Living Legends 2024: NANCY HOWELL AGEE

In April, Agee received the American Hospital Association’s Distinguished Service Award, the organization’s highest honor, recognizing “significant lifetime contributions and service to health care institutions and associations.”

Agee, who has led Carilion Clinic since 2011, announced her retirement in July. Carilion President Steve Arner will take over Oct. 1 as CEO of the $2.4 billion not-for-profit health system that employs more than 14,000 people serving more than 1 million patients in Virginia and West Virginia.

Agee was born at Roanoke Memorial Hospital and later graduated from the Roanoke Memorial nursing school. She went on to become lead administrative director of a National Institutes of Health oncology grant in Roanoke before becoming Carilion’s chief operating officer in 2001. 

Agee, who helped forge a partnership that resulted in the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, will focus on philanthropy as Carilion’s CEO emeritus through September 2025. Carilion received a $25 million gift in July from former U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Taubman and his wife, Jenny, toward its cancer center. Agee and her husband, U.S. Circuit Judge G. Steven Agee, kicked off fundraising for the center in 2019 by giving $1 million.