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Hospitality | Tourism 2025: KNIGHT, JUSTIN

As CEO of Apple , a publicly traded real estate investment trust, Knight oversees more than 220 , mainly Hilton and Marriott brands, across 37 states and Washington, D.C. He joined the company in 2000 and took over from his father, founder Glade Knight, in 2014. The elder Knight serves as the REIT’s executive chairman.

For 2024, Apple Hospitality reported $1.43 billion in revenue, up from about $1.34 billion in 2023. As of Dec. 31, 2024, the company had more than $4.96 billion in assets.

In June, Apple Hospitality announced it had acquired the Homewood Suites by Hilton Tampa-Brandon in Florida for $18.8 million. The company has under contract a Motto by Hilton being developed in Nashville, Tennessee — an expected $98.2 million purchase anticipated to close in late 2025, after construction ends.

Earlier this year, Apple sold two hotels for a combined $21 million. It expects the $16 million sale of the Houston Marriott Energy Corridor to close in the third quarter.

Knight earned his bachelor’s degree and MBA from Brigham Young University. He is a member of the board of trustees for Venture Richmond.

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Health Care 2025: ROSNER, DR. MITCHELL

A nephrologist who joined the University of Virginia’s school as a professor in 2005, Rosner stepped in as interim executive vice president for health affairs in February. His predecessor, Dr. K. Craig Kent, resigned after an investigation into allegations in a letter of “no confidence” signed by 128 physicians in 2024.

Despite Kent’s departure, Rosner has dealt with multiple challenges in recent months, including sparring between former and current health system board officials and medical school faculty members, as well as the departures of Dr. Melina Kibbe, the medical school’s dean, and the CEO of the U.Va. Medical Center. In his role, Rosner oversees UVA Health, which includes the medical center, three community and regional clinics.

Meanwhile, though, the university is building the $350 million Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology, working to develop cures for cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. The institute’s 350,000-square-foot facility is under construction, with completion expected in 2027.

ADVICE FOR NEW COLLEGE GRADS: Be open to new experiences, embrace change, build strong relationships and continuously learn.

MOST VALUED POSSESSION: 1969 New York Mets baseball card set

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Hospitality | Tourism 2025: JAIN, AKHIL

Jain has run Landmark Group for over a decade. With nearly 500 employees, the hospitality company manages, owns and develops in North Carolina and Virginia under brands such as Marriott, Hyatt and Radisson. The company also expanded into housing in 2021, developing a
287-unit luxury apartment complex in Hampton.

As part of the $200 million Pembroke Square redevelopment in Virginia Beach, Landmark is developing a 163-room Tempo by Hilton hotel, expected to open in 2027. Construction began in May.

Jain joined Landmark in 1999 as a general manager. He has a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in hospitality management from Cornell University.

Jain chairs the Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters’ Health System board, and also serves on TowneBank’s Virginia Beach local board. He was named King Neptune for Virginia Beach’s 50th Neptune Festival in 2024, recognizing his community contributions.

His father founded Landmark in 1983 and remains its chair.

TRAITS I ADMIRE: I admire people who possess humble authenticity, along with determination and perseverance.

FIRST JOB: Sweeping hotel parking lots at age 9 for quarters to play in the video game arcade

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Health Care 2025: LUNN, DR. WILLIAM

In 2023, Lunn was promoted to president of Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA’s Capital Division, which includes 19 across three states, including Virginia.

In October 2024, LewisGale Hospital Montgomery in Christiansburg opened a $14 million, 10,000-square-foot freestanding emergency room. In December, the Reston Hospital Center opened an inpatient cancer care unit with eight rooms as the first phase of its oncology program expansion. This summer, HCA filed plans with the state health department for a $260 million, 60-bed new hospital in Chesterfield County.

A pulmonologist, Lunn was formerly CEO of HCA’s Chippenham and Johnston-Willis hospitals in Richmond and Chesterfield County. He also previously was president and CEO of Tulane Health System in New Orleans. Additionally, Lunn was assistant dean of clinical affairs at Baylor College of .

Lunn received his bachelor’s degree in history from Tulane University and his degree from University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. HCA reported $70.6 billion in 2024 revenue, compared to about $64.97 billion in 2023.

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Health Care 2025: NEWMAN, DR. CHRISTOPHER

Newman took over as president and CEO of the regional health system in March, after serving as its chief operating officer and chief officer since 2019.

Mary Washington began as an eight-room hospital in Fredericksburg in 1899 and now encompasses two , four emergency departments and more than 80 facilities.

Before joining Mary Washington, Newman was chief medical officer for Penn State Health St. Joseph Medical Center and led operations for the health system’s medical group.

An internist, he holds a medical degree from Georgetown University and received his MBA from the University of Virginia. He serves on the University of Mary Washington’s board of visitors and on the boards of Saint Francis Ministries, Fredericksburg Academy and The Fredericksburg Symphony.

In 2024, Fredericksburg City Council unanimously approved an amended development plan for Mary Washington to allow a $40 million expansion of the Mary Washington Hospital campus that would include a two-story medical clinic and a three-story conference center with office space and classrooms for the hospital’s graduate medical education program. The latter’s expected completion is 2026, according to Clark Construction.

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Hospitality | Tourism 2025: HARDIE, MOLLY AND ROBERT

H7 Holdings is a private family investment company that owns and manages Keswick Hall and Golf Club in Albemarle County and the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. Venture capital firm Level One Partners invests in the and sectors. The couple also runs the H7 Foundation, supporting educational and nonprofit endeavors, and have donated millions to the University of Virginia.

Robert Hardie earned three degrees at U.Va., where he recently concluded his third term on its board of visitors. From 2023 through the end of June, he was the university’s rector, a turbulent period that included the sudden resignation of U.Va. President Jim Ryan in June. Hardie also taught as an adjunct professor at the Darden School of Business and co-authored two books.

Molly Hardie oversaw major renovations at Keswick Hall and Hermitage Hotel. In 2017, H7 assumed ownership of Keswick Hall from The Riverstone Group, owned by her father, Richmond philanthropist Bill Goodwin. A graduate of Dartmouth College and U.Va.’s school, she chairs the board of trustees of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns Monticello.

The couple received the 2024 Historic of America Lifetime Achievement Award.

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OurView: Will AI spell lights out for white-collar workers?

Perhaps the greatest symbol of tech companies’ uncanny valley visions or the AI-powered future are dark factories — also called lights-out factories, these AI-managed manufacturing plants are so fully automated that machines perform their work in full or near darkness 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without breaks — and largely without humans.

So far, there are less than a handful of such plants, all operating outside the United States. Give it time, though, and they’ll likely appear here in the form of lights-out fulfillment warehouses and vehicle assembly lines. Blue-collar workers are hardly the people most in danger of being supplanted by AI, though.

As you’ll read in this month’s issue of Virginia Business, remains a key focus across industries, presenting opportunities for increased productivity and capacity (see our story about law firms integrating AI into daily workflows) as well as major challenges like AI’s rapacious appetite for energy. (See our September 2025 cover story about plans for expanding nuclear power.)

The biggest immediate dilemma AI poses for business and society, however, is its potential impact on the professional labor force.

In a May interview with Axios, CEO Dario Amodei of AI company Anthropic predicted what the news site deemed “a white-collar bloodbath.” Between 2026 and 2030, Amodei forecasts, AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar , resulting in up to 20% .

Speaking at a Federal Reserve conference in July, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “entire classes of jobs will go away” because of AI, notably including customer service.

Amodei warned against AI companies and government “sugarcoating” what’s likely ahead, noting that most people “are unaware this is about to happen. It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it.”

Believe it or not, we may already be seeing the signs. In late July, The Wall Street Journal ran this headline: “AI is Wrecking an Already Fragile Job Market for College Graduates.”

Companies told the Journal that they’re turning to AI platforms like instead of hiring interns or entry-level coders. And while the national unemployment rate hovers around 4%, it was 6.6% for new college graduates as of this May. Anecdotally, the Journal found the situation is worst among graduates with tech degrees.

The New York Times picked up that thread in August with this story: “Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.”

For the past several years, Virginia has been part of a massive push to produce more computer science graduates to meet the anticipated needs of companies like Amazon, which has its HQ2 East Coast headquarters in Arlington. But as the Times noted, Gen Z college graduates with computer science and computer engineering degrees are now battling unemployment rates of 6.1% and 7.5% respectively.

While there’s no firm proof yet this is due to AI taking over entry-level jobs, we’re also already seeing headlines about billionaire tech CEOs laying off and replacing hundreds of workers at a time with AI.
So, what’s the solution? We can’t have mass unemployment, and we can’t freeze out a new generation of college graduates eager to join the workforce, can we? The ancillary economic impact on industries from retailers to and real estate would be devastating.

Enter universal basic income, or UBI.

Tech leaders like Altman, Tesla’s Elon Musk and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff have been bandying about the concept of a “Star Trek” future in which literally everyone shares in the wealth generated by AI. Altman has floated the idea of annually distributing digital tokens to every person as a form of currency.

This vision of a tech utopia may be enticing to some, but — corporate social responsibility notwithstanding — our system of capitalism is based on profit, not charity. It’s difficult to imagine Elon Musk (net worth $418.7 billion) or Jeff Bezos ($237.8 billion) engaging in widespread wealth redistribution.

Maybe this is the tech industry crafting a preemptive defense against potential liability. Or, as MIT labor economist David Autor suggested to the Journal, maybe it’s because these CEOs “think they’re gonna put everyone out of work, and they don’t have a better idea for what to do about that.”

Health Care 2025: THOMAS, RONY

Under Thomas’ leadership since 2004, LifeNet Health has continued to grow since its 1982 founding as the Eastern Virginia Tissue Bank.

Today, the nonprofit that provides organ, tissue and cell transplants has approximately 1,500 employees globally. In 2024, the organization worked with a record 299 people donating 857 organs for transplant, a 25% increase from 2023.

While it’s better known for organ transplants, LifeNet Health also distributes nearly 1 million allografts — tissue implanted from one person to another — annually. LifeNet Health LifeSciences provides human primary cells, tissues and 3D models for scientific research, drug discovery and safety testing. In 2023, LifeNet purchased Bioventus’ wound care business for $85 million, including $35 million in cash at the time of purchase.

LifeNet Health announced in October 2024 it would use a lab in Virginia Beach for liver disease research and sports applications. The nonprofit is leasing the 5,700-square-foot facility that housed the VABeachBio Accelerator, with renovations expected to be complete this year.

Previously, Thomas served as CEO at USA Instruments. He has an MBA from Case Western Reserve University and a master’s degree from the University of Akron.

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Health Care 2025: PULCZINSKI, DALE

Pulczinski is corporate vice president of Novo Nordisk’s manufacturing facility in Petersburg. The Danish pharmaceutical company bought the former AMPAC Fine Chemicals facility from Seoul-based manufacturing conglomerate SK Group at the end of 2024.

The maker of Wegovy and Ozempic has more than 10,000 employees in the U.S. across 11 manufacturing, research and development and business locations and produces half the world’s insulin. Novo Nordisk reported 2024 net sales of 290.4 billion in Danish krone, equivalent to approximately

$45.3 billion. Of that, its U.S. sales accounted for 167.4 billion in Danish krone, or about $26 billion.

As of May, Novo Nordisk had about 100 employees at the 600,000-square-foot Petersburg facility and was hiring for new positions. The location will focus on increasing development and production of future Novo Nordisk products.

A former U.S. Navy officer and assistant professor of naval science in George Washington University’s Naval ROTC program, Pulczinski has been with Novo Norwdisk for more than 22 years. He most recently oversaw its Durham, North Carolina, facility, which produces oral finished products.

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Health Care 2025: CONNAUGHTON, SEAN T.

Since 2014, Connaughton has led this trade association that represents 26 . The VHHA advocates for policies that support the sustainability of Virginia’s health care system, reduce health care costs and improve the health of Virginians. The organization also tracked COVID-related hospitalizations at the height of the pandemic.

Previously a commissioned officer on active duty with the U.S. Coast Guard, Connaughton later joined the Naval Reserve and retired as a commander. Early in his civilian career, Connaughton was an attorney and served twice as chair of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors.

President George W. Bush tapped Connaughton to be administrator of the U.S. Maritime Administration in 2006. Later, Connaughton served as Virginia’s transportation secretary under Gov. Bob McDonnell.

In a July WRVA radio interview, Connaughton said Medicaid cuts at , part of the Trump administration’s budget reconciliation bill, would shift the cost burden onto people with commercial insurance. He and other Virginia health care officials have frequently sounded the alarm that the state could see some rural hospitals close due to the loss of funding.

A U.S. Naval War College graduate, Connaughton earned degrees from George Mason University, Georgetown University and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

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