byline: Virginia Business

A University of Delaware alumnus, Woodhour has devoted 32 years to Maersk Line, rising to president and CEO in 2016.

Headquartered in Virginia with offices in Norfolk and Dulles, Maersk is the U.S. arm of Danish shipping giant A.P. Møller-Mærsk and has the largest U.S. flag fleet in commercial service.

The company was in the news this year for an unfortunate reason; it had chartered the Dali, a container vessel that struck Baltimore’s Key Bridge in March, causing the bridge to collapse and claiming the lives of six road workers. The collision also led to the temporary closing of the Port of Baltimore, forcing ships to move cargo to other terminals, including the Port of Virginia. In late June, the ship left Baltimore after blocking the Fort McHenry Federal Channel to all deep-sea vessels for 10 weeks. Although the federal government is still investigating the cause of the ship’s power outage that caused the wreck, the City of Baltimore has sued the ship’s owner and manager, not Maersk.

Woodhour serves as vice chairman of the National Defense Transportation Association’s board.

Since 2019, Moore has served as president and CEO of tobacco products manufacturer Philip Morris USA, maker of Marlboro cigarettes. He has worked under parent company Altria Group since 2003, serving as vice president of its heated tobacco products division and director of marketing for NuMark, Altria’s early e-vapor subsidiary started in 2013. Today, he heads the nation’s leading cigarette producer, established in 1847 in London.

As worldwide cigarette sales continue to decline, parent company Altria has expanded its product line to include heated tobacco and vaping products, with mixed success. In June, Altria filed through Helix Innovations premarket applications with the FDA for its on! Plus oral nicotine patches, which it says is larger than the leading tobacco-derived nicotine brands’ pouches. Altria manufactures its current line of on! pouches at the Philip Morris USA plant in South Richmond.

Appointed in 2021, Moore currently serves on Virginia State University’s Board of Visitors and will through June 2025. He graduated from Fort Lewis College in Colorado with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. An avid runner, Moore has participated in the Boston Marathon.

In 2019, Steitz was named president and CEO of plastic films and aluminum extrusions manufacturer Tredegar, a 1989 spinoff of Richmond fuel additives company Ethyl.

Steitz had served on Tredegar’s board of directors since 2017 while also serving as CEO of polymer additives supplier Addivant, which merged with SI Group in 2018. He was also a director of specialty-grade phosphate producer Innophos Holdings from 2008 until 2020, when it was acquired.

In September 2023, Tredegar entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Terphane flexible packaging films business to Oben Group for $116 million, subject to Brazilian and Colombian authorities’ approvals. Headquartered in Brazil, with manufacturing sites in Brazil and New York, Terphane has about 500 employees.

In May, Tredegar said that the Brazilian General Superintendence of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (SG-CADE) had issued a non-binding opinion recommending rejection of the transaction. The case is with the CADE Tribunal; CADE’s final decision deadline is Nov. 18. The Colombian authority cleared the merger review in February.

Steitz holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an MBA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Trepp had served as president and CEO at Hamilton Beach Brands since 2017. In February, he became CEO alone, as R. Scott Tidey was appointed company president, part of the appliance manufacturer’s succession plan. Tidey previously was senior vice president of global sales at subsidiary Hamilton Beach Brands Inc.

Trepp joined Hamilton Beach in 1996 as director of marketing. He became its president and CEO and a board member when Nacco Industries spun it off in 2017. Before that, he was president and CEO of the Hamilton Beach Brands Canada and Hamilton Beach Brands Inc. subsidiaries and CEO of the Kitchen Collection subsidiary.

Hamilton Beach makes and distributes home appliances and commercial restaurant equipment in North America and Latin America and is expanding into the home health and medical markets.

In February, its Hamilton Beach Health subsidiary acquired HealthBeacon, which develops medical devices for patients with chronic conditions to manage injectable medications at home. The 50-employee company operates in North America, Europe and Australia.

Trepp is a graduate of the University of Richmond and the University of Connecticut’s MBA program. He serves on The Steward School’s board of trustees.

Stacy, a former coal mining executive who headed Rapoca Energy, founded Par Ventures in 2000. In 2018, he purchased the vacant Bristol Mall for $2.6 million through Par Ventures and partnered with high school chum Jim McGlothlin to build Virginia’s first casino. Stacy and McGlothlin were instrumental in changing state gambling laws to allow casinos in economically challenged Virginia cities.

The temporary Bristol casino opened in 2021. The approximately $515 million permanent Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol, now scheduled to open in late fall, is expected to create an estimated 1,400 jobs and draw 4 million visitors annually.

Stacy was an investor in Dharma Pharmaceuticals, a licensed medical cannabis processor that was acquired in 2021 by Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries for $80 million. In October 2020, the company was the first in Virginia to dispense medical marijuana after the General Assembly loosened cannabis laws. Dharma Pharmaceuticals’ founders filed a lawsuit against Par Ventures, claiming Dharma is owed more than $7 million in relocation expenses for moving out of the Bristol Mall in 2021.

Youngkin’s victory in the 2021 gubernatorial race catapulted the former co-CEO of the Carlyle Group into the national spotlight. Politicos quickly seized on the affable businessman as a potential alternative to Donald Trump as the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, a possibility Youngkin neither openly embraced nor disavowed. But any hopes he may have had of a 2024 White House run were dashed by Virginia’s 2023 elections, when Democrats narrowly regained control of the General Assembly.

During his term, Youngkin has emphasized economic development and site development, factors that contributed to Virginia’s record sixth No. 1 ranking in CNBC’s Top States for Business this year. Youngkin’s economic wins have included securing a $1 billion Lego Group factory in Chesterfield County, but his plans for a $2 billion arena for the Washington Capitals and Wizards in Alexandria were quashed by Democrats during the last General Assembly.

While Youngkin previously kept a cautious distance from Trump, a strategy many political commentators say contributed to his 2021 success, he has switched gears this election, appearing with the former president at Trump’s golf club in Sterling and then at a Trump rally in Chesapeake in June. In August, he issued an order requiring paper ballots be used in Virginia’s 2024 presidential election.

A native of Lynchburg, Cardwell was chair of the board of directors of Roanoke law firm Woods Rogers in 2022, a position he held onto after the merger of his firm and Norfolk’s Vandeventer Black that year.

Cardwell, who became the first Black president of the Virginia Bar Association in 2022, continues as a leader at the state’s fifth largest law firm, which shortened its name from Woods Rogers Vandeventer Black back to the original Woods Rogers in May. 

After graduating from the University of Virginia, where he played football, Cardwell went to Washington and Lee for law school. Following graduation, he worked as deputy associate chief counsel with the U.S. Department of Labor Benefits Review Board before going to work at Woods Rogers in 1991. 

In his practice, Cardwell advises executives and human resources managers on issues, including harassment, sexual orientation and gender identity, retaliation and discrimination. He also provides guidance on topics including workforce reductions, unfair competition and union-organizing campaigns. 

In 2019, Cardwell was selected for the Martin Luther King Jr. Drum Major for Justice honor awarded by Roanoke’s chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

This year, Branch celebrates his 40th year at Bank of America. Since 2015, he has served as president of the bank’s Richmond market. He’s also chair of the Virginia Bankers Association board, which approved a merger with the Maryland Bankers Association to create the Mid-Atlantic Bankers Association holding company in July.

A William & Mary alumnus, Branch leads outside of work as well. He’s a member of the board of visitors at Virginia State University and vice chair of the Community Foundation of Richmond’s governing board. Additionally, he sits on the boards of Virginia Museum of History & Culture, ChamberRVA, Venture Richmond and the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges.

Bank of America reported $26.5 billion in net income in 2023 and employs 217,000 people globally, including more than 4,100 in Virginia. 

WHAT PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED TO LEARN ABOUT ME: I know the words to many “Hamilton” songs.

ONE THING I’D CHANGE ABOUT VIRGINIA: I would change Virginia’s slow adaption to change and move away from its steadfast commitment to traditions.

Kuhlmann took the helm at the credit union March 1, replacing Mary McDuffie, who was Navy Federal’s first woman CEO. She retired after 25 years with the financial institution, including five as CEO.

After retiring from the U.S. Navy as a rear admiral, Kuhlmann joined Navy Federal in 2019 as head of branch operations. He later worked as chief real estate lending officer before being named chief operating officer in 2022. 

Kuhlmann graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1983. Later, he earned a master’s in engineering management from Catholic University of America.

Spending more than three decades working for the Navy and the Department of Defense, Kuhlmann was a career submariner who also worked in financial management. As commander of Submarine Group 9 from 2012 to 2014, he oversaw everything from manning to equipping all Pacific Fleet ballistic and guided missile submarines. 

As programming division director on staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, Kuhlmann was responsible for the Navy’s $800 billion, five-year capital allocation process.

The nation’s largest credit union, Navy Federal reported $178 billion in assets in March and has more than 13.7 million members.

As leader of the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority since 2006, Belcher has helped bring new jobs to Southwest Virginia through numerous economic development deals. Two notable job announcements in the past year have included 170 jobs at data center company Tate in its access floors division, announced in November 2023, and 75 jobs accompanying natural gas company CNX Resources’ October 2023 new headquarters announcement.

Belcher also serves as executive director for the Virginia Coalfields Expressway Authority, which recently landed $7 million in federal funds and an additional $1.7 million from the Buchanan County Board of Supervisors. Together, the funds will be used to widen the expressway to four lanes from the Kentucky border to Grundy.

ADVICE FOR NEW COLLEGE GRADUATES: Time is your most precious resource, so make sure you use it wisely.

WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY: Probably have been less of a workaholic