byline: Virginia Business

Hardee has been with Lawson Cos. for more than half of its 52-year tenure, and he became president and CEO in 2016. He oversees a 190-employee real estate company specializing in the development, construction and management of affordable, low-income and market-rate multifamily housing communities.

Although the company got its start in Hampton Roads and still develops and manages numerous residential properties in the region, Lawson Cos. also has expanded into Richmond, Lynchburg, Roanoke and Woodbridge. 

Opened last year, Market Heights Apartments in Norfolk was awarded the 2024 CoStar Impact Award for Multifamily Development of the Year in the Hampton Roads market.

A Gulf War veteran, Hardee graduated from Virginia Military Institute in 1987. He serves on TowneBank’s Portsmouth regional board, as well as Southeast Virginia Community Foundation’s board, on which he serves as vice president. He also is Lawson’s executive certified property manager and holds real estate broker licenses in Virginia and the Carolinas.

Conston became TCC’s sixth president in January 2020, just before the pandemic. Laser-focused on ensuring student success despite the daunting challenge, she guided the college forward with a strategic plan — Innovate 2026 — and a vision “to be the community’s first choice for education, opportunity, partnership and innovation.”

The second largest college in the Virginia Community College System, TCC had a fall 2023 headcount of 15,912 students, slightly down from previous years, but administrators say they’re seeing more success in retaining current students.

Last year, the college expanded its Skilled Trades Academy, which opened in 2019 in Portsmouth and trains students in maritime trades such as pipefitting, welding, wind energy and more. With the expansion, TCC now offers programs including building maintenance, heavy equipment operation and logistics.

A runner who’s completed multiple marathons, Conston served 20 years as a vice president at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina, before moving to Norfolk.

WHAT I DO FOR FUN: I am an avid reader, dedicated journal writer, a published author of several articles and books, and a devoted mentor.

McDaniel is Hilldrup’s fourth president since the Fredericksburg-based moving, storage and logistics company was founded in 1903. The McDaniel family has owned the company since 1940.

McDaniel also chairs the board for UniGroup, the Missouri-based parent company of United Van Lines and Mayflower Transit.

McDaniel has grown the company since starting his current position, generating annual revenues exceeding $120 million. Hilldrup has 10 branches on the East Coast, 750 employees and 1.5 million square feet of storage space. In 2023, the company moved more than 17,000 families.

Hilldrup is the only agent in the UniGroup system to have been honored with United Van Line’s customer choice award 27 times. In November 2023, the company was named UniGroup’s member of the year out of 200 member companies. Among its qualifications were on-time delivery, claims ratio, revenue growth and network participation.

A 1986 University of Virginia graduate, McDaniel sits on the Stafford Hospital Foundation board.

After earning an economics degree and an MBA from Stanford University over a decade, Fairbank landed at Virginia’s Signet Bank, where he co-created the business that became Capital One, the Fortune Global 500 credit card giant.

Fairbank became CEO in 1994 during Capital One’s initial public offering. In 2023, the bank reported $36.8 billion in 2023 revenue, a 7% increase over 2022. With $475.6 billion in assets, Capital One is the nation’s ninth largest bank.

In February, Capital One announced plans to buy Discover Financial Services for $35.3 billion in an all-stock deal expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025. However, the acquisition has been under regulatory scrutiny, and in July, Capital One committed to spend $265 billion over five years to lending, philanthropy and investment if the deal goes through. A few days later, two Capital One cardholders filed a class action lawsuit against the two companies, claiming the deal would violate antitrust law.

In May, Capital One and Walmart announced they had ended a partnership that had made Capital One the exclusive issuer of Walmart’s consumer credit cards. Capital One’s second quarter net income was $597 million, a drop from $1.3 billion in the first quarter, as the company added $826 million to its reserves for losses on loans related to the Walmart program termination.

In April, the University of Virginia opened the School of Data Science building, which was built using a portion of a $120 million gift in 2019 from the Quantitative Foundation, the family foundation of Woodriff and his wife, Merrill, who are both alumni. The donation remains the largest in U.Va.’s history.

Woodriff started studying baseball statistics at age 11, which built into a focus on stock market data in college. That evolved into learning to “gamify investment management,” he said at the U.Va. School of Data Science opening ceremony. “I am eager to cheer on the University of Virginia’s contributions to the safe and ethical navigation of the murky waters ahead in artificial intelligence,” he said in a statement.

In 2003, Woodriff and two others co-founded QIM, a Charlottesville hedge fund that uses pattern recognition to predict global market shifts.

Woodriff also invests in early-stage technology startups through the Felton Group, his family office. In June, Caju AI, a company that uses AI to analyze messages and records to “deliver actionable intelligence,” closed on a $3 million seed financing round that included funding from the Felton Group.

After completing major renovation projects at several properties in 2023, Park Hotels & Resorts reported higher first-quarter 2024 revenue per available room and occupancy compared to the same period in 2023. The company reported almost $2.69 billion in 2023 revenues, up from $2.5 billion in 2022.

Park Hotels & Resorts also moved up 30 places on the 2024 Fortune 1000 list, ranking 957 this year, up from 987 in 2023.

Baltimore joined the lodging real estate investment trust in 2016, shortly before its 2017 spinoff from McLean-based Hilton Worldwide Holdings. He has led the company through the downturn in business and leisure travel during the pandemic and the rebound, including stopping loan payments on two San Francisco properties which are now in court-ordered receivership. Park has no further economic interest in the operation of those two hotels.

Baltimore was previously president and CEO of RLJ Lodging Trust. He co-founded RLJ Development, RLJ’s predecessor entity, and served as its president from 2000 to 2011. Baltimore, who earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA at the University of Virginia, is on the boards of directors of American Express and Comcast.

As chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Torian oversees the creation of the single biggest piece of legislation his chamber passes every year: the budget. Difficult in the best of times, the budget process in recent years has been complicated by divided state government. In 2023, with Republicans in control of the House of Delegates and Democrats leading the Senate, it took six months for both parties to agree to amendments to the two-year spending plan. In 2024, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the Democratic-led House and Senate reached a compromise budget in mid-May, with no tax increases or cuts.

Elected to represent part of Prince William County in the General Assembly in 2009, Torian took over leadership of House Appropriations in 2020, when Democrats seized control of the legislature. After a two-year hiatus when Republicans controlled the House, he returned to the post in 2024. He also chairs Virginia’s Minority Business Commission and is vice chair of the Major Employment and Investment Project Approval Commission, which vets projects eligible for economic development incentives.

A pastor, Torian holds degrees from Howard University, Virginia Union University, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Winston-Salem State University.

For more than a year, Sampson has led the Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters, where she oversees 4,000 employees, but she has worked for the pediatric health system for nearly 35 years.

Established in 1961, CHKD offers special units for neonatal and pediatric intensive care, cancer care, acute inpatient rehabilitation, medical and surgical care, as well as transitional care. Additionally, the health system includes Children’s Pavilion, a 60-bed pediatric mental health hospital and outpatient center that opened in Norfolk in 2022, as well as primary care pediatric practices, surgical practices and other facilities.

A University of Virginia graduate, Sampson most recently served as the health system’s senior vice president and chief engagement and innovation officer. She’s also overseen departments ranging from strategic planning to the donor milk bank to government relations.

Schmude doesn’t hesitate to tussle with health care executives. 

In April, Chesapeake Regional Healthcare distributed a statement complaining that Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield had paid the hospital 25% less than other hospitals in Hampton Roads. By the next month, Schmude had fired off an editorial to The Virginian-Pilot, pointing out that Chesapeake Regional Healthcare recently announced more than $150 million in new construction costs.

“I spend my time advocating for health care affordability because it is consumers and businesses that pay for health care, and they should not bear the burden of flagrant cost increases to fund Chesapeake’s expansion plans,” she wrote.

By June, Chesapeake Regional and the insurer had signed a multiyear contract. 

Before being named Anthem’s Virginia president in April 2023, Schmude spent almost 13 years at Cigna in different leadership positions, including serving as president of the mid-Atlantic market, which covers Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Schmude is a member of Marymount University’s board and sits on the payment models council of the national Healthcare Financial Management Association.