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JENNIFER WAKEFIELD
Jennifer Wakefield is on a mission to turn the greater Richmond area into the top midsize region in the U.S. for business. To accomplish her goal, she is laser-focused on persuading companies to relocate to the area. She aims to create enough jobs to encourage youth to stay, instead of moving to other cities to […]
BARBARA D. BOYAN
“I decided at age 10 that I was going to cure arthritis because my mother had it,” says Barbara Boyan, and, in the decades since then, Boyan has never really wavered in her search for treatments. Although Boyan holds a doctorate in biology, she early on saw the value of mastering engineering concepts so that […]
JANET GULLICKSON
Janet Gullickson initially didn’t think much about the importance of being named the first woman president of Germanna Community College in 2017, after having worked in higher education in Colorado, Minnesota and Washington state. “I just thought, ‘Well, women should be in these positions,’” she says. “It shouldn’t[...]
FOR THE RECORD
Central Virginia The state’s fiscal 2023-24 budget, approved June 1, contains funding that will benefit future redevelopment of the Central Virginia Training Center site in Madison Heights. Republican Sen. Steve Newman requested $25 million in state money to annul outstanding bonds associated with CVTC, a former state facility for people with intellectual disabilities that closed […]
LORI GARRETT
When Lori Garrett was studying architecture at the University of Virginia in the 1980s, she recalls, there wasn’t a women’s restroom near her classrooms. “That changed shortly after I graduated,” Garrett says. “But clearly, in the ’80s, it was very male-dominated.” Garrett went on to oversee the design of buildings[...]
CAROLYN BISHOP
Virginia529 helps families in the commonwealth afford higher education for children by participating in long-term, tax-advantaged saving programs. And as chief operations officer of the independent state agency, Carolyn Bishop helps oversee its $60 billion in assets distributed across more than 2.5 million accounts. The job is a[...]
SUSAN HORNE
From her local government service to building statewide networks of people and organizations, Susan Horne knows how to connect people. Horne has been involved in Lead Virginia since its inception — first as a member of its steering committee and as a board member and then as a member of its second class in 2006. […]
AMY McDANIEL WILLIAMS
In 2011, Amy McDaniel Williams learned she had breast cancer. The hard-driving finance lawyer realized she needed to slow down and take care of herself. “The diagnosis made me realize that every day is a gift,” she says. In 2015, she created a supportive fitness community for cancer survivors, launching Amy’s Army of Cance[...]
TRACY FITZSIMMONS
Tracy Fitzsimmons thinks regionally. Through her involvement on GO Virginia’s Region 8 council, secretary of Loudoun Education Foundation and vice chair on the board of Shenandoah Telecommunications Co. (aka Shentel), she has connections throughout the Shenandoah Valley and into Northern Virginia. She also focuses on regional [...]
KIM ROY
By age 10, Kim Roy knew she wanted to build skyscrapers. Now she leads Hitt Contracting, a $3.3 billion commercial construction business that builds structures across America. Roy is passionate about recruiting women into her firm to help diversify the next generation of leaders in her industry. Women comprise about 10% of the c[...]
LAUREN SWEENEY
Lauren Sweeney founded Richmond-based creative agency Dotted Line in 2014 when she was 26 years old — building on insights from her family. “I come from a family of small business owners,” she explains, “so a lot of the language that I heard growing up around the dinner table was … the typical topics you […]
JAYME SWAIN
Jayme Swain is the first woman to serve as president and CEO of VPM and the Virginia Foundation for Public Media. She leads a 100-person team that creates content and programs for a network of public media television and radio stations and digital properties serving Central Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, a notable achieveme[...]
