byline: Virginia Business

When Ryan arrived at Langley Federal in 2012, the credit union had about $1.7 billion in assets and 165,500 members. It now boasts $5.45 billion in assets and 378,000 members. 

With more than 700 employees, Langley Federal has 21 branches. The credit union opened a new branch in Raleigh, North Carolina, in September 2023 and one in Richmond in October 2023.

Prior to joining Langley Federal, Ryan spent 26 years at Massachusetts’ Digital Federal Credit Union, where he was executive vice president and chief operating officer. Ryan made the move, he has said, because he wanted to make a difference by leading a credit union. 

In 2021, Ryan’s efforts prompted the Credit Union Executives Society to name him its outstanding chief executive of the year. 

Ryan has a degree in business management from Michigan’s Fitchburg State University. He sits on the board of the Langley For Families Foundation, the credit union’s charitable arm. In 2023, the foundation gave about $1.14 million to over 170 nonprofit organizations serving the Greater Hampton Roads area, a 10% increase in giving compared to 2022.

In April, Shentel completed the acquisition of Horizon Telcom, a commercial fiber provider, for $385 million. The combined company has approximately 15,400 fiber route miles across seven states. Shentel plans to re-brand the Horizon commercial and residential fiber businesses to Glo Fiber.

Earlier this year, Shentel sold its tower portfolio to Vertical Bridge for $310.3 million in cash. The proceeds from the sale will provide additional growth capital to support the planned expansion of the Glo Fiber line to approximately 600,000 homes and business passings by the end of 2026.

French has served as president of the company since 1988, and has been a member and chairman of its board since 1996. A double graduate of the University of Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and an MBA, he serves on the board of directors for The Virginia Foundation for Community College Education.

Since 1978, King has been leasing shopping centers for individuals, private partnerships and institutional clients, and has led the commercial real estate company’s retail leasing team since 1985. He was named president of the firm in 2019, and took over as chairman last year when his adoptive father, Harvey L. Lindsay Jr., died at 93.

Founded in 1919, the company provides brokerage services, asset management and property management services. Under King’s leadership, it has grown its shopping center portfolio to more than 4.5 million square feet of retail space. The firm credits King’s team approach with producing superior occupancy percentages for clients, some of whom have been
with the firm for more than four decades.

In December 2023, the company acquired a management portfolio of 50 buildings in the Hampton Roads area, with the majority of the structures located in Norfolk and others in
Virginia Beach.

A longtime member of the International Council of Shopping Centers, King is a graduate of Duke University and received his MBA from Old Dominion University.

Since becoming president in 2018, Ryan has spearheaded several growth initiatives at the state’s flagship university, including the School of Data Science, a new performing arts center and the Karsh Institute of Democracy — all projects funded by donors, including a record 2019 gift of $120 million from alumni couple Jaffray and Merrill Woodriff for the data science school.

In December 2023, U.Va. began construction of the $350 million Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology, launched by a $100 million donation from the Mannings. The institute will develop targeted treatments for diseases that either have no cure or involve therapies that make life hard on patients.

In May, Ryan faced criticism for the university’s handling of a pro-Palestinian student protest on campus, after 27 students were arrested by police in riot gear who sprayed protesters with chemical irritants.

Ryan previously served as dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. A first-generation college student, who graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and was first in his U.Va. law class, he was a U.Va. law school faculty member for 15 years.

Presley has been overseeing the U.S. market — Nestlé’s largest market, with around $30 billion in annual sales — since 2018. In 2021, he also became head of the Swiss food producer’s continent-wide business when Nestlé created a North America business zone, along with a China zone, to align with its market-led approach. In this role, Presley has overseen multiple acquisitions and divestitures, including selling the confections business and acquiring Starbucks Consumer Packaged Goods business and Essentia premium water.

In fiscal 2023, Nestlé’s North America group posted sales of $29.13 billion, with organic growth of 7.3%. In May, Presley announced Nestlé was launching a frozen food line targeting users of Ozempic and Wegovy, medications that help patients manage diabetes and lose weight.

In January, Presley received the William H. Albers Industry Relations Award from the Food Industry Association, awarded for trading partner relations and consumer and community service. In April, Nestlé joined Consumer Brands Association, with Presley taking a seat on the organization’s board of directors.

A graduate of the University of South Florida, Presley joined the company as a controller for a Nestlé beverage factory in Suffolk in 1997.

This year, Backmon was on hand for the completion of two projects funded by the NVTA: the $19.6 million Boundary Channel Drive Interchange Project in Arlington, for which the agency contributed more than $4.3 million, and the $313.9 million Route 7 Corridor Improvements Project in Fairfax County that NVTA provided with more than $22 million.

Backmon was named the authority’s CEO in 2021, after having served as its executive director in 2014. Established by the state, the authority has invested more than $3 billion in 122 regional projects over the past decade, and in March, NVTA’s six-year program running through fiscal 2029 recommended $587.2 million in infrastructure in Fairfax County alone, out of the authority’s $947.1 million total funding request.

Backmon was one of 10 women recognized as 2024 Women Who Move the Nation honorees by the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials. In 2022, she received the Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) D.C. chapter’s Woman of the Year Award and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ Ronald F. Kirby Award for Collaborative Leadership. The two-time graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign serves as a mentor through WTS.

Parkinson has served as Drake Extrusion’s CEO since 2001. A subsidiary of Duroc AB, a Swedish manufacturer specializing in filament yarn and staple fiber, the company established its roots in Henry County in 1996.

In 2021, Drake acquired North Carolina-based yarn manufacturer Michael S. Becker. Drake has expanded its Henry County footprint twice in the past 10 years and employs more than 200 nationwide. Its more recent expansion, announced in 2020, established an additional manufacturing facility in a 120,000-square-foot building, representing a $6.9 million expansion.

Representing the Southern region, Parkinson is a member of the GO Virginia Region 3 Council. He also serves on the Piedmont Workforce Development Board of Virginia Career Works West Piedmont Region, part of the state’s workforce development initiative, and as secretary and treasurer on the board of the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber’s Partnership for Economic Growth.

Parkinson received a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from the U.K.’s Lancaster University.

Starting as a liquid fertilizer business on a Shenandoah family farm in 1975, Houff Corp. grew to provide a range of agricultural and industrial services, including agronomy, supply chain solutions, transloading and biosolids management.

Two years ago, the company acquired 14 acres to expand its Doswell rail transload yard, where it’s laying more than a mile of new track. The 48% employee-owned company is also building a 24,000-square-foot tilt-up warehouse in Weyers Cave for more crop protection storage.

Houff has been the corporation’s president since the early 1990s. He’s also board chair of Railside Enterprises — the family’s holding company that owns Houff Corp. and IDM Trucking, a transportation company run by Houff’s brothers. Houff has an agriculture degree from Virginia Tech.

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Ransom boasts 24 years in the banking industry. At BB&T he started as a commercial banker in 2020 and went on to become greater Washington, D.C., market president. After Truist formed in 2018 through a merger of BB&T and SunTrust Banks, Ransom went to Charlotte, North Carolina, as an executive vice president before returning to the commonwealth in 2021 to become president of the bank’s Virginia region, which covers the whole state except for Northern Virginia.

Speaking in March to Randolph-Macon College’s Leadership Fellows Program, Ransom said, “Always get feedback. Don’t look for praise. Ask ‘What can I improve on?’”

While there, Ransom presented a grant of $200,000 from the Truist Charitable Fund to support the leadership program.

In February, Ransom was appointed to the board of his alma mater: Hampden-Sydney College. He sits on the Governor’s Advisory Council on Revenue Estimates, as well as the board of the Virginia Bankers Association.

Ransom earned an MBA from the University of Baltimore and was a public policy fellow at Princeton University.