The internet was a godsend, Locke says, allowing alumnae to set up a hub for strategic planning and a portal for keeping alumnae informed about legal updates, news coverage, fundraising progress and the like.

“People respond to urgency and they respond to truth,” Locke says, noting one of her main takeaways from Saving Sweet Briar effort.

If any single moment can be remembered from Sweet Briar College’s year of tumult, it might be last year’s commencement address by Teresa Pike Tomlinson, the mayor of Columbus, Ga., and now chair of the college’s board of directors.

Addressing what many thought would be the college’s last graduating class, Tomlinson inspired the students  with a call to leadership in the face of what many perceived to be a hopeless cause — saving Sweet Briar.

Reflecting on her speech, and on the actions of alumnae and supporters of Sweet Briar since then, Tomlinson says one lesson of leadership has emerged.

“Giving up is always on the table,” Tomlinson says. “Effective leaders, however, are defined by those that do not choose it. They choose to persevere.”

Training female executives

Twenty years ago, there were no female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies. Today, there are 22, 4.4 percent of the total. About the same percentage lead S&P 500 companies. So, at best, the journey of women to the C-Suite has edged forward at a glacial pace.

A  Pew Research Center study published a year ago found that Americans believe women are not moving into senior executive positions at a faster rate because they are being held to a higher standard. Women have to do more than their male counterparts to prove their leadership capabilities, the study suggests.

Maybe that’s why more executive education programs are making more room for leadership training for women.

Melissa Thomas-Hunt, senior associate dean and global chief diversity officer at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, says more women are becoming interested in honing their leadership skills and so are the companies that employ them.

“The big trend I’ve noticed at Darden and around the globe is the demand for women’s leadership programs. There were few of them 10 years ago … [But] today, companies need all the talent they can find. They are looking for the absolute best talent,” she says.

Darden offers the Women’s Leadership Program, a short course, through the school’s executive education program. The course is designed for female executives and women with management responsibilities.

Thomas-Hunt says that efforts to recruit and retain women in top positions, especially in technology companies, have reached a critical stage. Tech companies are concerned about the relatively low number of women entering, or staying, in the field, she says.

Asking for help
Rosanna Koppelmann, executive director of the Center for Corporate Education at the College of William & Mary’s Mason School of Business, says that — for the first time in her decadelong tenure at the school — a company recently asked her to put together a leadership program for women employees.

“The CEO/president saw this as an important strategic, capital-development piece. They’re really trying to develop [talent among] women in their workforce,” Koppelmann says.

In Mason’s executive education programs, she adds, instructors don’t distinguish between the leadership roles  of men and women. Instead, the process focuses on identifying and cultivating leadership characteristics and helping companies develop good leaders.

Koppelmann encourages women to look at their professional goals in a much more intentional manner rather than seeing a move into upper management as a matter of happenstance.

She laughs in recalling high-level discussions about plans for Miller Hall, the Mason School’s home, which was completed in 2009. The design called for a baby room for nursing mothers.

Koppelmann says some of the men involved in the project drew a blank when they saw “baby room.” They wanted to know, “What do we do with that?”
She uses the story to illustrate the importance of women’s input in leadership decisions. “You’re not going to have the right conversation if the diversity isn’t there,” she says.

Few female deans
Mary Gowan knows what it’s like to be one of the few women leading an organization in certain fields. When she was named the head of James Madison University’s College of Business in 2013, she was only the third female dean among the nation’s 15 top public undergraduate business schools.

Gowan still notices the absence of women in the audience when business school deans gather. During the 2014-15 academic year, only 19.9 percent of business school deans were women, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

Ironically, that percentage fails to reflect the rising number of women in business. In 2013, women held 52 percent of managerial and professional occupations in the U.S., a jump from about 31 percent in 1968, according to Pew research.

Gowan has extensive consulting and executive education experience with private and public organizations in the areas of leadership, human resources management and organizational behavior. She says male executives are sometimes not sure how to deal with the increasing number of women in management.

As a consultant, she once coached a male executive on how to address female leaders in his company. “He said if [the executive] was a male, he would know how to respond,” Gowan says. But in dealing with women, he was concerned about making missteps.

The JMU dean says because, achieving leadership positions still represents a challenge for women, the College of Business is doing what it can to help. Three years ago, it started a conference focused on women in leadership.

“We bring alums back to participate, to empower women to think about their future. And encourage them to lean in,” accepting leadership opportunities when they present themselves, even if the challenges seem huge, Gowan says.

In a changing workplace where some women are breaking through to high executive positions, Gowan notes that traditional relationships between spouses also are changing. “I have seen a lot of successful women whose [husbands have paused] their careers to help their wives,” Gowan says.

Changing an attitude
Jenifer Alonzo, an associate professor of communication and theater arts at Old Dominion University, often conducts executive education workshops to help businesspeople learn how to better manage teams.

She says many women attend her programs because they want to empower themselves in the workplace. “Women are more susceptible to thinking less of themselves,” Alonzo says, and a change of attitude can lead to a better job.

She teaches women executives and managers — and those aspiring to such positions — techniques that can help them navigate a communications code that they may not even be aware of.

For example, Alonzo says, women often sit on the perimeter of a group, not positioning themselves among influencers who can help them. And women have a tendency not to make as much eye contact as they need to. “It is a difficult thing for women to unpack how they should present themselves,” she adds.

While women are making leadership gains in the business world, the Darden School’s Thomas-Hunt says female managers and executives sometimes fall short advocating their own career advancement. “Women on average feel less comfortable entering into a negotiation when they are negotiating for themselves,” she says.
New executive education leadership programs now in the works at many universities may help bolster their confidence.