byline: Virginia Business

A financial adviser for close to three decades, Hamilton still enjoys helping families achieve their financial goals. After joining the Wise Investor Group in 2007, he now leads its portfolio management department.

Hamilton also co-hosts “The Wise Investor Show” podcast. On a June episode, Hamilton pointed out to listeners that the number of stocks doing well had been shrinking in recent weeks. “Diversifying for some has led to di-worse-ifying,” he quipped. 

The Wise Investor Group’s 17-person team manages $2.7 billion in assets. Initially aligned with Baird, the Wise Investor Group moved to Raymond James in 2022. 

Barron’s ranked Hamilton as the 22nd best financial adviser in Virginia in 2024, and Forbes rated him No. 18 in its Northern Virginia wealth advisers list this year. 

An English and economics major at Haverford College who grew up in Baltimore, Hamilton previously served as vice president of investments at Baltimore-based advisory firm Ferris, Baker Watts.

Hamilton lives in Vienna with his wife, Allison, with whom he has three daughters. A fan of the Baltimore Ravens, he also enjoys bass fishing, traveling and collecting wine.

Originally a lawyer, Aggarwal got into the events business after planning hundreds of events as president of the Indian CEO Network. This led Aggarwal in 1999 to found Cvent, a market-leading meetings, events and hospitality technology provider based in McLean. Cvent has grown to employ more than 4,800 workers serving some 22,00 customers worldwide.

The company has bounced between public and private, with Aggarwal taking Cvent public in 2013. In 2016, the company was purchased for $1.6 billion by Vista Equity Partners and taken private again. And in 2021, Cvent returned to being a publicly traded company briefly before it was acquired in 2023 for $4.6 billion by private equity firm Blackstone.

In July, Gov. Glenn Youngkin appointed Aggarwal to the powerful state governing board for GO Virginia, the state economic development and job creation initiative. 

In 2022, Aggarwal was inducted into the Washington Business Hall of Fame. He has been named CEO of the Year by the Washington Business Journal and an Executive of the Year by the American Business Awards.

Aggarwal holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, a law degree from Washington and Lee, and a master of laws degree from Georgetown.

Rhyu joined for-profit education tech company Stride in 2013 and has served as its CEO since 2021. Founded in 2000 as K12, Stride offers career-learning services for middle and high school curricula, programs for businesses and the military, and professional skills training in health care and technology for adult learners. Stride reported $1.84 billion in fiscal year 2023 revenue, an increase of almost 9% from 2022.

Rhyu has held a variety of positions at Stride through the years, including chief financial officer, president of corporate strategy, marketing and technology, and president of product and technology. He previously served as chief administrative officer and chief financial officer for Match.com, and senior vice president of finance at Dow Jones & Co. In May, Rhyu was tapped to become Stride’s board chair, following the December annual meeting.

Rhyu holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and an MBA from the London Business School.

Richmond insider Richard Cullen was an early pick by Gov. Glenn Youngkin to serve on the political newcomer’s cabinet when he took office in 2022, and he has remained a prominent figure in the executive branch since.

Before joining the Youngkin administration, Cullen was a senior partner at McGuireWoods, Virginia’s largest law firm. There, he served as chairman for more than a decade and represented a slate of high-profile clients, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Gov. Doug Wilder, former Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones, and Jonnie R. Williams Sr., the businessman whose relationship with former Gov. Bob McDonnell led to a federal corruption conviction later overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Cullen’s service hasn’t only been in the private sector, though. From 1991 to 1993, he was the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and he spent seven months as attorney general of Virginia in the late 1990s after then-Attorney Gen. Jim Gilmore stepped down to run for governor. 

A graduate of Furman University and the University of Richmond School of Law, Cullen serves as board chair for the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Kendrick became the 13th dean of the University of Virginia School of Law on July 1, replacing Risa Goluboff, who stepped down after eight years in the role and will continue to teach at U.Va.

A native of eastern Kentucky, Kendrick graduated from U.Va.’s law school in 2006 and became a member of the faculty two years later after clerking for former U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter and for Judge
J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 2017, Kendrick, whose scholarship focuses on freedom of speech and torts, won U.Va.’s All-University Teaching Award. She was also director of the school’s Center for the First Amendment and a special adviser on free expression and inquiry to U.Va.’s provost.

Kendrick was the law school’s vice dean from 2017 to 2021. In the early days of the pandemic, she oversaw the effort to move 139 courses online over eight days. She received her master’s and doctorate in English literature as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford.

At age 16, Kuhn founded JK Moving Services, now North America’s largest independently owned and operated moving company, with annual revenues exceeding $210 million. JK Moving and Kuhn’s other companies, JK Land Holdings and global corporate relocation firm CapRelo, employ more than 1,300 employees, mostly in Virginia.

One of Loudoun County’s biggest landholders, Kuhn is a major investor in data centers through JK Land Holdings, which in February acquired 108 acres in Ashburn primed for data centers.

In July, Leesburg Town Council voted to approve JK Land Holdings’ plans for an 86,400-square-foot flex industrial building. At the same time, Kuhn was seeking approval in Purcellville to build Valley Commerce Center, a business park.

In August, Kuhn purchased the 225-acre Waterside property in Sterling, which could become a mixed-use development, and the $60 million, 25-acre Telos Corp. site in Ashburn, where he may build a data center.

Kuhn also founded JK Community Farm, a nonprofit that donates its produce to area hunger relief organizations.

ADVICE FOR NEW COLLEGE GRADUATES: Work hard. Be clear about your goals, values and what you stand for. Treat everyone, your customers, your employees and those in your community, with care and respect.

Since July 2022, Carpenter has served as CEO of Comscore, an analytics company that measures audience and consumer behaviors, along with advertising impact, across media platforms.

Carpenter started his career at Comscore by serving as chief financial officer from November 2021 until moving into the CEO role. He came to Comscore from Publishers Clearing House, where he was CFO. Before that, Carpenter served in senior divisional CFO roles for Nielsen, Sears Holding and NBCUniversal after beginning his career at General Electric. In June at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting, Carpenter joined Comscore’s board of directors.

In August, on Comscore’s second-quarter earnings call, Carpenter acknowledged that, despite cost-cutting measures and service improvements he’d implemented, “2024 has not played out as we had expected.” He revised 2024 full-year earnings estimates downward to $350 million to $360 million, less than the company’s revenue for 2022 or 2023.

A multiyear deal for Comscore with Tysons-based Tegna, the nation’s largest owner of NBC-affiliate TV stations, was announced this spring, as was Comscore’s National Currency Certification by the U.S. Joint Industry Committee as a transactable cross-platform solution.

A U.S. Navy veteran, Tait joined government contractor ManTech International in 2018 as a division president before becoming its chief operating officer in 2020. Shortly after the company went private in a $4.2 billion sale to Carlyle Group, Tait became CEO and president in October 2022.

Previously, Tait spent two decades at consulting firm Accenture. He holds a bachelor’s degree in government from the U.S. Naval Academy, is vice chair of the board of directors for the Operation Renewed Hope Foundation and received his second consecutive Wash100 Award for top government contracting executives earlier this year from Executive Mosaic.

ManTech provides technology solutions for U.S. defense, intelligence and federal civilian agencies. It has a worldwide workforce of 9,800 and reported $2.55 billion in 2021 revenue.

In November 2023, ManTech completed its acquisition of Arlington County-based Definitive Logic, a move expected to add 330 employees to the contractor’s workforce. In January, ManTech announced the launch of a data analytics and artificial intelligence solutions practice for government clients. In March, SPA announced that it had acquired parts of ManTech’s technical advisory business. And in July, ManTech joined forces with Peraton to challenge a $245 million cyber warfare contract award to Booz Allen Hamilton.

Lutes started as Bon Secours Mercy Health’s Richmond market leader in 2022, not long after The New York Times exposed how the Ohio-based health system made as much as $100 million annually from Richmond Community Hospital through a federal medication discount program. While legal, the 340B overwhelmingly benefited Bon Secours hospitals in wealthier parts of the Richmond region compared to Richmond Community.

In January 2023, Bon Secours launched a three-year plan designed to improve the health and well-being of the East End neighborhood served by Richmond Community Hospital, including a medical office building, a $4.5 million MRI suite and a new behavioral health program.

In February, Lutes and other Bon Secours officials met with the Council of African American CEOs to discuss ways to partner with local minority-owned businesses. Also, Bon Secours announced in February it plans to open a sports medicine, primary and physical therapy facility on Richmond’s West Broad Street, a relocation from the former Washington Commanders’ training center leased by the health system on Richmond’s Leigh Street.

Before joining Bon Secours, Lutes served in leadership roles for Atrium Health in North Carolina.

In May, Wall became Richmond market managing partner for Big Four accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. In her role, Wall oversees approximately 175 employees and is part of a network of managing partners nationally and regionally who help PwC run its local businesses. Wall started her career at PwC in 2006 as an assurance director before making partner in 2021.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration, accounting and marketing from the University of Richmond and is a CPA.

In May, PwC announced a deal to become the largest customer and first reseller of OpenAI’s enterprise product. PwC will provide ChatGPT Enterprise, a version of OpenAI’s chatbot geared towards large companies, to its 75,000 U.S. employees and 26,000 U.K. employees. PwC said it has been developing custom GPTs to assist with tasks that include report generation and reviewing tax returns.

For fiscal year 2023, PwC reported revenues of $53.1 billion, employing more than 364,000 people in firms across 151 countries.