Dominion Resources has officially changed its name to Dominion Energy Inc.
The Richmond-based energy company announced Wednesday that its shareholders had approved the change.
A new logo also takes effect today. Dominion’s three operating segments will change. Dominion Virginia Power will now be known as Power Delivery Group, Dominion Generation will be known as Power Generation Group and Dominion Energy will be called Gas Infrastructure Group.
Dominion Energy shares will continue to be traded under the ticker symbol “D.”
IR Engraving announced Wednesday it will expand its operations in Henrico Conty, creating 22 jobs.
The company plans to spend $850,000 on the expansion.
IR Engraving designs and builds engraved rolls and plates, gravure rolls and custom machinery.
“We are excited at the opportunities available since we acquired the business from Standex last summer, returning the company to its privately-held roots,” IR Engraving President Matthew Pursel said in a statement. “Now, as an entrepreneurial business with 100 employees… we are once again poised to aggressively grow with our customers.”
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership will support the company’s expansion through the Virginia Jobs Investment Program, which provides consulting and funding to companies creating new jobs or retraining companies on new technology.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s board of trustees has elected three new trustees.
They are: Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO and candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination; Joseph W. Montgomery, managing director of The Optimal Service Group of Wells Fargo Advisors; and Gerald L. Shaheen, retired group president of Caterpillar Inc.
At Hewlett-Packard Fiorina was the first woman to lead a Fortune top-20 company after rising from an entry-level position at AT&T to become that company’s first female officer. She led AT&T’s spin-off of its manufacturing arm as Lucent Technologies, then oversaw Lucent’s North American operations. In addition to her presidential run in 2016, she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010.
Fiorina also served as chair of Good360, the world’s largest products philanthropy, as chair of the CIA External Advisory Board and on the Pentagon’s Defense Business Board. She has also served on James Madison University’s board of visitors and as a trustee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Montgomery is a College of William & Mary alumnus, who joined his Williamsburg firm’s predecessor, Wheat First Securities, in 1975 and has been named to top nationwide adviser lists by the Financial Times, Barron’s, Worth, Registered Representative and Forbes. His firm specializes in services for high net-worth individuals, institutions and corporations.
Montgomery is a trustee of the Virginia Retirement System, a director of the Virginia Capitol Foundation, a director of the Future of Hampton Roads Inc., a Randolph associate of the Dean’s Circle of the William & Mary School of Business and a member of the William & Mary President’s Council.
He previously served on the William & Mary board of visitors, the Colonial Williamsburg National Advisory Council, as president of the William & Mary Alumni Association, as vice president of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s board of directors, as a director of the Williamsburg Community Hospital, as a trustee of Hampton Roads Academy and the Greater Williamsburg Community Trust.
Shaheen was responsible for the design, development, and production of Caterpillar’s large construction and mining equipment, as well as the company’s U.S. operations division. He also oversaw its marketing and sales operations in North America, its components business, and its research and development division. During his 41 years with the company, he held numerous marketing and management positions in the United States and Europe, and at one time held responsibility for business in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.
Shaheen is a board member and past chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He also serves on the boards of Ford Motor Co. and AGCO Corp. He chairs the OSF Illinois Neurological Institute board and serves as a trustee of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society – Greater Illinois Chapter and Peoria NEXT.
He is former chairman of the Bradley University board of trustees and president of its alumni association. He also served as board member of the National Chamber Foundation, Aquila Inc. and National City Corp.
Former Delaware Gov. Jack A. Markell has been elected to Graham Holdings Co.’s board of directors.
Markell was the governor from 2009 until 2017. Before he was elected governor he served as 10 years as Delaware’s state treasurer.
Prior to his government roles, Markell held several executive leadership roles in corporate development, investor relations, strategic management and consulting with First Chicago Corp., McKinsey & Co., Comcast Corp. and Nextel.
Markell serves on the national board of directors of Jobs for America’s Graduates and as a trustee of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. He earned his undergraduate degree in economics and development studies from Brown University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Dominion announced Thursday it plans to purchase a 79-megawatt solar energy facility under construction in Anson County, N.C.
A subsidiary of the Richmond energy company agreed to purchase the facility from Cypress Creek Renewables LLC in the second quarter of 2017.
A power purchase agreement is in place for the offtake from the solar facility.
The solar facility, located on a 550-acre tract of land near Morven, N.C., is being constructed by an affiliate of Cypress Creek Renewables. About 450 workers are expected onsite during the peak of construction.
The acquisition would bring the company’s solar portfolio to 535 megawatts of solar generating capacity under development or in operation in North Carolina and Virginia. That is enough power for about 135,000 homes and businesses at peak use.
Dominion's North Carolina solar fleet also includes the 20-megawatt Morgans Corner array in Pasquotank County and the 60-megawatt Summit Farms facility in Currituck County.
The Branch Group Inc. of Roanoke has announced it has named a new CFO and senior vice president.
Robert Wills has joined Branch as CFO. Bob was most recently executive vice president and CFO of the America’s region for M&W Group.
Wills received a bachelor’s degree from Texas State University and received his MGA from Regis University in Denver.
The Branch Group also announced this week that it has promoted Melanie F. Wheeler to senior vice president and board member. She will focus on corporate and contract administration, risk management, and IT systems and development.
Wheeler has been with The Branch Group since 1994, holding several positions, including director of accounting, vice president of administration and treasurer.
The Branch Group is a construction company whose subsidiaries include: Branch & Associates, Inc., Branch Civil, Inc., and G. J. Hopkins, Inc.
Canadian Chamber of Commerce CEO Perrin Beatty was in Richmond this week promoting the country’s trade relationship with Virginia at the same time U.S. President Donald Trump launched his first attack in a potential trade war with America’s northern neighbor.
Trump on Monday announced tariffs of up to 24 percent on Canada’s softwood lumber, which is used heavily in the U.S. homebuilding industry. The announcement came a week after Trump decried unfair trade policies in Canada affecting U.S. dairy producers.
But Beatty said Wednesday that his reception in Virginia had been anything but acrimonious.
He met with Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Todd Haymore and Barry DuVal, president and CEO of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce.
Canada is Virginia’s top trade partner, with annual bilateral trade worth $4.8 billion.
“This relationship is important to Canada as well,” Beatty said. “Virginia is a destination for our investment, and our goods and services, and for about 800,000 tourists a year. It’s a win-win relationship.”
Virginia’s primary exports to Canada include tractors, paper and paperboard, plastics, paper and printing machinery, and motor vehicle parts. And Beatty sees growth opportunities in software, research and development at universities and tourism.
“It was great to see such a strong partnership between the government and business community,” says Beatty, a former Cabinet minister who also served in the Canadian Parliament. “When you talk to the governor and the secretary of commerce, they have such a good understanding of the importance of the relationship.
“When I talk to members of the Canadian business community, I’m able to say Virginia’s open to business and that this is a good place for us to be looking for sales and to purchase.”
But Beatty’s visit comes against the backdrop of several attacks from Trump over trade.
Beatty plans to visit several U.S. states this year to highlight the importance of the U.S.-Canada relationship to both economies. Visits with local and state leaders are important to highlight trade between the countries, says Beatty.
“This is the most successful trading relationship anywhere in the world, and there’s potential for us to grow considerably more,” Beatty said.
“State government and municipal governments understand what’s happening on the ground, and when they speak to members of Congress or to senators or to the president, and say, ‘Look, it’s important that we recognize what this relationship does here in this state for trade prosperity and jobs,” Beatty said.
Canada and the U.S. have long had disputes over the trade of softwood lumber and dairy products.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former President Barack Obama last year failed to reach an agreement to extend a truce on softwood lumber that effectively ended in 2016. The U.S. lumber industry says Canada unfairly subsidizes its lumber industry, which the Canadian government denies. About 30 percent of lumber used in the U.S. is imported from Canada.
Beatty points out that the U.S. National Association of Homebuilders released a statement decrying the tariffs. The association says that lumber prices in the U.S. have increased 22 percent in the first quarter of 2017 because of the expiration of the trade agreement governing lumber, adding almost $3,600 to the cost of building a new home.
As far as the dispute over dairy trade between the two countries, Canada has long had high tariffs on U.S. dairy products. The U.S. dairy industry, however, has imported ultrafiltered milk, which is used to create cheese and yogurt. A new policy change last year, however, incentivized dairy farmers to create a lower-priced industry milk, and U.S. imports sharply fell.
On that note, Beatty points out that the U.S. has a surplus of $400 million in the dairy trade. “It’s hard to understand what the benefit is of a trade war [on dairy products] when you’re running a $400 million surplus today,” Beatty says.
But beyond the lumber and dairy issues, Beatty is concerned the actions could taint the relationship as well as future negotiations regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement.
“All trade is related,” Beatty said. “It contaminates the negotiations you have on NAFTA or other bilateral issues.
“This is very different form when I was in government, and we negotiated NAFTA with Ronald Reagan,” says Beatty. “The goals was: ‘How do we make all countries succeed? The approach today seems to be somebody has to lose for somebody to win and that makes is it very difficult.’”
Trump announced Wednesday he does not plan on withdrawing from NAFTA, but said Canada, the U.S. and Mexico had agreed to enable renogtiation of the deal.
Beatty says we should be encouraging more trade between the two countries, which are natural trading partners. “It’s in the in best interest in the U.S.,” says Beatty. “As a Canadian I would far sooner do business with the U.S. than with any other country. We have the same system of laws, we follow the rule of law; we speak the same language, and we’re tied together by security.”
Vienna resident Alyssa Lehman’s youngest child is less than a year old. Nonetheless, Lehman already is armed with the confidence that her daughter would respond well to more than 20 medications.
Her daughter was born in July at Inova Fairfax Hospital, the flagship facility of Inova Health System, which likely is the first in the country to offer MediMap testing for newborns. With a simple cheek swab, Inova uses a baby’s genetics to document how that child could react to more than 20 drugs. That list includes codeine, a common pain relief drug used for children. Some children metabolize the drug too quickly, which in extreme cases can cause death.
The other drugs on the test, which range from blood thinners to antidepressants, are chosen because they have genetic markers determining how a patient will react to them. “I think it’s great to have a report that is so specific to my child,” says Lehman, a mother of three. “Usually doctors are doing a guessing game about correct dosages and whether a medication will work.”
The MediMap program is popular. More than 70 percent of mothers are electing to have their newborn babies tested, and there is no extra cost for the patient. The tests have been so successful that they are being added to obstetrics departments at other Inova hospitals.
“These kids won’t need these medicines for some time,” says Dr. John Deeken, chief operating officer of the Inova Translational Medicine Institute, a research institute charged with applying genomic and clinical research to personalized health care. “So is it necessary to do it today? No. But your genes don’t change. We think this starts the child on the right path to personalized health.”
Inova makes genetic specialists available for parents and advises them to share the test information with their pediatricians. But the science behind the test, pharmacogenomics, or PGx, is complex and barely taught at most medical schools. There also is a shortage of doctors and nurses who can interpret PGx data.
Inova wants to revolutionize health care through personalized medicine at its new Inova Center for Personalized Health (ICPH) campus in Fairfax County, but to do that, it needs more professionals well versed in the field of pharmacogenomics.
Last month, Inova and Shenandoah University announced a partnership to launch graduate-level programs in personalized medicine and other high-need fields. “I think we can hire every single person that graduates and comes through these programs,” says Todd Stottlemyer, CEO of the ICPH. “There’s a real shortage of outstanding health professionals [in the field]. The partnership allows us to capitalize on the strengths of the university to make sure we have the pipeline of outstanding talent in some areas that are relatively new.”
First occupants on campus
Notably, Shenandoah’s students and professors will be the first occupants on the ICPH campus, a symbol of the health system’s ambition to become a global destination for research and clinical care centered on personalized medicine. Inova recently bought the 117-acre property, located directly across the street from Inova Fairfax, from the Irving, Texas-based energy company Exxon Mobil. Most of the programs will begin in August.
Inova envisions the campus eventually being a place that attracts clinicians, researchers, health-care providers, students and businesses involved in personalized health. “Inova’s bringing together the very best researchers and practitioners, and imagine if you’re a student, the opportunity you have to be among those minds,” says Tracy Fitzsimmons, president of Shenandoah University. “I think the energy is going to be amazing here. These are the people who are going to define the future of health.”
The Shenandoah programs will occupy 28,000 square feet of classroom and laboratory space in the education wing of the former Exxon Mobil offices, which currently are under renovation. Inova will invest $5 million to create the programs.
ICPH also has signed partnerships with George Mason University and the University of Virginia. Those programs will focus on research, while Shenandoah’s programs will focus on teaching clinically trained professionals.
The new programs include master’s degree and postgraduate certificate programs, which are expected to have about 250 students. In addition to the new programs, Shenandoah will move the Northern Virginia campus of its Bernard J. Dunn School of Pharmacy, now in Ashburn, to ICPH.
Many students will be able to do clinical rotations at Inova facilities, including Inova Fairfax. Not only will that opportunity provide hands-on training for students, but Inova also will be able to hire practitioners already trained in its policies and procedures and applicable medicine.
“Inova has identified two things here,” says Fitzsimmons. “They’ve identified where the societal needs are emerging because of the aging population, and the second piece is that we need practitioners with new sets of skills. We just don’t have enough psychiatric nurses, genetic nurses or professionals focusing on public health.”
The new programs include both master’s degrees and postgraduate degrees in:
public health,
pharmacogenomics and precision medicine,
and, for nurse practitioners, psychiatric mental health and gerontology primary care.
Certificates in health-care information technology and patient care navigation also will be offered. The certificates in health-care IT, public health, and pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine will be offered online.
Working relationship
The Inova-Shenandoah partnership is a natural one, the institutions say. They have been working together on programs such as nursing, physical therapy and physician-assistant studies for two decades.
In addition, Shenandoah was one of the first pharmacy schools in the country to incorporate pharmacogenomics into its core curriculum, and its professors are active in PGx research, says Arthur Harralson, the associate dean for research and a professor of pharmacogenomics at the pharmacy school.
For example, the FDA adopted Shenandoah researchers’ method of assigning genotypes to Warfarin, a blood thinner used to prevent clots, strokes and heart attacks. The pharmacy school also is part of a federally funded program studying pharmacogenomics in African-American patients.
PGx is an integral part of Shenandoah’s curriculum, with students required to take four classes on the subject.
That puts Shenandoah ahead of the curve. In 2016, new national pharmacy school standards were adopted saying that PGx should be included in curricula. “We had it woven into our program long before that,” says Robert DiCenzo, who is dean of Shenandoah’s School of Pharmacy. “There are now requirements to have pharmacogenomics within pharmacy education, but many of the programs are just starting to look for ways to put that in.”
Pharmacogenomics has the potential to be a game-changer in medicine. About 10 percent of drugs have known markers that can affect a patient’s reaction to medicine, influencing its efficacy or toxicity, says Deeken with Inova.
PGx also can be used to determine the correct dosage for a patient. “I think it’s probably one of the most exciting areas of medicine today: the intersection of pharmacology and genomics and the ability to tell a healthy individual that they shouldn’t take a drug,” says Stottlemyer.
In addition to its MediMap test for infants, Inova is incorporating genetic tests for patients being treated for high cholesterol, coronary disease and psychiatric conditions, such as adolescents being treated for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Little exposure in med school
But while doctors in some areas of medicine, such as cardiology and oncology, are well versed in PGx, most primary-care doctors and pediatricians are not.
Harralson of Shenandoah University says a recent study showed that the average medical school student gets only four hours of lecture on pharmacogenomics.
That lack of education is holding the field back.
“Physician education and physician adoption [probably are two of] the reasons that the field continues to progress, but not rapidly progress,” Deeken says.
That’s where Inova and Shenandoah hope their new certificate programs will help. They will include specialized modules for practitioners in different fields. “The rate of change is exponential,” says Fitzsimmons. “That’s why it’s important not just to be training new practitioners, but as they go out into the field, to bring them back every five or 10 years.”
Stottlemyer says pharmacogenomics is revolutionizing the health-care field, giving doctors ways to prevent disease and help their patients stay healthy. “This is fundamentally about changing the human condition,” says Stottlemyer. “You have an industry that’s going through a significant disruption. Disrupting from the inside out is ambitious and not easy to do, and you’ve got to have partners that are agile, quick and entrepreneurial like Shenandoah University to help you do that.”
Cybersecurity firm Neovera Inc. announced Tuesday it had appointed Al Morisato as chief operating officer.
Morisato previously was an executive with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, serving most recently as chief operations and technology officer. He also held positions at Freddie Mac.
Morisato holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech.
Neovera, based in Reston, provides cybersecurity services and enterprise cloud solutions to clients ranging from nonprofit organizations to Fortune 500 companies.
Agritourism in Virginia had a $2.2 billion economic impact in 2015, according to a new study by the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business.
The report considered spending by visitors at 1,400 agritourism businesses in Virginia, including wineries, ranches, historical attractions and pick-your-own vegetables and fruit farms.
The study is the first of its kind to provide a benchmark report on the impact of Virginia’s agritourism sector.
The report also found that more than one-third – 35 percent – of the respondents had been open less than five years.
Key findings suggest that in 2015, agritourism:
Supported 22,000 jobs
Contributed $840 million in income
Paid $135 million in state and local taxes
The three regions attracting the most visitors included Northern Virginia, Central Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, accounting for 60 percent of total visitor spending.
Agritourism also is important in attracting out-of-town visitors. The study said that out of 7.2 million visitors, 3.2 million had traveled from farther than 50 miles to visit the sites surveyed.
The study was funded by a planning grant from the Governor’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development (AFID) fund. Financial support also came from the Virginia Tourism Corp. and the counties of Augusta, Halifax, Loudoun and Rockingham.
VIRGINIA REGION
LOCAL VISITORS
NON- LOCAL VISITORS
TOTAL VISITOR SPENDING (in millions)
Southwest Virginia/Blue Ridge Highlands
344,819
249,697
$120.00
Central Virginia
891,560
645,612
$311.3
Chesapeake Bay
111,833
80,983
$39.1
Coastal Virginia/Eastern Shore
93,194
67,486
$32.2
Coastal Virginia
410,055
296,937
$142.4
Southwest Virginia/Heart of Appalachia
55,917
40,491
$19.4
Northern Virginia
1,096,587
794,081
$383.1
Shenandoah Valley
736,236
533,136
$255.8
Southern Virginia
270,264
195,708
$94.0
Virginia Mountains
366,565
265,443
$127.5
Source: The Economic And Fiscal Impacts of Agritourism in Virginia
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Inova envisions the campus eventually being a place that attracts clinicians, researchers, health-care providers, students and businesses involved in personalized health. “Inova’s bringing together the very best researchers and practitioners, and imagine if you’re a student, the opportunity you have to be among those minds,” says Tracy Fitzsimmons, president of Shenandoah University. “I think the energy is going to be amazing here. These are the people who are going to define the future of health.”