byline: Virginia Business

Davis became president and CEO of Hampton Roads-based Kaufman & Canoles in April, succeeding William R. Van Buren III, who led the firm for 16 years and is now chairman.

The transition took place after an 18-month strategic planning process at Kaufman & Canoles, which has roots dating back to 1919.

Davis, who joined Kaufman & Canoles in 1997, continues to co-chair the firm’s health care team and serve on its executive committee. In his practice, Davis represents and advises hospitals, long-term care facilities, physicians and other health care providers on different matters, including potential breaches of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

He is president of the board of directors of the Norfolk Forum, a public lecture series.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Virginia, Davis completed law school at William & Mary in 1994.

With offices in Chesapeake, Newport News, Williamsburg, Virginia Beach, Tysons, Norfolk and Raleigh, North Carolina, Kaufman & Canoles had 92 lawyers in Virginia as of Jan. 1 and is the state’s sixth largest law firm.

Sixth-generation chicken farmer Heatwole started his 100% organic and humane-certified chicken company in 2014. Originally named Shenandoah Valley Organic but rebranded as Farmer Focus in 2020, the company lets farmers own their flocks, receive fair compensation and make key decisions.

In August 2023, Farmer Focus announced that Stephen J. Shepard, the company’s president and chief operating officer, would be promoted to CEO, a position Heatwole had held since the company’s start. Heatwole assumed a new role as chairman of the organization’s board of managers.

The moves are part of the company’s strategic plan and commitment to focus on the future of farming. In early 2023, Farmer Focus announced a $17.8 million expansion of its organic poultry processing facility that was backed by a $3.6 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant. The expansion would nearly double the number of chickens the facility could process and would allow the hiring of another 300 workers.

In a 2023 news release, the company stated that Farmer Focus was on track to double its revenue by the end of 2024 because of increasing consumer demand.

In April, Atlantic Union Bankshares, the holding company for Atlantic Union Bank, completed its acquisition of Danville-based American National Bankshares, parent company of American National Bank and Trust — a transaction valued at about $507 million.

The combined bank has $24.3 billion in total assets, $19.4 billion in deposits and $17.9 billion in total loans, based on unadjusted records from Dec. 31, 2023.

The merger is a prime example of the trend of community banks merging to compete in today’s economy, which Asbury has spoken about extensively.

On the negative side of the ledger, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined Atlantic Union in December 2023 for illegally enrolling thousands of customers in checking account overdraft programs between 2017 and 2020. The bank was ordered to refund at least $5 million in overdraft fees and pay a $1.2 million penalty to the CFPB’s victims relief fund. The bank did not admit any wrongdoing under the settlement, and Asbury said he disagreed with the bureau’s conclusions. 

With more than 35 years of experience in banking, Asbury has led Atlantic Union since 2016. In October 2023, the American Bankers Association named Asbury its chair-elect.

In October 2023, Levy was tapped to lead Amazon Web Service’s worldwide public sector business, overseeing government contracting activities for Amazon.com’s cloud computing subsidiary, as well as business for educational, nonprofit and health care organizations.

In 2023, AWS recorded $90 billion in net sales, up from $80 billion in 2022. Last year, AWS announced it would become the primary cloud provider for Anthropic, an AI startup in which Amazon has committed to invest up to $4 billion.

Levy previously served as AWS’ vice president of U.S. government, nonprofit and health care business. Before joining AWS, Levy spent 12 years at Apple, leading teams that helped the U.S. government adopt new mobile technologies. Levy also worked for Monster.com, started Empire Capital Management and co-founded Sulla Technology Group, where he served as chief operating officer.

Levy earned his bachelor’s degree in international economics from Texas Tech University. Earlier this year, he made Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 Awards list for the fifth time.

Novakovic has led General Dynamics, the world’s sixth largest aerospace and defense company, since 2013. During her tenure as CEO, Northrop Grumman won the Navy’s largest-ever contract, $24.2 billion, to build nuclear submarines. The Fortune Global 500 company employs more than 100,000 people and recorded $42.3 billion in revenue for fiscal 2023, a 7.3% increase from 2022.

Ranked No. 29 on Forbes’ 2023 World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list, Novakovic is a graduate of Smith College and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Before joining General Dynamics in 2001, Novakovic worked for the CIA, the federal Office of Management and Budget, and under two deputy defense secretaries.

In the past year, General Dynamics appointed a new chief financial officer, and its Falls Church-based General Dynamics Information Technology subsidiary landed a $450 million contract to modernize systems for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Novakovic serves on several boards, including for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan think tank. She is also board chairman of the Association of the United States Army and serves on the board of governors for Ford’s Theatre in its Executive Chairman’s Circle.

Baker leads Fortune 500 pharma manufacturer Merck’s vaccine operations in Elkton. The company founded a plant in the Rockingham County town in 1941.

Early in his career, Baker spent seven years at Pennsylvania-based Biopharm Project Solutions as a senior process specialist. He joined Merck in 2008 as a process engineer and went on to engineering leadership positions in Pennsylvania and Switzerland, before coming to Virginia in 2015.

Merck entered into a collaboration with Gavi, an international vaccine organization, and UNICEF in 2017 to supply more than 90 million doses of its human papillomavirus vaccines to low- and middle- income countries between 2021 and 2025. To boost capacity to make the vaccine, Merck in 2022 completed construction on a 120,000-square-feet expansion of its facility in Elkton.

On April 18, however, The New York Times reported that because of production problems, millions of African girls would miss HPV shots because Merck would only be able to distribute 18.8 million of 29.6 million doses it was contracted to deliver in 2024. Days later, Merck announced it had altered its initial commitment to supply 115 million doses of the HPV vaccine to Gavi-supported countries through 2025.

Between her leadership positions with the Richmond Association of Realtors and the Central Virginia Regional Multiple Listing Service, Lafayette serves more than 6,800 Realtors in Central Virginia.

This year, she’s become an even more powerful voice in the Richmond real estate community in the wake of a landmark court settlement that’s changing how homeowners buy and sell homes.

The National Association of Realtors this year agreed to settle a $418 million lawsuit that it conspired to keep Realtors’ compensation artificially high. As a result, agents’ standard 6% commissions are expected to fall dramatically; sellers likely will save money, but buyers are expected to pay more out of pocket, creating challenges for first-time home buyers. High interest rates and prices, leading to a lack of housing stock, also has added additional hurdles to home ownership.

Lafayette continues to advocate for affordable housing through her work on the board of the Partnership for Housing Affordability, where she was previously executive director. She also is on the board of trustees for Virginia Diocesan Homes.

A William & Mary graduate, Lafayette did postgraduate work at Yale Divinity School and the University of Virginia.

Founded in 1965 by Peterson’s late father, Milt, Peterson Cos. is responsible for some of the most prominent and successful mixed-use retail, residential and office developments in Northern Virginia and Maryland, including Fairfax Corner, Fair Lakes, National Harbor, Burke Centre and Tysons McLean Office Park.

Peterson, who became executive committee chairman in 2016 and CEO in 2018, helms the 170-employee real estate development firm, which also develops self-storage and industrial projects, including data centers.

The Peterson Family Foundation has made large donations to Northern Virginia entities this year, including a $20 million gift to Inova Health System announced in April and a $5 million donation to George Mason University announced in May.

A 1986 Middlebury College graduate, Peterson plays on the college’s alumni lacrosse team. He started his third term in July on George Mason’s board of visitors and serves on the boards of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance and Youth for Tomorrow, a nonprofit organization started by former Washington Redskins head coach Joe Gibbs.

PERSON I ADMIRE: Joe Gibbs. I admire his ability to build successful teams.

MOST RECENT BOOK READ: “How to Think Like a Roman Emperor,” by Donald Robertson

Carter Machinery has deep roots in Virginia, tracing back to 1928, when Robert Hill Carter founded Virginia Tractor in Richmond. The company was the state’s first Caterpillar dealership, and it is still going today as an independent dealer with more than 30 locations. It has more than 2,300 employees in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C.

Parker is the eldest son of the dealership’s former owner and CEO, Jim Carter, whom he succeeded as CEO in 2018. In 2020, the company purchased Baltimore-based Alban Tractor Co., expanding the business into Maryland, Delaware and Washington.

Carter Machinery runs an apprenticeship program for technicians that gives participants 400 hours of instruction and 2,000 hours of on-the-job training and mentoring. In August 2023, the company recognized its first graduate in the master technician program, which started in 2022.

Parker holds an undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Banas oversees the $3.9 billion Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Expansion, the largest highway construction project in Virginia’s history and one of the largest infrastructure projects in the country.

Milestones this year included one on April 17 when the tunnel boring machine, nicknamed Mary, completed its much-anticipated journey to North Island, broke through the headwall and created Virginia’s first bored roadway tunnel and the third of its kind in the nation. Vehicles traversing the new structure marked the first new bridge crossing the harbor at the HRBT in nearly 50 years. As of June, estimated completion for the expansion project is February 2027, a six-month improvement on the previously anticipated August 2027 finish date. Still, the end of the project is about a year later than originally scheduled.

A project manager with HNTB for more than 10 years, Banas also has worked on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel expansion, the Arlington National Cemetery Southern Expansion and the Elizabeth River Tunnels project. Prior to HNTB, he spent five years as assistant construction manager with Parsons Brinckerhoff (now WSP USA) working on projects, including the Gilmerton Bridge replacement in Chesapeake and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Alexandria.