2025 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards: Michael Elliott
In 2022, Elliott was named VCU Health System’s first chief operating officer, and moved to Richmond from Lynchburg, where he was chief transformation officer at Centra Health. He also worked for Sentara Health and earned a doctorate in pharmacy and master’s in health administration at VCU. In 2024, he was elected chair of th[...]
2025 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards: Roberta Tinch
Tinch has been a hospital leader for more than 15 years, including at HCA Johnston Willis Hospital in Richmond and HCA Spotsylvania Regional Medical Center, and has been recognized for her volunteer work by the March of Dimes. In 2023, Tinch was named one of Modern Healthcare’s Top 25 Emerging Leaders. She joined Inova in [&he[...]
2025 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards: Melissa Cade
Cade was promoted to her current role in January 2024, after 24 years with the credit union as director of its call center, director of retail, regional president of branches and senior vice president of product and innovation. She now oversees Chartway’s branch and member care teams, as well as the credit union’s multicultu[...]
2025 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards: Benita Thompson-Byas
Thompson-Byas joined the company started by her brother Warren Thompson right at its launch in 1992. Over the past three decades, Thompson Hospitality has grown from a group of 31 Big Boy restaurants to become the nation’s largest minority-owned hospitality business. Thompson-Byas is in charge of the company’s partnership wi[...]
2025 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards: Deirdre C. Gonsalves-Jackson
Trained as a biologist, Gonsalves-Jackson leads Virginia Wesleyan’s online, Japanese, evening and weekend programs under the umbrella of the VWU Global Campus. She’s been recognized for STEM outreach and has received multiple teaching and community engagement awards. In 2024, she was promoted from dean to vice president. FIR[...]
2025 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards: Yvonne Allmond
Allmond joined TowneBank in 2005 and has more than three decades of experience in banking and finance. Although she moved around in her youth as part of a military family, Allmond is today settled into Hampton Roads civic life, having served on boards for Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University Foundation and the Virgi[...]
FRED THOMPSON JR.
Thompson is partially retired as Thompson Hospitality’s CAO, but he’s stayed busy by starting two nonprofits: Opportunity Scholars, a Winchester-based organization that provides mentorship opportunities to underserved middle and high school students; and The Global Good Fund, which supports young adults from around the world[...]
RICHMOND VINCENT JR.
“Being a CEO is attainable,” Vincent says. “You just have to have the confidence of knowing that you can do it.” That can-do attitude has taken Vincent steadily up the ranks at Goodwill Industries International chapters from Arizona to Mississippi to Virginia, where last spring he assumed the stewardship of a Goodwill se[...]
GILBERT BLAND
Hall of Fame member Born in Jim Crow-era Harrisonburg, Bland launched his career in Chicago as a commercial lending officer before becoming a vice president for the largest Black-owned bank in the country, Independence Bank of Chicago. Bland found himself surrounded by Black entrepreneurs who “were tremendous role models.” H[...]
VICTOR BRANCH
Hall of Fame member The first African American president of Bank of America’s Richmond region oversees almost 2,000 employees at 25 locations, but Branch began his career as a sociology major, earning his bachelor’s degree in the subject from William & Mary. He credits Mary DePillars, a longtime executive at regional ban[...]
FLOYD E. MILLER II
Before taking over the leadership of Metropolitan Business League, a nonprofit association that supports small, women- and minority-owned businesses in Richmond, Miller worked in human services, education and criminal justice and spent 17 years as director of urban programs for Special Olympics Virginia. Those seemingly diverse [...]
AISHA BOWE
The daughter of a Bahamian immigrant who worked as a taxi driver in Michigan, Bowe was told by a high school counselor to become a cosmetologist. She decided instead to listen to her father’s advice and took a math class at a local community college. Somewhat to her surprise, she excelled and earned degrees in […]