byline: Virginia Business

In addition to leading the Virginia and Washington D.C., metro area operations for Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group, Johnson served as the 2023 chair of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, where he tackled issues such as Metro funding, public safety and downtown revitalization.

At a January celebration of Johnson’s tenure, Tim Gillis, the managing partner of accounting firm KPMG’s Washington D.C., office (who is retiring in September), said of Johnson: “He has this gentle, quiet grace. Full of compassion, yet strategic. Action-oriented. Effective.” 

Before joining PNC in 2005, Johnson worked in portfolio management and underwriting at GE Capital and served as a vice president at Bank of America.

In February, PNC Bank announced plans to invest $1 billion in the next four years to open 100 new locations and renovate more than 1,200 existing ones. The greater Washington area will get 12 new branches as part of this endeavor, according to news reports. A Fortune 500 bank with assets of about $566 billion as of March 31, PNC is one of the 10 largest banks in the U.S.

Steib succeeded David Lougee, who retired Aug. 12, as president and CEO, as well as a board member, of the nation’s largest owner of NBC-affiliate TV stations. Under Lougee’s tenure, New York-based hedge fund Standard General’s $5.4 billion bid to acquire Tegna in May 2023 was terminated.

Steib, a University of Pennsylvania alumnus, came to Tegna after serving as CEO for Artsy, an online art marketplace. He’d previously served as president and CEO of XO Group (now The Knot Worldwide). Before that, he was CEO for vente-privée USA, which was the U.S. arm of the French flash-sale ecommerce company Veepee.

Formed in 2015 when Gannett Co. spun off its broadcasting and digital business, Tegna has approximately 6,200 employees nationwide. With 64 television stations in 51 U.S. markets, it reaches approximately 39% of all television households nationwide. The company also owns leading multicast networks True Crime Network and Quest.

In March, Tegna expanded its contract with Comscore, reaching a multiyear deal for the Reston-based media metrics and audience measurement services provider to cover all of Tegna’s markets nationwide.

A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and former Navy SEAL, Angold leads a company that was named the 24th largest federal contractor in 2019.

Angold left the military in 2005 and joined Blackbird Technologies, a solutions provider for the intelligence community that’s now part of RTX. After a stint at VP Expeditionary Programs in 2010, Angold joined ADS as Navy vertical manager. He held a variety of sales positions before being promoted to CEO in June 2022.

ADS started as a small dive shop, Lynnhaven Dive Center, in Virginia Beach. The son of the company’s founder created an offshoot in 1997 to manage federal contracts and supply military divers. The company handles more than 50,000 products and lays claim to being the second largest supplier to the Defense Logistics Agency, the 28th largest federal government contractor, and the 32nd largest supplier to the Government Services Administration.

In 2021, ADS recorded $3.1 billion in revenue. In 2023, it won a place on a potential 10-year, $3.2 billion DLA contract.

In 1916, Thomas Rutherfoord launched an insurance agency in Roanoke. Flash forward to 1979: Brown, Rutherfoord’s grandson, started his own insurance career at the family business.

In 1983, Brown moved from the Star City to Richmond to open a Rutherfoord office there with one employee. Brown became president of the company in 1998 and CEO in 2004.

In 2010, Brown helped to guide the company’s acquisition by Marsh McLennan. Brown became chairman of Marsh’s mid-Atlantic operations six years later. 

Marsh McLennan, which provides business insurance, employee health and benefits, retirement and private client insurance solutions, has more than 180 offices in North America and in 2023 reported $22.7 billion in revenue. The company has 336 employees in Virginia. 

With his sons Tucker and Thomas, Tom Brown purchased Yellow Umbrella Provisions, a Richmond specialty grocer of fresh seafood, in 2020. In March, Yellow Umbrella opened another location in the Libbie Mill shopping center, and the Browns are also working to develop an operation in Scott’s Addition that will include a Yellow Umbrella market and restaurant, as well as a Cirrus Vodka tasting room. They hope to open it this year.

In October 2023, the University of Richmond celebrated the 100th anniversary of the first woman graduating from Richmond Law — only 25 years after U.S. women were allowed to serve on juries.

Times have changed. In 2023, 39% of all U.S. lawyers were women, according to the American Bar Association. Today, 55% of all law students at the University of Richmond are women. “It’s a tale of amazing progress,” Perdue said at the event.

Dean of the University of Richmond School of Law since 2011, Perdue has blazed plenty of trails herself. She’s among the 43% of law school deans who are female. In May, Virginia Lawyers Weekly inducted Perdue into its Hall of Fame.

A graduate of Wellesley College and the Duke University School of Law, Perdue clerked for former Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy when he was a judge for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. She was an associate at the Washington, D.C., firm Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells) before entering academia. 

Perdue joined the faculty of Georgetown University Law Center in 1982 and later became an associate dean. 

Jennings is the third generation to lead the general contracting firm, which was started as a masonry firm in 1952 by his bricklayer grandfather, Lawrence Floyd Jennings. Larry Jennings, L.F.’s son and Jon’s father, joined the company in 1965 and helped expand the business into general contracting.

In the 1980s, the company made another business shift, building a backlog of large-scale private projects for commercial developers. Today, Jon Jennings oversees about 350 employees and a large portfolio of projects in the Richmond and Washington, D.C., regions.

The firm serves the mid-Atlantic, with offices in Falls Church and Richmond; clients include Target, Whole Foods Market, Federal Realty and Trammell Crow. Current projects include the 7000 Carnation Apartments in Richmond, two four-story apartment buildings totaling 175,000 square feet and 218 units, and two new automotive buildings for Lindsay Lexus in Alexandria. In October 2023, L.F. Jennings completed work on Richmond’s Mutual on Main apartments, a 168-unit property that emerged from the renovation of the Mutual Assurance Society Building constructed in 1905.

Bhatia has held the position of president and CEO of TMEIC Corp. Americas, a regional subsidiary of the Japanese-owned Toshiba Mitsubishi-Electric Industrial Systems Corp., since 2021. During his career at TMEIC, Bhatia has served as chief operating officer for the North American branch and held executive positions in Europe and Asia.

He has been with the company since its inception in 2003, when he was general manager of operations for Toshiba and Mitsubishi’s U.S.-based joint venture with General Electric. It later became TMEIC Americas. The company designs and develops advanced automation systems, large AC and DC motors, and photovoltaic inverters.

Earlier in his career, he held various engineering and sales leadership positions for GE’s operations in Roanoke County, Europe and Asia.

Bhatia was among the panelists at the 2023 Virginia Economic Summit and Forum on International Trade. Serving on the board of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, he holds an electronics and communications degree from Gulbarga University in India. During his 11 years at GE before joining TMEIC, Bhatia achieved his Six Sigma Black Belt Certification.

Universal Corp.’s CEO since 2008 and president since 2006, Freeman is a Richmond native at the helm of the world’s largest supplier of tobacco leaf. Freeman previously served as the corporation’s general counsel and secretary from 2001 to 2005; before, he worked at law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth (then Hunton & Williams) in the early to mid-1990s.

In fiscal year 2024, Universal Corp. reported $2.75 billion in revenue, a 7% increase from fiscal 2023. In February, Universal Corp. declared an annual dividend of 81 cents per share on the common shares of the company, marking the 54th consecutive year  the company has increased its dividend payments. In June, the company made the 70th annual Fortune 1000 list, coming in at No. 979.

A graduate of the University of Virginia and Yale Law, Freeman also serves on the board of Richmond-based Tredegar and the Mutual Assurance Society of Virginia. Freeman serves as immediate past chair of the Virginia chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

HOBBY/PASSION: Bird hunting, shooting sports, fishing

INTERESTING PLACE I’VE TRAVELED: Turkey

In May, hundreds gathered at the Virginia Beach Convention Center to celebrate the 25th anniversary of TowneBank. 

Back in 1998, Aston and friends famously launched the bank from his garage. By April of the following year, TowneBank opened three offices with the support of 4,000 founding shareholders. 

Today, TowneBank operates 51 bank offices in Virginia and parts of North Carolina, and has the largest market share in Hampton Roads. “Looking back, no one could have possibly imagined where Towne is today,” Aston wrote last year. 

Beginning his banking career in 1964, Aston was named president and CEO of Citizens Trust Co. in 1981. He went on to lead Commerce Bank and BB&T of Virginia.
In 2018, Aston ended his 20-year tenure as board chairman and CEO of TowneBank, becoming executive chairman as part of a succession plan.

He sits on the boards of Virginia Wesleyan University and the Virginia Business Higher Education Council.

TowneBank reported bank assets of $16.8 billion and $13.89 billion in deposits at the end of 2023. It has more than 2,700 employees.