100 People to Meet in 2025: Innovators

These scientists, founders and creators are leading the way in tomorrow’s industries, from national security to cannabis.

Wes Anderson

Vice president of defense, Microsoft Federal, Reston

As leader of Microsoft’s federal defense team, Wes Anderson oversees the company’s efforts to bring cloud and artificial intelligence innovations to the U.S. Department of Defense at a time when the nation faces competition from adversaries like China.

“AI is driving the fourth industrial revolution that is dramatically changing how we live, how we work and how we interact with the world around us,” Anderson says.

Anderson, who was named in 2024 by WashingtonExec as a top DOD executive to watch, has spent more than a quarter century with the Fortune 500 giant. He started his career working at the U.S. Naval Academy and has also worked at Northrop Grumman. When he’s not meeting with defense customers, Anderson works on his family farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Rory Brogan

Founder and CEO, Torev Motors, Arlington County

Rory Brogan hatched an idea for an electric motor as a junior studying electrical engineering and math at Southern Methodist University in Texas. For a second, Brogan debated dropping out to launch a company, but ultimately decided he needed business experience first. 

Brogan spent a few years working in securities and venture capital. After earning an MBA from Georgetown University in 2022, he launched Torev, which in June announced it was closing an oversubscribed pre-seed fundraising round. The startup has raised more than $1 million for its double axial flux motor, which reduces the use of rare earth metals while boosting vehicle efficiency.

Brogan says Torev is currently working with companies, “some of the biggest names out there.” He declined to provide names due to non-disclosure agreements. 

Sophia Economou

T. Marshall Hahn Chair of Physics, Virginia Tech; founding director, Virginia Tech Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering, Blacksburg

Sophia Economou’s research centers around theoretical quantum information science; she looks at how the behavior of physics at the quantum level might be applied to computing and connecting computers.

On an October afternoon, Economou, whose research has received more than $5 million in federal funding, was enthusiastic to report that several faculty members of Virginia Tech’s Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering who had previously been scattered across campus had recently moved into the university’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science II building — a move Economou thinks will boost collaboration. She’s also looking forward to 2025, which the United Nations has dubbed the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

B.J. Hughes

Co-founder and president, VIcom, Virginia Beach

B.J. Hughes, along with Dennis Schliske, launched a business setting up corporate phone systems in 2001. Called Virginia Integrated Communication, or VIcom, the company evolved into setting up video conferencing, first using phone lines and then over the internet.

Today VIcom’s areas of expertise include audio/video systems, phone and Voice over Internet Protocol systems, data networking, cloud services and total network management.

VIcom acquired Quality Communications, a Richmond communications business, in 2011, the same year VIcom became 100% employee-owned. The company’s business in Central Virginia has continued to grow over the years. In September, VIcom moved out of a leased office in Henrico into a 31,000-square-foot office and warehouse facility in Mechanicsville. VIcom’s headquarters are on Cleveland Street in Virginia Beach.  

Letitia “Tish” Long 

Board chair, Intelligence and National Security Alliance, Arlington County

Letitia “Tish” Long spent her entire career in national security roles, culminating in leading the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2010 to 2014, as the first woman to lead a U.S. intelligence agency. Though retired, she’s remained active and has been re-elected to her fourth three-year term as board chair for the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a position she’s held since 2016. 

The trade organization links government, industry and academia to solve challenges faced in the national security and intelligence areas, including obtaining security clearances and the ethical adoption of artificial intelligence. A Virginia Tech engineering graduate, Long says she does the work with her five grandchildren in mind.  

“It is about keeping this nation secure so that our grandkids can enjoy what we have all enjoyed, that is, the freedom to choose.” 

Will Melton

Founder, Richmond Water, Richmond

Will Melton was frustrated by how many plastic bottles he saw lying around the streets of Richmond. In December 2022, convinced that water sold in plastic bottles is overpriced and perpetuates unsustainable behavior, he came up with the concept for Richmond Water. 

Lessening the prevalence of single-use plastic bottles was only part of his plan, which also included championing Richmond artists like Hamilton Glass and Noah Scalin, and giving back to the community. Richmond Water offers locally sourced water bottled in reusable aluminum bottles, covered in designs by local artists, with 50 cents from every bottle sold going to local nonprofits. 

In partnership with community members and the city, the company is working to install public refill stations across Richmond. The public can nominate artists and nonprofits on its website.

Meghan Murray

Professor of practice, University of Virginia Darden School of Business; co-founder, Greenmont Hopworks, Charlottesville

Meghan Murray, a 1997 graduate of the University of Virginia, runs her own consulting firm and has taught at U.Va.’s Darden business school since 2012. She’s also on the board of the Anne and Gene Worrell Foundation, which focuses on economic development in the Charlottesville region, Surry County and Southwest Virginia. 

In 2016, Murray moved to the Albemarle County farm where she grew up, where she and her father, former U.Va. Rector James B. Murray Jr., started Greenmont Hopworks. This venture grew from a wild hops variety growing on the farm, and they combined it with another Virginia hops to produce a hybrid known as Greenmont Mother. Now the farm produces the largest amount of hops in the state, and local brewers are using the variety for their beers.

Adam Patterson 

Singer, writer and fashion designer, Jones-Hurst Designs, Big Stone Gap

Black, gay and introverted, Adam Patterson fled Wise County for Atlanta at 19, launching a career as a singer. But after a quarter century, Patterson came back to help his parents. His mom suggested that he start work on those books he always wanted to write. 

To date, Patterson has self-published two novels and two novellas, one called “The REAL Big Stone Gap.” 

A fashion lover, Patterson had, for decades, sketched designs. That evolved into creating Barbie couture and then to ripping up jeans to create fresh pieces for living, breathing humans.

After the 2022 death of his mother, Patterson poured his grief into sewing, eventually founding a clothing brand, Jones-Hurst Designs. With several pop-up events under his belt, Patterson opened a store in Big Stone Gap in October. 

Holly Szumila-Vance

Staff scientist, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Newport News

Holly Szumila-Vance is used to explaining the work she does at the Jefferson Lab, a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory, to laypeople.

“Everything that we see is actually made up of atoms, which is made up of things like protons and neutrons, and those are all held together by what’s called the strong force,” she explains. In May, she received the 2024 Guido Altarelli Award for experimental physics,

An electron beam allows Szumila-Vance to explore that world, focusing on color transparency of protons. “We can see all of the dynamics of what the strong force is doing inside of a nucleus,” she says. “It’s really kind of exploring the very fundamental building blocks of matter.”

Before earning her doctorate in physics from Old Dominion University in 2017, Szumila-Vance served in the Army National Guard as an aeromedical evacuation pilot.

Mike Tabor

CEO, Integra Vertical; vice president of operations, JackPot 777 Farms, Albemarle County

Since his days as a 12-year-old entrepreneur mowing lawns, through creating an Internet business in the ’90s, Mike Tabor has enjoyed building a brand. His green thumb brought him to the cannabis industry 20 years ago.

Greenwood-based JackPot 777 Farms, the company behind Integra Vertical, produces hemp flower and CBD-infused products legally sold in Virginia. Earlier this year, Tabor applied for a permit to set up a pharmaceutical medical cannabis processing operation for the Shenandoah Valley, although the license was awarded to a different applicant in September.

Nonetheless, Tabor is launching his first CBD product line in time for the holidays, including gummies, lozenges and CBD-infused coffee, one of Tabor’s favorite products. “Coffee is an easy way to integrate CBD into daily life.”

Will Wilson

Co-founder and CEO, Antithesis, Vienna

Will Wilson has long understood he’s better suited for the entrepreneur life. “I’m not like the greatest at following instructions,” he says. 

Even so, Wilson, who grew up in Hong Kong, has found parts of running Antithesis, the software startup he co-founded in 2018, stressful. For one thing, when working for a company, you usually have a good idea of what you need to accomplish to keep your manager happy. 

“When you’re working for yourself, you’re always wondering, ‘Could I be doing more?’” he says. 

Seems like Wilson, who has five kids, is putting in the elbow grease, though. Antithesis, which offers an AI-powered platform that continuously scans the newest version of software for bugs, emerged from stealth mode in February with $47 million in seed funding.

Check out the rest of our 100 People to Meet in 2025.