byline: Virginia Business

Formerly a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who covered federal courts for The Washington Post, York became an attorney in 1994 and started his own firm focused on corporate litigation and white-collar criminal cases. He became president of the state bar July 1, starting his one-year term after serving on the bar’s council and executive committee and chairing the legal ethics committee.

The state bar has more than 50,000 members — attorneys licensed to practice in Virginia — and evaluates judges and disciplines lawyers. York graduated from the University of Kentucky with a journalism degree and earned his law degree at the University of North Carolina. He and co-author Jeffrey A. Marx won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting while employed with the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky for a series of exposés on payoffs to UK basketball players.

York was retained as a legal counselor and adviser by Fairfax County Public Schools when a former student filed a federal Title IX lawsuit in 2019 claiming she was bullied, harassed and raped while attending middle school in 2011. A federal jury rejected her claims in April.

Robinson, who assumed her role in August 2023, is only the second layperson and second woman to lead the domestic humanitarian work branch of the Catholic Church in the United States. She followed Sister Donna Markham’s eight-year tenure.

A member of the Leadership Roundtable — a network of lay people and Catholic clergy that supports  leadership and management in Catholic organizations — Robinson has dedicated her professional life to the church.

Robinson’s work has focused on helping the church use the expertise lay members can provide. The Vatican invited her to advise the church on how to empower and engage women leaders.

According to the organization, Catholic Charities has 167 member agencies and 3,900 locations across the United States. It served more than 15 million people in 2022.

Robinson also served as director of development for Saint Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University, leading a $75 million fundraising campaign. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and Yale Divinity School.

Focused on primarily online learning for working adults, Strategic Education was formed in 2018 through the $2 billion merger of Strayer Education and Capella Education. The education services holding company owns for-profit Strayer and Capella universities and other entities.

McDonnell previously was president and CEO of Strayer, which he joined in 2006, serving as chief operating officer and later also as a board member before taking the top job in 2013.

Strategic Education’s programs range from Capella and Strayer universities in the U.S., which offer primarily online associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs, to three programs in Australia and New Zealand.

Its Education Technology Services division has an education benefits administration program for employers and offers Sophia Learning, with online general education-level courses for college credits. 

McDonnell previously was COO of Intelistaf Healthcare, and before that, a vice president at Goldman Sachs. From 1995 to 2000, he was general manager of the Walt Disney World theme park in Orlando, Florida.

McDonnell has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Virginia Wesleyan University and an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Choi was announced as the new leader of StarKist in December 2023, replacing Chae-Ung Um, who had been in the role for about a year and left to “pursue new professional opportunities,” according to a company news release.

Choi starts the new position just as South Korea’s Dongwon F&B, also a subsidiary of StarKist parent Dongwon Industries Co., set its sights on increasing its proportion of overseas sales to 20% by 2026. In fall 2023, Dongwon F&B reportedly was discussing a business cooperation with StarKist, which is expected to be central to that effort.

Choi brings extensive experience within the roughly 4,000-employee company to his new role. He served as chief financial officer of StarKist from May 2022 to December 2023, and was also chief operating officer in the second half of 2023. He also can draw on previous executive and finance experience, having served as CFO and COO of SPC Group’s Paris Baguette North America, as well as several positions at Tesco and as a certified public accountant for Deloitte.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from Yonsei University in South Korea and his MBA from the U.K.’s Manchester Business School.

Originally from Venezuela, Gluski joined AES in 2000 and became its president and CEO in 2011. A Fortune 500 global electric utility that generates and distributes power in 15 countries, AES is one of the world’s largest electric utilities. In fiscal year 2023, AES reported $12.6 billion in revenue, with $44 billion in assets. In a press release, Gluski stated, “2023 was AES’ best year ever in terms of both execution and financial performance.”

Gluski has pushed for solar farms and, in 2021, announced that AES plans to reach net-zero carbon emissions from electricity generation by 2040. In 2018, AES and Siemens Energy launched Fluence Energy, which focuses on the development and expansion of energy storage technologies.

Gluski holds master’s and doctorate degrees in economics from the University of Virginia. He also serves as chairman of the Council of the Americas and is on the boards of Waste Management and the US-Brazil CEO Forum. 

In June, Gluski made headlines when he said the excitement over using nuclear energy as a power source for data centers was “overblown” and renewable energy is the way of the future.

Jain has run Landmark Hospitality Group for over a decade. With 367 Virginia employees, the hospitality company manages, owns and develops hotels in North Carolina and Virginia under brands such as Marriott, Hyatt and Radisson. The company also expanded into housing in 2021, developing a 287-unit luxury apartment complex in Hampton.

As part of the $200 million Pembroke Square redevelopment, Landmark, in partnership with Pembroke Square Associates, will develop a 163-room Tempo by Hilton hotel, expected to open in early 2027.

Jain joined Landmark in 1999 as a general manager. He has a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in hospitality management from Cornell University.

Jain chairs the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters’ Health System board. He was named King Neptune for Virginia Beach’s 50th Neptune Festival in 2024, recognizing his community contributions.

His father founded Landmark in 1983 and remains its chair.

HOW I CHOSE MY CAREER: Working in hotels from an early age, I fell in love with hospitality, real estate and our industry’s power to bring people together. In some ways, you could say my career found me.

In July, Kurt Vogel, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), retired, setting off a reshuffling that resulted in Schaible becoming acting director of Langley Research Center, which employs about 3,400 scientists, engineers, researchers and staff at its 764-acre aeronautical research facility in Hampton. Langley’s previous director, Clayton Turner, was tapped as Vogel’s acting replacement.

Schaible began her NASA career in 1987 at the Kennedy Space Center, where she worked on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs. She had served since February 2023 as deputy director at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Before that, she led the NASA Langley Research Center Engineering Directorate and was NASA deputy chief engineer. She had also managed the Systems Engineering Office for the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, an agency branch created in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.

Established in 1917 as the nation’s first flight-testing facility in the early years of aviation, the Project Mercury astronauts trained at Langley Research Center in the first years of the Space Race. Langley generates more than $1 billion per year for the Hampton Roads economy.

Earle-Sears is a woman of firsts: the first Black woman and immigrant to hold statewide office in Virginia and the commonwealth’s first female lieutenant governor, serving as president of the state Senate and occasionally casting tiebreaking votes. She is widely expected to seek the Republican nomination for governor in 2025.

A U.S. Marine Corps veteran and former state delegate, the Jamaican-born Earle-Sears took an unusual path to the Virginia State Capitol in a career that has included owning an appliance, plumbing and electrical company and managing a homeless shelter. In her 2021 campaign for lieutenant governor, she made a splash by running ads that featured her holding a military-style rifle. Besides her support for gun rights, she has been a vocal advocate for school choice programs, including taxpayer-funded educational savings accounts and charter schools.

Although Earle-Sears previously campaigned for former President Donald Trump, she has been critical of him in recent years, writing in a memoir she released in August 2023 that she doesn’t believe he should seek a second term.

Frustrated that the United States had so many medications on the Food and Drug Administration’s drug-shortage list, Edwards partnered in 2020 with Frank Gupton, a college of engineering professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, to launch Phlow, a Richmond-based company that develops and domestically manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients and finished pharmaceutical products.

A few months later, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded Phlow a four-year contract worth $354 million to create a domestic supply chain for essential drugs and pharmaceutical ingredients in short supply.

Last year, the company closed on a $36 million fundraising round to expand its commercial offerings, and in December 2023, Phlow announced it was the first pharmaceutical company to become a certified Benefit Corporation or B Corp, which recognizes companies that are leaders in creating
“an inclusive, equitable and regenerative economy.”

Phlow is part of the growing Petersburg-Richmond pharmaceutical hub, as well as a stakeholder in the so-called “Virginia Research Triangle,” a biotech cooperative initiative among VCU, Virginia Tech, Old Dominion University and the University of Virginia. In July, Phlow’s plant in Petersburg started production.

Before funneling his energy into Phlow, Edwards co-founded Kaléo, which produces autoinjectors for allergies and drug overdoses.