byline: Virginia Business

UMW had its most successful fundraising year so far in 2022-23, raising more than $21.36 million in gifts and pledges, including a portion of a $30 million bequest from a 1959 alumna to support undergraduate research and scholarships, announced in March 2023.

Last year, Paino received the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators’ 2023 President’s Award, which recognizes a president or chancellor who has, over a sustained period, advanced the quality of student life on campus.

In April, the university became part of a consortium receiving a $25,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to develop curriculum around AI. In August 2023, UMW received a three-year, $345,000 National Endowment grant to continue publishing “The Papers of James Monroe.”

UMW also received in March two $100,000 Virginia Talent + Opportunity Partnership grants expanding internships.

President of UMW since 2016, Paino was previously president of Truman State University in Missouri. He holds doctoral and master’s degrees from Michigan State University, a law degree from Indiana University and a bachelor’s degree from Evangel College.

Paino serves on the boards of the Northern Virginia Technology Council and the Virginia Business Higher Education Council.

Dreiling’s first year as Dollar Tree’s CEO has seen a continuation of some of the tumult that preceded his time leading the Fortune 500 discount retailer.

The chain reported $30.6 billion in revenue in fiscal 2023, but a $1.7 billion loss in the fourth quarter. Following that poor performance, the company announced it would close around 600 Family Dollar stores in the first half of fiscal 2024 and would shutter 370 more Family Dollar and 30 Dollar Tree stores over the next few years. In June, it began reviewing strategic alternatives for Family Dollar, including selling or spinning off the brand.

From 2017 to April 2024, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued $22.7 million in penalties to Dollar Tree, though the entities reached a settlement in August 2023. In Virginia, federal regulators fined Dollar Tree $1.9 million for 85 safety violations in  the past 10 years.

A seasoned executive, Dreiling served as CEO for competitor Dollar General from 2008 to 2015, then became executive chairman of Dollar Tree in 2022, following a proxy battle with an activist investor group. Dreiling also serves as lead independent director on Lowe’s board of directors.

Co-founded by Frantz in 2009, Blue Delta is a venture capital firm that supports growth-stage companies providing technology solutions to the federal government. 

In April, Blue Delta announced it had invested $25 million in Maryland’s Herrick Technology Laboratories, a provider of software-defined radio (which relies on software rather than hardware to control frequencies) and related signals intelligence and electronic warfare tools. In July, Blue Delta closed a $250 million, oversubscribed fund.

In addition to his work at Blue Delta, Frantz sits on the board of ASGN, the Henrico County Fortune 1000 IT and professional services provider.

Previously, Frantz was a principal with Carlyle Group, the private equity firm where Gov. Glenn Youngkin served as co-CEO, and was a partner at RedShift Ventures. Early in his career, Frantz served as associate director of the White House’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs under President George H.W. Bush. He also worked as economic and technology policy adviser to former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge.

Frantz earned a law degree and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.

Years before she was appointed to serve in Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration, Merrick and her husband, Phillip Merrick, founded webMethods, a software company that helped businesses connect data from disparate systems via the web. The company grew steadily from the mid-1990s tech boom until the business sold to Software AG in 2007 for $546 million.

Merrick, who is a venture partner in startup investment firm NextGen Venture Partners, also later founded and led Pocket Mentor, an app delivering leadership tools.

Before her appointment as the state’s secretary of commerce and trade in 2022, Merrick served as CEO of Youngkin’s nonprofit Virginia Ready initiative, which promoted workforce development.

In her current role, Merrick leads 13 agencies with 1,300 team members. She oversaw the launch of the state’s Compete to Win economic development policy, which aims to enhance the commonwealth’s workforce development, site inventory and infrastructure growth.

Merrick earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and completed Harvard Business School’s corporate governance program.

Landrum has led the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership since 2015. She joined the partnership nearly 20 years ago, serving as acting executive director for two years before stepping up to senior vice president. Before coming to AEDP, Landrum was a project coordinator at Southeast Fairfax Development Corp.

The site of Alexandria’s shuttered Landmark Mall is being redeveloped in a multibillion-dollar project that will include new housing units and an Inova Health System hospital. Also under construction is the first academic building of Virginia Tech’s $1 billion Innovation Campus, which is expected to open in spring 2025.

The city also claimed the headquarters for burger restaurant chain Five Guys, which in summer 2023 moved its 250 employees back to Alexandria, where it opened its first restaurant in 1986.

In March, Alexandria lost a controversial $2 billion arena proposal touted by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, when the Washington Wizards and Capitals NBA and NHL teams reached a deal to stay in Washington, D.C.

Landrum earned her bachelor’s degree in city and regional planning from the University of Virginia and her MBA from UVa’s Darden School of Business.

FAVORITE TEAM: Washington Capitals

A graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Pepperdine University, Kastner was tapped as Huntington Ingalls Industries’ president and CEO in March 2022. HII reported revenue of $11.5 billion last year, a 7.3% increase from 2022, and a total project backlog of $43.1 billion as of Dec. 31, 2023.

The Fortune 500 company is the nation’s largest military shipbuilding company and owns Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia’s largest industrial employer, with about 25,000 workers.

HII’s current history began in 2011 when parent company Northrop Grumman spun out its entire shipbuilding portfolio, including Huntington Ingalls and Newport News Shipbuilding. Before joining HII, Kastner was vice president and chief financial officer for Ingalls Shipbuilding.

Already looking to add 3,000 jobs this year, NNS expanded its footprint last year to an 8-acre satellite campus at Fairwinds Landing in Norfolk. The campus expects to have 150 employees this year. NNS has invested more than $25 million there and could spend as much as $100 million in five years.

HII’s technical solutions division, renamed Mission Technologies in 2022, has grown massively since its establishment in 2016, and the company is now heavily focused on artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity and unmanned systems.

The United Way of Southwest Virginia named its president and CEO, Staton, to lead Endless Opportunity, or EO, in February. EO is a new nonprofit, spun off of the United Way chapter, focused on workforce development programs. As EO’s leader, Staton manages a $10 million portfolio of grant-funded economic development, workforce training and child development programs.

In June, Megan Parks was hired as the new executive director of United Way of Southwest Virginia, taking on some of Staton’s former duties and allowing him to focus on leading EO.

During his 20 years with United Way, Staton created and grew a cradle-to-career nonprofit to train people for new careers amid the collapse of the mining industry in the region and loss of jobs and population.

Currently, UWSWVA is redeveloping a former K-Mart into a regional workforce and child development hub. It will provide child care, support child care operators and offer career exploration and hands-on opportunities to K-12 students. EO will serve as a program implementer, allowing the United Way to focus on high-level needs and gather resources.

Staton has a bachelor’s degree from East Tennessee State University.

Myers joined Cox Communications in 2006 as vice president of the company’s business services, steadily ascending through the ranks to his current position as senior vice president and region manager, east region. He leads the home and business telecommunications and cable TV provider’s day-to-day operations for much of the eastern United States, including Virginia.

Cox Communications is a division of Cox Enterprises, which posted $22.1 billion in 2023 revenue. In summer 2023, the company acquired commercial fiber provider Unite Private Networks (UPN), with UPN and Cox-owned Segra forming a new stand-alone fiber company to accelerate growth in the company’s commercial fiber solutions.   

This year, Cox earned Top Workplaces Culture Excellence awards for compensation and benefits, flexibility, leadership, innovation and more.

An Army veteran, Myers earned a bachelor’s in business administration and MBAs in finance and marketing from American University, and is a Yale School of Management graduate certified in fostering inclusion and diversity. He serves on the Virginia Chamber of Commerce board of directors and is a trustee of the Hampton Roads Chamber.

With interests ranging from sports, education, technology and health care to philanthropy, Baroni always has been something of a Renaissance man. But while his passions are far-ranging, at his core he always has been focused on innovation and mission-based projects.

Attain Partners, which Baroni founded as Attain LLC in 2009, provides strategy, tech and compliance consulting services for educational institutions, nonprofits, health care companies and state and local governments.

Baroni is also founder and managing partner of private equity firm Attain Capital, which invests in firms delivering technology-enabled solutions and services to government and education clients.

Additionally, Baroni serves as CEO for Attain Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Baltimore Orioles’ Double-A affiliate Bowie Baysox, as well as two Frederick, Maryland-based teams — the MLB Draft League’s Frederick Keys and the Atlantic League’s Spire City Ghost Hounds — and men’s soccer team Loudoun United FC.

An avid supporter of education, Baroni has donated $7 million to George Mason University’s Center for Government Contracting, now named for Baroni and his wife, Camille, and serves on the executive committee for the Northern Virginia Technology Council and the board of the Professional Services Council.

In 2018, Eastright was named CEO at Bloomberg Industry Group, a Bloomberg affiliate company. His career at Bloomberg had begun more than 25 years earlier, when he was a college intern. He worked for Bloomberg LP, Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Bloomberg Government before becoming Industry Group CEO.

Eastright received his bachelor’s degree in political science from Amherst College. Serving on the board of directors at THEARC-Building Bridges Across the River, he is also a member of the board of trustees of The Phillips Collection and an advisory committee member of the 11th Street Bridge Park.

Bloomberg Industry Group employs nearly 1,350 people, about 1,200 of whom work in Virginia. The Bloomberg footprint provides proprietary legal, tax, regulatory and business data and news across multiple industries through its Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax & Accounting and Bloomberg Government services.

In March, Bloomberg Industry Group named Bobby Puglia to the newly created position of chief product officer. Bloomberg Industry Group announced in April the acquisition of Dashboard Legal, a project management and collaboration tool built for the legal market.