byline: Virginia Business

Under Adams-Gaston’s leadership since 2019, Norfolk State has racked up achievements ranging from regularly ranking among U.S. News & World Report’s top 20 historically Black colleges and universities to attaining a 10-year reaffirmation of accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.

The public university also has attracted big-dollar donations, from grants of more than $53 million for scholarships and student support to a one-time gift of $40 million from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in 2021.

Adams-Gaston has led NSU’s online curriculum expansion to include master’s degrees in cybersecurity and cyber psychology. She has played key roles in forging partnerships with companies such as Netflix, Apple and Amazon.

She also serves on President Joe Biden’s HBCUs advisory board and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. Her term on the NCAA Board of Governors ended in August.

Before joining Norfolk State, Adams-Gaston was senior vice president for student life at Ohio State University and held executive positions at the University of Maryland. She holds a doctorate from Iowa State University.

When Doré arrived in Richmond in April 2023 to become the 10th chancellor of the Virginia Community College System, he began his tenure by traveling 3,600 miles in 36 days on a listening tour across the state.

As head of the state’s community college system, Doré oversees 23 colleges with 40 campuses and more than 200,000 students. The former president of Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona, he replaced Glenn DuBois, who was VCCS’ chancellor for more than two decades.

One of Doré’s chief goals is to see all Virginia high school students graduate with a community college credential under their belts. In a February op-ed co-authored with Virginia Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Barry DuVal, Doré wrote that every $1 spent on community college education results in $5.70 in lifetime earnings for a VCCS student, according to a December 2023 study by Lightcast.

Doré earned his doctorate in education at Pepperdine University and master’s degrees from Georgetown, Boston College and Santa Clara University.

In January, Davis stepped into the role of CEO at Cort Business Services, a Berkshire Hathaway-owned company that includes Cort Furniture Rental, Cort Trade Show and Events, and other businesses. He succeeded Jeffery Pederson, who retired after having led the company since 2012. Cort has more than 100 offices, rental showrooms and retail furniture outlets nationally.

Davis has been with Cort since 1997, when he started as a general manager at Cort Furniture Rental. He then worked in a number of roles in the company, including executive director and group vice president of Cort Trade Show & Event Furnishings, and group vice president of ABC Special Event Rentals & AA Party Rentals by Cort. He previously was the company’s executive vice president, chief operating officer and president. Before his long tenure at Cort, he worked at Viking Freight, ABF Freight and 3 Day Blinds.

Davis started a new volunteer position in January: He joined the board of directors of Move for Hunger, a nonprofit focused on combating food insecurity.

Rivers Casino Portsmouth made history in January 2023, becoming the first permanent casino to open in Virginia. The 250,000-square-foot, $340 million casino created 1,300 permanent jobs locally. It had almost $250 million in gaming revenue in its first year of operation, generating an estimated $42 million in state and local taxes. 

In May, the casino reached a settlement with the Virginia Lottery, agreeing to pay $505,000 for several violations, including the presence of underage people on the gaming floor, following a September 2023 fine of $40,000 for the same violation. The lottery also fined Rivers Casino Portsmouth in March 2023, levying $275,000 for several violations, including underage people’s presence.

Corby has three decades of experience in the gaming industry, beginning as a table games dealer and slot attendant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Before joining Rush Street Gaming, he was senior vice president of operations for Oklahoma-based Global Gaming Solutions, where he oversaw three full-service casinos.

He joined Rush Street Gaming, owner of the Rivers Casino brand, as assistant general manager of the Rivers Casino Pittsburgh a few months before becoming general manager of the Portsmouth facility.

Colbert was named the head of Boeing’s defense, space and security sector in 2022. Colbert restructured the defense program, but Boeing is still years behind schedule on aircraft and tanker deliveries; his unit logged nearly $1 billion in losses in 2023 alone. In January, a Boeing official said that they plan to get the unit back to high single-digit margins by the 2025-26 timeframe.

Recent headlines have been brutal for Boeing. The Fortune 500 aircraft and aerospace manufacturer has experienced ongoing issues with its commercial 737 Max plane, including a midair blowout of a door panel on a flight in January. And this summer, a Boeing Starliner spacecraft stranded two astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

In 2023, Boeing’s revenue was $22.02 billion, growing 10% from the previous year. It employs roughly 170,000 people worldwide.

A graduate of Morehouse and Georgia Tech, Colbert previously worked for Ford and Citigroup. He joined Boeing in 2009, serving as chief information officer, then president and CEO of Boeing’s global services division. Colbert was elected chair of the Aerospace Industries Association board for 2024.

Trundle has led Tysons-based home security tech company Alarm.com since May 2003, coming aboard from its founding parent company, MicroStrategy, where he served as chief technology officer. MicroStrategy sold the spinoff security business to investors in 2009, and Alarm.com, which now has 2,000 employees, went public in 2015.

Alarm.com has become known for its rapid expansion as the market for connected home and business security services has increased. In 2020 and 2021, it was named to Fortune magazine’s list of the top 100 Fastest Growing Companies, marking a 22% growth rate from the previous three years and bringing in $639 million in revenue in 2021. In fiscal 2023, its revenue increased to $881.7 million, an increase of 4.6% from 2022.

In December 2023, Alarm.com settled a patent infringement lawsuit with rival Vivint, with Alarm.com saying it would license its intellectual property portfolio to Vivint. Alarm.com had filed the suit in January 2023 alleging that Vivint infringed on 15 of its patents for smart home products. The settlement removed an overhang for Alarm.com stock.

Trundle holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and government from Dartmouth College.

In April 2022, Gilbane Building tapped Reed to lead the business unit for its Richmond office. One of the construction company’s youngest vice presidents, she has managed over $1 billion in contracts during her career. She is responsible for driving sales and supervising more than 70 employees.

In July, the Richmond Flying Squirrels selected Gilbane Building, along with Prestige Construction Group, to build the new stadium the Double-A team will lease. It will be the centerpiece of the city’s $2.4 billion Diamond District mixed-use project and is projected to cost at least $110 million.

Gilbane has managed construction for multiple notable projects in Central Virginia, including the new, 415,000-square-foot Virginia General Assembly office building and the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science building.

Reed has helped Gilbane reach out to the community through the ACE Mentor Program of America, a free after-school program designed to attract high school students into pursuing careers in architecture, construction and engineering. She’s also a mentor in the Women in Construction Conference.

A registered architect, Reed graduated from Penn State — where she was a two-time All-American in rugby — with a bachelor’s degree in architecture.

Sands became the land-grant university’s 16th president in 2014 after serving as interim president at Purdue University. He signed a contract in August 2022 to stay on as president through the 2027 academic year.

Sands has been leading development of Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus, a $1 billion campus in Alexandria for graduate computer science and engineering programs. The university announced in January that the opening of the campus’ first academic building has been delayed to spring 2025, although the campus headquarters are open nearby.

Virginia Tech has received notable donations in recent years, including $50 million from Fortune 500 defense contractor Boeing to foster diversity at
the Innovation Campus and $50 million for the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC in Roanoke.

Sands previously was executive vice president for academic affairs and provost of Purdue University. Trained as a scientist whose research focused on light-emitting diodes, he holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

In August, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors elected Sands its chair for a two-year term.

Spilman has led Bassett Furniture as CEO since 2000, also becoming the company’s board chairman in 2016. He has been with the home furniture manufacturer and seller for four decades and succeeded his father, Robert H. Spilman Sr., as CEO.

The company, with almost 90 locations nationally, reported a 19.6% decrease in net sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2024 compared with the first quarter of fiscal 2023, and a 17% decrease in revenues for the second quarter of fiscal 2024 compared with the previous year.

When it released its second-quarter results in July, Bassett also announced a restructuring plan that includes closing its Noa Home e-commerce business and consolidating its two wood manufacturing facilities into one primary facility with a satellite operation. According to Home News Now, the company will move its Bassett production into its Martinsville facility.

A Vanderbilt University alumnus, Spilman serves on the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges’ board of trustees. He has been a member of Dominion Energy’s board of directors since 2009.