byline: Virginia Business

Layne, a former state secretary of finance and secretary of transportation under two governors, has worked at Sentara since July 2021, overseeing several teams, including legislative affairs, real estate, construction, supply chain, security, compliance, internal audit and privacy.

He also chairs the Virginia Port Authority board, which oversees the Port of Virginia, one of the state’s economic drivers. In 2022, the port recorded $126 billion in output sales, an increase from $100.1 billion in 2021. His five-year term runs through June 2026.

Layne is also a member of the TowneBank corporate board and a member of An Achievable Dream’s endowment board.

A native of Hampton Roads and graduate of the University of Richmond, Layne earned his MBA from Old Dominion University. Layne completed the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leaders Program in 2011. In February, Layne was honored as a recipient of UR’s Spider Athletics Alumni Achievement Award. He was a member of the university’s baseball team before graduating in 1979.

In March, Williams Mullen tapped Fowler to serve a fourth three-year term as the president, CEO and chairman of the state’s third largest law firm. Under Fowler’s tenure, Williams Mullen, which has 437 employees, has enjoyed nine consecutive years of increased revenue and profits that increased by an average of 11.2% each year.

A graduate of the University of Virginia and its law school, Fowler joined Williams Mullen more than 30 years ago. Through the years, his clients have included colleges and universities, health care systems and insurance companies. A champion of alternative dispute resolution, Fowler also serves as an arbitrator and mediator.

Fowler sits on the boards of the American Heart Association’s Richmond chapter and the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, as well as on the executive committee of RVA757 Connects and the board of trustees of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges.

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Holland went to work at a mortgage company after graduating with a finance degree from Old Dominion University in 1993. Three years later, he founded Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group. Today, the company has more than 800 employees and 139 branches across 17 states. Holland’s stepbrother, Stan Holland, is the firm’s president.

Although many in the mortgage industry may remember 2023 as a bad year because of high interest rates, ABMG helped 11,500 families get into new homes. 

In a LinkedIn post earlier this year, Holland rejected the idea that the industry should adopt a “survive until 2025” mentality. Instead, Holland picked the word “thrive” as his word for 2024.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin appointed the Suffolk native to Old Dominion University’s Board of Visitors in 2022. Holland also sits on the board of the Old Dominion Athletic Foundation and has season tickets for the Monarchs men’s basketball and football games. In 2017, ABMG secured naming rights for ODU’s Atlantic Bay Football Complex for the next 15 years.

Holland has three children with his wife, whom he met working at Red Lobster during college. He’s a passionate golfer and pickleball player.

In July, VonKruger joined two fellow members of Bank of America’s Native American Professional Network, along with a few other coworkers, at the Indigenous Voices of the Americas reception in Washington, D.C. 

“I am so grateful to work for an organization that celebrates cultural experiences,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “We are far more alike than we are different.”

VonKruger, who has served as Bank of America’s Hampton Roads market executive since 2018, is also happy to work for an organization that celebrates art. For 2024, the bank is funding 24 art conservation projects globally, including the conservation treatment of Edgar Degas’ painting “Dancer with Bouquets” at the Chrysler Museum of Art, where VonKruger sits on the board.

“Knowing how important the Chrysler Museum has been to fostering conversations and supporting community building here in Hampton Roads, I’m so glad to see their work recognized,” VonKruger wrote in May.

Before joining Bank of America in 2016, VonKruger worked for JPMorgan Chase for more than two decades. His community service includes serving as board vice president for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeast Virginia.

Caesars Virginia operates a temporary casino in a large tentlike structure while construction continues on the permanent $750 million facility in Danville. When completed, the property will include a 320-room hotel and a casino gaming floor with about 1,400 slot machines, roughly 80 table games and 24 electronic table games. The resort will also have 2,500 seats in a multipurpose space — combining the originally planned separate live entertainment venue and meeting space — along with dining rooms, bars and lounges.

The facility is expected to open late this year. In May, Danville City Council approved changes to its agreement with Caesars Virginia that estimates employment will be between 900 and 1,300 workers, down from the previously announced 1,300.

Albrecht has been with Caesars Entertainment for 19 years, including two years in his current post. Previously, he held the same title for Caesars’ Harrah’s Philadelphia Casino and Racetrack for six years. He has also worked at Caesars properties in Indiana, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Las Vegas.

Albrecht earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

A native of Greece, Bidzos is an internet and cybersecurity pioneer and an early advocate for encrypted commercial software. Verisign, a company he founded in 1995 as a spinoff of RSA Data Security, is the world’s largest internet domain name registration and infrastructure provider. Any address with a .com or .net domain suffix is registered with the S&P 500 company.

In August, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said it would renew its agreement with Verisign to run the .com registry but noted it planned to discuss pricing after multiple increases.

Bidzos began his career at IBM in the 1970s, previously served as president and CEO of RSA Data Security and co-founded RSA Laboratories, a cybersecurity research organization that created early encryption software. According to The New York Times, Bidzos struck a deal with the Netscape browser to use RSA technology. He previously served as president and CEO of RSA Security from 1986 to 1999, and he then served as RSA’s vice chairman from 1999 to 2002.

Verisign has about 900 employees and reported revenue of $1.49 billion in 2023.

Headquartered in Lynchburg, BWX Technologies manufactures nuclear reactors, fuel and components for the Navy, develops and manufactures microreactors for national security and space applications, and provides nuclear technical services at contractor-operated government labs and facilities.

Geveden joined BWXT in 2015 as its chief operating officer before advancing to CEO in 2017. Prior to BWXT, Geveden was an executive at Teledyne Technologies and a chief engineer and associate administrator at NASA.

A Fortune 1000 company, BWXT has approximately 7,800 employees — including about 2,840 in Virginia — and reported $2.5 billion in fiscal 2023 revenue.

In March, the U.S. Department of Energy re-awarded a joint venture led by BWXT an up-to-$45 billion contract to clean up a decommissioned nuclear production site in Washington state. In June, a joint venture led by a BWXT subsidiary was awarded a potential $30 billion Department of Energy contract to operate a nuclear weapons plant in Texas.

Geveden holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from Murray State University. He’s chairman of the board for TTM Technologies and previously served on the National D-Day Memorial Foundation’s board.

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Blackley founded Evolent Health in 2011 with fellow Harvard Business School alums Frank Williams and Tom Peterson with a goal of providing technology to help health systems shifting to value-based care — where payment is connected to patient outcomes.

In 2015, Evolent debuted on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $195 million. Initially serving as president of the company, Blackley became CEO in 2020 when Williams stepped down.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (who continues to be a Tar Heels basketball fan), Blackley started his career in 2001 as an analyst in the Washington, D.C., office of consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Later, he joined The Advisory Board, a global health care research, consulting and technology firm, where he worked with Williams and Peterson.

In June, Evolent announced plans to acquire an exclusive, perpetual and royalty-free license of Machinify Auth, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to increase the quality, speed and consistency of clinical reviews. The company reported fiscal 2023 revenue of $1.96 billion, 45% growth over 2022.

The board of the Medical Society of Virginia (MSV), a trade organization that represents more than 30,000 physicians, physician assistants, residents and medical students, brought Davis on as its executive vice president in 2014 and made her its CEO four years later. 

During the Virginia General Assembly’s 2020 session, Davis and MSV advocated for lawmakers to pass a law allowing doctors and physician assistants to seek mental health care and help for career fatigue without fearing repercussions to their medical licenses. Then-Gov. Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurosurgeon, signed a law creating the SafeHaven program in March 2020. In 2021, the law was expanded to include other health care professionals.

Today, MSV, partnering with VITAL WorkLife, manages SafeHaven, which offers clinicians resources such as  peer coaching and counseling to help with career fatigue and mental health issues.

Before coming to MSV, Davis was CEO and president of the American Lung Association of the Atlantic Coast. She also founded PlanG Holdings, a consumer platform that allows people to donate to charitable causes.

Davis has a degree in international studies from the University of South Carolina and an MBA from Virginia Commonwealth University.

In December 2021, Rogish became the first woman to lead Big Four global accounting firm Deloitte’s Central Virginia market. Rogish joined Deloitte in 1998, specializing in human capital services for clients in the financial services industry. She became a relationship leader for several clients in the Washington, D.C., metro area in 2005. In 2015, she was promoted to managing director of client relationships.

A graduate of Cornell and Columbia universities, Rogish is a women’s leadership advocate and co-sponsors several gender equity initiatives at Deloitte, including Within Reach, a research series analyzing the rise of women in leadership positions. She founded and is an executive sponsor of DC Spark, a networking organization for female executives in the Washington, D.C., metro area. Rogish has also served on the board of directors for Greater Richmond SCAN and YWCA Richmond.

For fiscal 2023, Deloitte reported record revenues of $64.9 billion, a 14.9% increase over the previous fiscal year.