byline: Virginia Business

Fairbanks was named Trex’s president and CEO after the retirement of James Cline in April 2020. He had been executive vice president and chief financial officer before stepping into the top role.

Fairbanks joined the publicly traded composite decking and railing manufacturer in 2004. Before Trex, he served in several senior finance roles at Ford Motor. He is a graduate of the University of Dayton and the University of Pittsburgh’s business school.

In June 2023, Trex moved into its new $7 million headquarters in Winchester. As of year-end 2023, the company had 1,765 employees and a reported $1.1 billion in 2023 net sales.

Lowe’s awarded Trex its 2023 Sustainability Award for its commitment to manufacturing sustainable, wood-alternative decking. Investor’s Business Daily named Trex one of the 100 Best ESG Companies for 2023. It was selected from more than 6,000 global companies, and one of only three in its industry to
make the list. Newsweek named Trex one of the country’s Most Responsible Companies 2024.

Fairbanks serves on the Frederick County Economic Development Authority’s board and the Governor’s Advisory Council on Revenue Estimates.

A native of Sweden, Högberg became president of Volvo Penta North America in 2022. He joined Volvo Group in 1994 and has held a variety of positions, including in digital services, retail development and aftermarket sales. He previously was the senior vice president for digital and IT services for Mack and Volvo Trucks North America. Högberg also serves as a member of Volvo’s USA country management team.

Högberg is responsible for the strategic direction and execution of the company’s operations throughout the continent. Sharing the name of the vehicle manufacturer, Volvo Penta is a supplier of engines and power systems for marine and industrial applications, and it runs an engine test facility in Suffolk. The company also has an assembly plant in Lexington, Tennessee, a warehouse in Byhalia, Mississippi, and a warehouse in Milton, Ontario.

Högberg completed his marketing degree at IHM Business School and his MBA at Henley Management College, now Henley Business School.

Di Rita has led the greater Washington D.C., market for Bank of America since 2019. He’s also the bank’s head of global public policy. 

Di Rita joined the bank as an external affairs executive in 2006 after previously making a name for himself in the U.S. Navy and the federal government. 

From 1980 until 1993, Di Rita served in the Navy, with his final active-duty assignment as a politico-military planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After his military service, he was deputy director of foreign policy and defense studies at The Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, and was policy director for the 1996 presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm. From 2001 to 2006, he was special assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. He joined Bank of America as senior vice president of external affairs.

Bank of America posted $26.5 billion in net income in 2023, a 4% drop from 2022, and had $3.18 trillion in total assets, up 4% compared to 2022. 

ONE THING I’D CHANGE ABOUT VIRGINIA:  A few more bridges (and some tunnels) across the Potomac. Even if just for rush hour!

The most popular historic estate in the U.S., Mount Vernon receives about 1 million visitors annually.

Bradburn is currently overseeing a privately funded preservation project to ensure the structural integrity of George Washington’s mansion for decades to come. The $40 million project, which started last year and will stretch to 2026, includes designing and installing a new HVAC system, improving drainage in and around the mansion’s cellar and repairing sections of the building’s framing and masonry.

Bradburn has been with Mount Vernon since 2013, when he joined as the founding director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. He became president and CEO of the estate owned and maintained by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association in 2018.

Bradburn, who has a doctorate in history from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in history and economics from the University of Virginia, is an author and a scholar of early American history. He chaired the history department at the State University of New York at Binghamton before joining Mount Vernon.

With nearly seven years leading Acentra Health, Stottlemyer oversees a health care solutions company that employs approximately 3,000 people across the United States and India. Founded in 1994 as Client Network Services, the company was acquired by Carlyle Group in 2021, then merged with Nashville, Tennessee-based health care management and quality oversight company Kepro.

Following the merger, the company rebranded as Acentra Health in 2023; today, it processes medical claims, billing and health benefits for Medicaid and Medicare, serving more than 140 million people. In January, Acentra Health announced that it had acquired EAP Consultants, a workplace mental health company known as Espyr based in Marietta, Georgia. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.

Stottlemyer is vice chairman of state economic development initiative GO Virginia’s powerful and influential state board and serves on the executive committee of the Northern Virginia Technology Council’s board of directors. He holds a bachelor’s degree from William & Mary and a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.

Since 2016, Jackson has led Chesapeake Regional Healthcare, which includes the Chesapeake Regional Medical Center and nearly 40 practice locations, as well as about 600 physicians serving southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina.

Sometimes the job requires Jackson to go to the mat; in April  he charged in a newspaper column that Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield was paying his hospital 25% less than what it paid other local facilities for the same services.

Despite the public callout, the health system and Anthem managed to reach a multiyear agreement on insurance rates in June.

Before coming to Virginia, Jackson led Forbes Regional Hospital in Pennsylvania. He also worked at Saint Francis Health System in Oklahoma as senior vice president of operations and completed a brief stint as chief operating officer for Valley Health in Winchester.

Jackson received his bachelor’s degree from Texas Tech University, his master’s degree in health administration from Virginia Commonwealth University and a law degree from the University of Richmond.

In 2022, Jackson was named a First Citizen of Chesapeake, an annual award recognizing citizenship, leadership and enhancing the city’s quality of life.

Reiff has logged more than three decades of experience representing businesses and organizations in the complicated immigration and compliance legal sphere. Serving as co-manager of the global firm’s Northern Virginia office, Reiff also oversees about 50 attorneys, and she chairs the firm’s Northern Virginia/Washington, D.C., immigration and compliance practice.

She co-founded Greenberg Traurig’s Business and Immigration and Compliance group and the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, which issued a statement to Congress in February supporting strong border enforcement and advocating for creating legal pathways for essential workers. The coalition pushes for immigration reform to address the shortage of unskilled workers in the United States.

A graduate of American University and George Washington University Law School, Reiff also writes and speaks about issues related to I-9, the form used to establish that non-citizen employees are eligible to work in the United States. In 2023, Reiff was named to a two-year tenure as chair of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s subcommittee on immigration.

In June, Wold marked her one-year anniversary as the Virginia market manager for Forvis Mazars, a top 10 global accounting firm. Wold came to Virginia from Wichita, Kansas, and oversees the firm’s offices in Richmond and Norfolk. Forvis Mazars was formed this June when Forvis acquired Paris-based audit, tax and advisory firm Mazars’ U.S. arm.

Forvis Mazars, which recorded $1.7 billion in fiscal 2023 revenue as Forvis, employs more than 7,000 workers across 80 offices worldwide.

Wold, who has about 30 years of experience and joined Forvis in 2018 as an audit partner, focuses on strategic growth and talent acquisition and development. She previously served as an audit partner at Grant Thornton and BKD CPAs & Advisors.

Wold holds an accounting degree from Wichita State University and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Virginia Society of CPAs and the Kansas Society of CPAs.

Williams serves as senior vice president for Fortune 500 discount retailer Dollar Tree’s real estate portfolio, a position in which he leads Summit Pointe Realty, the entity developing Summit Pointe. Dollar Tree formed the Summit Pointe Realty subsidiary in 2015 after acquiring North Carolina-based Family Dollar Stores for $8.5 billion.

Williams joined Dollar Tree in 1998 as vice president of portfolio management until his promotion to senior vice president in 2019.

A $330 million walkable mixed-use district in the Greenbrier area, Summit Pointe houses three apartment communities, restaurants, office spaces and public parks, all built around Dollar Tree’s corporate headquarters tower, which opened in 2018. In 2023, global coworking franchise Venture X announced it would be leasing 18,543 square feet in the 555 Belaire office tower in Summit Pointe.

Williams started his career as an accountant for KPMG in Norfolk. He received his bachelor’s degree in accounting from Old Dominion University.

Wilkin was named Optical Cable’s chairman and CEO in September 2003. Those titles joined his other roles as Optical Cable’s president and board member. Wilkin joined Optical Cable in 2001 as senior vice president, chief financial officer and director. He became acting president in December 2001, in addition to his role as CFO, and was named president in April 2002.

Optical Cable manufactures fiber optic cable for telecommunications uses and military-grade cable for the U.S. military and allies. Its gross profit increased 8.7% to $22.3 million in fiscal 2023, compared with gross profit of $20.5 million in fiscal 2022.

Before joining Optical Cable, Wilkin served as CFO of an online real estate brokerage. Prior to that, he was an attorney at McGuireWoods and Kirkland & Ellis. Wilkin also worked as a CPA with Coopers & Lybrand, a predecessor to PricewaterhouseCoopers, in Richmond.

Wilkin is a three-time graduate of the University of Virginia, with undergraduate, MBA and law degrees. He serves on Carilion Clinic’s 2024 board of directors and is a member at-large on Virginia Western Community College Educational Foundation’s board of directors.