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KAREN WIGGINTON
Karen Wigginton is a passionate mentor who encourages women to dream big. Her secret to success, she says, is boldly taking on leadership roles that push her outside of her comfort zone. Since 2013, Wigginton has overseen marketing and sales strategies for Sunnyside Communities, which has three senior living properties in Virgin[...]
LORETTA CATALDI
When Loretta Cataldi started out in the real estate business 25 years ago, only a handful of agents were women. “Not very many doors were open,” she says, “so I had to climb in through the windows.” That determination has taken her from being an executive assistant to principal and managing broker at Divaris Real [&helli[...]
CATHIE J. VICK
Cathie J. Vick was the first woman to join the Port of Virginia’s executive leadership team eight years ago. Vick had no direct experience in the male-dominated maritime industry, so she almost didn’t apply for the job, but a male colleague encouraged her to try. “Just having my job is shattering the glass ceiling,” Vick[...]
CONNIE CONNELLY O’BRIEN
Early in her career, a client at the ad agency where Connie Connelly O’Brien worked threatened to take their business to another firm. Determined to fix the situation, she spoke with the client and learned that they did not feel heard, and quickly offered a solution. “By really listening to the problem they were trying [&hel[...]
DeETTE GRAY
DeEtte Gray began her career as a middle school math and science teacher in the late 1990s. Her passion for STEM education eventually led to her role at CACI, where she’s involved in modernizing government agencies’ operations. “One of my great experiences was integrating computers into the science curriculum, making the c[...]
BECKY BAREFORD
To become the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s chief operating officer, Becky Bareford had to embrace a paradox: She had to get “comfortable with being uncomfortable.” Her moments of greatest doubt also were her “greatest learning moments,” she says, and many learning moments later, she now oversees the bank’s $400[...]
JENNIFER TAYLOR
Jennifer Taylor’s birthplace of Middletown, Ohio, is the backdrop of GOP U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance’s 2016 book “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir about growing class divisions in the Rust Belt. While Taylor now lives in Northern Virginia and leads one of the largest regional technology trade associations in the nation, s[...]
BRENDA ELLIOTT KARP
Brenda Elliott Karp is the first and only woman at The Breeden Co. in senior leadership devoted to real estate development partnerships. Being a woman in her industry is not easy, and Karp is determined to change that. To help level the playing field, Karp dedicates her life to mentoring women through the Commercial Real [&helli[...]
IRMA BECERRA
“Prepare, prepare, prepare. Persist, persist, persist.” That mantra has carried Becerra, whose family fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba for Puerto Rico when she was an infant, to the presidency of Marymount University. “From immigrant to university president in a lifetime” is an extraordinary story, but one that she credits in [...]
WENDY HORTON
In March 2020, Wendy Horton arrived at the University of Virginia Medical Center to start her new job as chief operating officer at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Seven months later, she became the teaching hospital’s CEO. At 43, she oversees a medical center with approximately 700 beds and 9,000 employees. She credit[...]
LYNN CROWDER GREER
Lynn Crowder Greer has been instrumental in some of this country’s biggest legal mass claims resolutions. From 1990 to 2000, the attorney was part of the Dalkon Shield Claimants Trust, which obtained settlements for more than 200,000 women who had been injured by the contraceptive device produced by A.H. Robins Co., a Richmond[...]
DENISE VAUGHN
Twelve years ago, Denise Vaughn was struggling to balance work with the demands of raising a family. She felt like she was failing at both, so she resigned to take a less demanding job. The news reached the CEO of Ferguson, and he called her. She sobbed as she told him why she felt she […]
