byline: Virginia Business

One of the largest power distribution cooperatives in the nation based on sales and revenue, NOVEC last year reported operating revenue totaling $864 million, net margins exceeding $27 million and assets totaling $1.4 billion last year. Energy sales grew 17% to more than 10.1 billion kilowatt-hours sold.

Since 2022, Schleicher has led the not-for-profit corporation, which serves more than 180,000 residential and business customers in Clarke, Fairfax, Fauquier, Loudoun, Prince William and Stafford counties, as well as Manassas Park and Clifton.

Schleicher took the reins of NOVEC after the retirement of Stan Feuerberg, who led NOVEC for 30 years. With more than 40 years of utility experience, Schleicher previously worked for PPL Electric Utilities in Pennsylvania and held an executive role at the EnergyUnited co-op in North Carolina. An electric engineering grad of Drexel University, he also earned an MBA from the University of Scranton. He is a registered professional engineer in Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Reston-based federal contractor Octo was founded in 2006 by Virginia Tech alum Sanghani, who remains its CEO after IBM purchased Octo in 2022 from Arlington Capital Partners for an undisclosed sum. Octo is now part of IBM Consulting’s U.S. public and federal market arm, employing about 1,500 workers.

Sanghani was born in India and raised in Blacksburg, where his family operated a Red Carpet Inn. He graduated from Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering in 1998 and worked in Silicon Valley before returning to Virginia to start Octo.

In 2020, Sanghani and wife, Hema — also a Virginia Tech grad — donated $10 million to the university. Part of that funding supports the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics in Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus in Alexandria; it also funds scholarships for minority students studying AI. In May 2022, Octo opened oLabs, a $10 million research and development lab focused on AI and other tools to assist its federal customers.

Sanghani serves on Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business advisory council and delivered Tech’s commencement address in May.

For more than 25 years, Summerlin has advised businesses — from sole proprietorships to Fortune 500 names — in environmental matters. Summerlin also assists employers with employment laws and regulations, including investigations with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 

A Roanoke native, Summerlin returned to the Star City in 1997 to work at Woods Rogers after graduating from William & Mary Law School. The firm named him president in 2015. In 2022, Woods Rogers merged with Norfolk-based Vandeventer Black, becoming Woods Rogers Vandeventer Black, the state’s fifth largest firm. In May, the law firm shortened its name back to Woods Rogers.

An 11-time Atlantic Coast Conference swimming champion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Summerlin competed in the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials.  

Summerlin’s family shares his enthusiasm for being in the water. His wife, Laura Summerlin, is a two-time qualifier for the Ironman World Championships. His daughter Callie surfed at San Diego State University and competed in the Women’s Longboard Tour. Two other daughters, Taylor and Caroline, both swam for club teams in college. A stepdaughter, Cabell Whitlow, swam for Duke and competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials.

As CEO of TNS since 2013, Keegan is responsible for setting global strategy for the privately held networking, integrated data and voice services provider.

TNS was acquired by a Koch Industries subsidiary in 2021 and, in 2022, TNS acquired Agnity Global, a leading provider of intelligent business communication applications and infrastructure to organizations in the telecommunications and health care industry verticals.

In November 2023, TNS acquired West Highland Support Services, a Connecticut-based financial market data solutions provider. 

Earlier this year, the company announced the commercial availability of TN Insights, a reporting tool that presents outbound call data metrics, including calls answered, declined, blocked and missed, along with contact rate and duration analysis. In April, TNS launched Complete Commerce, an end-to-end payments solutions stack.

TNS also tracks robocall trends; Keegan said in November 2023 that AI-fueled voice cloning fraud and politics-related spam are expected to increase in 2024.

Keegan has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame and a law degree from the University of Virginia. He serves on the board of directors for the Competitive Carriers Association.

Sheehy carries on his father’s legacy as an auto dealer, manning the largest dealership group in Virginia and No. 33 in the nation, according to Auto News’ list of Top 150 dealership groups. His late father, Vincent Sheehy III, founded Sheehy Ford in Maryland in 1965 as a suburban business near the newly built Capital Beltway.

After graduating from Dickinson College, receiving an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and working in marketing and sales for Prudential and General Mills, the younger Sheehy joined the family business in the late 1980s. He became president in 1998 and now oversees 30 dealerships. Sheehy Auto Stores is the largest retailer of Fords and Nissans in the mid-Atlantic region.

Sheehy Auto Stores and its founding family are active philanthropic donors. In January 2023, the Sheehy family donated $3.65 million to Catholic University’s Metropolitan School of Professional Studies to endow The Sheehy Family Scholarship. The company raised more than $340,000 for the American Heart Association in November 2023.

Sheehy is a trustee of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

Edmunds originally began his career in the music industry. As a musician and song writer, he produced a video for MTV, and thus began his love affair with film production.

Today, he’s Virginia’s go-to guy for movie and TV projects being filmed in the state. As director of the Virginia Film Office since 2011, Edmunds helps land glitzy TV and film projects that touch all parts of the commonwealth’s economy, from buying office supplies to renting helicopters.

He’s worked with such top directors as Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott and Clint Eastwood, assisting filmmakers in securing economic incentives and tax breaks and smoothing the way for film crews to have a positive experience working in Virginia.

Most recently, this included paving the way for Universal Pictures’ coming-of-age musical “Atlantis,” inspired by music and fashion superstar Pharrell Williams’ childhood growing up in Virginia Beach. The film, which was shot this spring and summer at the beach and in the Richmond area, received about $12 million in state incentives.

Other recent projects have included two Apple+ shows, “Swagger,” filmed in Central Virginia and Hampton Roads, and “Dopesick,” based on Virginian Beth Macy’s best-selling book and filmed in Central Virginia and Clifton Forge.

In the last two years, the four-employee Shenandoah Valley Partnership was involved with more than $300 million in economic development deals representing nearly 500 new jobs in the region. It’s helped create almost 3,000 jobs in the past five years.

Langston has led the regional economic development organization since 2018, after serving in multiple roles at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership for 13 years.

In March, Modine Manufacturing, which makes cooling equipment for data centers, announced it would invest $18.1 million to expand its existing Rockbridge County operation, creating an estimated 211 jobs. Shenandoah Valley Partnership worked with VEDP and Rockbridge County to secure the project.

In 2023, SVP raised more than $1.7 million in its first capital campaign, funding a five-year business and workforce attraction and retention plan.

Langston holds a bachelor’s degree from Georgia Tech, as well as master’s and doctorate degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University.

HOW I CHOSE MY CAREER: A happenstance occurrence of seeing an ad for a job in the newspaper about a state job working with business and going for it. Forty years later, it has been fulfilling helping to create thousands of great jobs.

In June, Wensinger replaced outgoing president and CEO Chuck Prow at aerospace and defense contractor V2X. The move was part of a “board-led succession planning process,” the company stated in a press release. Wensinger also serves on V2X’s board of directors.

The change follows the move of V2X’s headquarters from Colorado to Tysons in April 2023. V2X, formed by the $2.1 billion merger of Vertex and Vectrus in 2022, is a Fortune 1000 company with about 16,000 employees.

V2X reported $3.96 billion in revenue in 2023, up 8% from the previous year. The company serves national security, civilian, defense and international clients with solutions related to logistics, operations, aerospace, technology and training.

Wensinger has more than three decades of experience as a defense and government contracting executive. He previously served as Peraton’s chief operating officer, was a principal at Augusta Management Strategies, president of PAE, chief operating officer of GTSI, and president of Cobham Defense Electronic Systems.

Wensinger holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Bowling Green State University and an MBA from the University of South Florida.

Davis-Hagens speaks enthusiastically about the construction of the Harbour View Medical Center, an $80 million, 98,000-square-foot hospital scheduled for completion in Suffolk in spring 2025.

Davis-Hagens is passionate about expanding access to care, and the new hospital, as the former nurse has pointed out, will allow residents of northern Suffolk and western Hampton Roads to stay in their communities for surgery.

Additionally, Davis-Hagens has plenty of other work to keep her occupied with overseeing operations at hospitals in Franklin, Newport News and Portsmouth, as well as at other Bon Secours facilities in the area.

Before taking her current post as president of the Hampton Roads market in 2021, Davis-Hagens was president of The Jewish Hospital – Mercy Health in Ohio, part of the national Bon Secours Mercy Health system. She also worked for two decades at Illinois’ Provena Covenant Medical Center in a variety of leadership positions. 

Davis-Hagens earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Salem State College in Massachusetts and an MBA from Plymouth State College in New Hampshire.

As founder and head of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, Friedlander leads 40 research teams with more than 450 faculty, staff and students working together to solve major health challenges, including brain disorders, heart disease and cancer.

Under his leadership, the institute, which was founded in 2010, has been awarded more than $379 million in grants and contracts.

Last year, Red Gates Foundation, established by the estate of Richmond philanthropist Bill Goodwin’s late son, Hunter, made a $50 million commitment to support cancer and neuroscience research at the Fralin Institute.

In June, the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, a Charlottesville-based nonprofit that promotes the use of ultrasonic energy to target tissue deep in the body, designated Virginia Tech as a Focused Ultrasound Center of Excellence, making it the sixth such center in the United States and one of only 12 in the world. Friedlander will be the center’s chair.

A neuroscientist, Friedlander also leads academic programs for medical, doctoral, graduate and undergraduate students at Virginia Tech.