byline: Virginia Business

In 1983, barely five years after graduating from high school in Alexandria, Gramm sold two new cars on his first day as a sales rep at a dealership in Vienna. “The retail automobile business has been in my blood ever since,” he says.

Gramm worked in car sales in Virginia and Maryland, becoming vice president of Maryland Motors before buying his first dealership, Safford Dodge and RV in Fredericksburg, in 2002. In November 2022, Safford purchased Brown Automotive Group, which includes 16 stores in Virginia and Maryland, and more than doubled Safford’s store count. The leadership team at Brown, based in Fairfax County, joined Safford, and the combined privately held company is now Safford Brown Automotive Group.

In 2024, Safford ranked No. 38 on Automotive News’ list of the top 150 vehicle dealership groups, a jump of 49 places from the previous year — the fastest-rising dealership in the nation.

A Southampton County native, McClenny has been working to bring tourism and film productions to Virginia since 1991. She ran Virginia Film Office, a division of the Virginia Tourism Corp., for two decades before becoming president of the state agency in 2012.

Tourism in Virginia generated $33.3 billion in visitor spending in 2023, with the tourism industry directly supporting more than 224,000 jobs in the state and driving $2.4 billion in state and local tax revenue. For 2023, Virginia was among the top 10 states generating the most sports tourism revenue, according to trade association Sports ETA.

To promote Virginia tourism during the 2026 commemoration of the nation’s 250th birthday, the agency recently awarded more than $200,000 in grants to support marketing, programming and events related to the Semiquincentennial.

As Virginia Film Office head, McClenny was responsible for bringing high-profile TV and movie projects like Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” to the commonwealth.

McClenny, who received her bachelor’s degree in economics from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, serves on the board of Travel South USA, a destination marketing organization for the South.

Since Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s election, Lucas has become the face of Virginia Democrats’ “blue brick wall” strategy to block Republican priorities in Richmond. Key to her public image is the state senator’s brash and outspoken presence on X, where she has more than 95,000 followers.

Democrats’ success in the November elections and a reshuffling of political maps propelled Lucas into the chairmanship of the powerful Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee in January. She is widely seen as the decisive factor in the demise of Youngkin’s proposal to build an arena for the Washington Wizards and Capitals in Alexandria.

The first female shipfitter at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and a businesswoman whose ventures include a cannabis store, Lucas came to the Senate from Portsmouth City Council in 1992. When Democrats retook control of the General Assembly in 2020, she became president pro tempore. That year, Portsmouth’s police chief charged Lucas with two felonies related to protests at a Confederate monument; the charges were later dismissed, and in late 2021, Lucas won a $300,000 settlement from the city that she pledged to donate to community nonprofits.

Dacey has stayed busy since January 2023, when the Riverside Health System president added CEO to his title and responsibilities. Riverside has more than 9,500 employees and operates seven hospitals in Newport News, Williamsburg, Hampton, Yorktown, Gloucester and Onancock, as well as
110 medical offices in the region.

In May, Dacey announced Riverside Health System would launch an inaugural internal medicine residency with eight slots in fall 2024 as a way of addressing the national physician shortage. In April, he kicked off a campaign to raise $12 million in support of Riverside’s neuroscience services.

More than 200 people — including Gov. Glenn Youngkin — Dacey in fall 2023 for a ribbon cutting at Riverside Mental Health & Recovery Center, Virginia’s first stand-alone psychiatric emergency department in Hampton.

Before joining Riverside in 2018 as chief clinical operations officer, Dacey worked as chief medical officer for Care New England in Rhode Island. A graduate of Providence College and George Washington University School of Medicine, Dacey also earned a master’s degree in health care management from the Harvard School of Public Health.

President and CEO of United Way since 2021, Williams is the first Black woman to lead the organization. Previously, she was president and CEO of Easterseals and executive vice president at YMCA of the USA.

United Way Worldwide and its four partners in the Power Forward Communities coalition received a $2 billion, seven-year National Clean Investment Fund grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in April. The grant will promote affordable efforts to decarbonize and electrify homes in low-income and marginalized communities in the United States.

In April, a former chief marketing officer filed a $12 million lawsuit against UWW, claiming retaliation and wrongful firing after reporting sexual harassment incidents to administrators. The alleged incidents took place before Williams joined the organization. An independent investigation by a law firm found that UWW did not engage in “actionable harassment, discrimination or retaliation” against three employees.

A native of South Carolina, Williams holds a law degree from the University of Texas Law School and a divinity master’s degree from Virginia Union University.

In August, PwC named Johnson managing partner for the Washington, D.C., office, which serves clients in Northern Virginia. Johnson replaces Kevin Smithson, who was promoted to east regions market leader, a newly created position.

Johnson holds on to her previous role as lead client partner in the deals practice, in addition to her new responsibility at the Big Four accounting firm where she’s worked since 2015. She is well versed in the hospitality and travel industries and frequently sits on panels and speaks to the media about those topics.

In addition to a degree in marketing from George Washington University, Johnson earned an MBA at the University of Maryland. She previously worked for almost a decade at Deloitte.

Johnson is a trustee and sits on the education committee of the PwC Foundation, which supports the “people of PwC” and invests in solutions for challenges in education and humanitarianism. Additionally, Johnson sits on the board of Higher Achievement, a D.C. nonprofit that works to close the opportunity gap. She’s also a founding member of Chief, a networking group for female senior executives.

Since 2011, Lowham has led the Washington, D.C., office of the luxury real estate company, where he sells residential real estate to the rich and famous. In 2024, he was once again named to T3 Sixty’s Swanepoel Power 200 list, a ranking the country’s top leaders in residential real estate. He is ranked among the top 100 agents at Sotheby’s International Realty worldwide.

As a listing agent for some of the most expensive homes in the Washington, D.C., area, Lowham knows McLean’s luxury, single-family market inside and out. When he recently listed his own 9,000-square-foot McLean home for sale, he decided to go it alone, asking $7.95 million for the six-bedroom, seven-bath Georgian colonial, which he purchased for $3.7 million in 2007. He and his husband plan to downsize, Lowham told the Washington Business Journal.

Lowham holds an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University.

He serves on the Bright MLS board and is on the board of trustees for Washington’s Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens.

Since Rogers founded Capital Square in 2012, the real estate investment company has completed more than $7.8 billion in transaction volume and grown from handling mainly Delaware Statutory Trust 1031 Exchange offerings to launching a real estate investment trust and developing and operating multifamily properties across the nation.

In September 2022, Rogers’ son-in-law, Whitson Huffman, was promoted from chief strategy and investment officer to co-CEO. The real estate firm also announced the launch of a private equity group that month. In March 2023, the company launched its Capital Square Living subsidiary for multifamily property management.

Capital Square made the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing privately held companies for the seventh straight year in 2023, with a three-year growth rate of 263%. The company has been the largest developer in Richmond’s Scott’s Addition neighborhood. It has about 240 employees and manages more than $6.02 billion in assets.

A graduate of Northeastern University, Oxford University and the University of Virginia School of Law, Rogers previously served as president of Triple Net Properties, which he helped found. Before that, he was a partner with Hirschler Fleischer.

A former board vice chair, Farino was named CEO of Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority in April, succeeding Travis Hill, who led the agency for nearly a decade. Farino was executive vice president of Sandston-based Breakthru Beverage Virginia, a wine and spirits wholesaler and brokerage company, and previously worked at Tidewater Wholesalers and Coca-Cola Bottling. He also was president of the Virginia Wine Wholesalers Association from 2019 to 2023.

Virginia ABC, which reported $1.5 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2023, transformed from a state department to a semi-independent authority in 2018, a move that gave it more autonomy.

In 2022, the Virginia ABC found itself mired in scandal when employees were found to have embezzled money from seven ABC stores. In December 2023, Director of Retail Operation Jennifer Burke filed a federal lawsuit claiming she was put on administrative leave as a result of reporting the embezzlement. In June, the agency reached settlements with Burke and another former employee who filed a whistleblower lawsuit.

Following Hill’s departure in August 2023, Tom Kirby, chief of the ABC’s law enforcement bureau, served as interim CEO of the authority. Farino is a graduate of the University of Richmond and was an artillery officer in the Marine Corps.