Jones has led Inova Health since 2018. The Northern Virginia health system employs approximately 25,000 people across its five hospitals and numerous other facilities, including the region’s only Level 1 trauma center and Level 4 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Jones previously led Cleveland Clinic Regional Hospitals and Family Health Centers. The editor of an American Urological Association journal, Jones is immediate past chair of the American Medical Group Association’s board.

In September 2024, Inova launched its first comprehensive campaign, with a goal of raising $500 million by Dec. 31, 2029.

Inova began construction in September 2024 on a Springfield hospital and a new Alexandria hospital at the former Landmark Mall site. They’re expected to cost a combined $2 billion and be completed in 2028.

The first phase of the $161 million Inova Fairfax Hospital emergency department expansion and renovation opened in late 2024, which included an expanded pediatric ER.

NEW LIFE EXPERIENCE: Getting to know some of the early founders of the internet and translating things they did decades ago to our own technology and AI journey at Inova.

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Since 2023, Sampson has led Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters, where she oversees 4,000 employees. She has worked for the pediatric health system for about 35 years.

Established in 1961, CHKD offers neonatal and pediatric intensive care, cancer care, acute inpatient rehabilitation, and medical and surgical care, as well as transitional care. Additionally, the health system includes Children’s Pavilion, a 60-bed pediatric mental health hospital and outpatient center that opened in Norfolk in 2022, as well as primary care pediatric practices, surgical practices and other facilities.

In June, CHKD added a fifth ambulance to its Mobile Intensive Care Program, which the health system launched in 1975, and the hospital recently expanded its pediatric cancer program to offer CAR T-cell therapy, which modifies a patient’s T cells to kill cancer cells.

Sampson most recently served as the health system’s senior vice president and chief engagement and innovation officer. She’s also overseen departments ranging from strategic planning to the donor milk bank to government relations.

A University of Virginia graduate, she serves on numerous boards, including those of The Norfolk Forum, the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association and the Hampton Roads Chamber.

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Matheis has led Sentara Health, a not-for-profit health system with 12 hospitals in Virginia and North Carolina, since 2022, overseeing more than 34,000 workers.

Sentara broke ground in October 2024 on a $107 million, 42-bed acute care hospital in South Boston expected to open in summer 2026.

After the health system said in April it would end its degree programs at the Sentara College of Health Sciences in Chesapeake, Sentara and Virginia Wesleyan University signed a letter of intent to create the Sentara College of Health Sciences of Virginia Wesleyan University, which will launch in January 2026. In September 2024, the health system cut 200 positions, mainly due to declines in Sentara Health Plans enrollment.

Matheis previously led the Hampton Roads hospital system’s insurance brands. Before joining Sentara, he held senior roles at Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri, Cigna Healthcare and Humana Health Plan.

Matheis serves as co-chair of the Hampton Roads Executive Roundtable. The University of Kentucky alumnus sits on several boards, including for cancer prevention medical diagnostics company Lucid Diagnostics.

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As founder and head of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, Friedlander leads 40 research teams with more than 450 faculty, staff and students working together to solve major health challenges, including brain disorders, heart disease and cancer.

Under his leadership, the institute, which was founded in 2010, had been awarded more than $379 million in grants and contracts as of September 2024, including two $50 million gifts.

In June 2024, the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, a Charlottesville-based nonprofit that promotes the use of ultrasonic energy to target tissue deep in the body, designated Virginia Tech a Focused Ultrasound Center of Excellence, making it the sixth such center in the United States and one of only 12 in the world. Friedlander chairs the center.

The Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance, Virginia Tech and Carilion Clinic are spearheading the region’s efforts within a statewide project to make Virginia a biotechnology leader. Virginia Tech announced in February the region’s $4.9 million GO Virginia grant.

A neuroscientist, Friedlander also leads academic programs for medical, doctoral, graduate and undergraduate students at Virginia Tech. At the medical school, he coordinates research curriculum and opportunities for students.

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Since 2023, McBride has been CEO of UNOS, the nonprofit that has managed the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) for more than four decades.

UNOS has come under congressional scrutiny in recent years, and a law signed in September 2023 authorized the Health Resources & Services Administration to break the OPTN management contract into separate awards. In September 2024, for the first time in its history, HRSA awarded separate contracts to multiple vendors for OPTN modernization work.

The HRSA also held special elections to create a separate board that was seated July 1. Previously, the OPTN board and UNOS’s board were made up of the same people.

In April, news surfaced that UNOS had reduced its staff —by roughly 10%, according to one report.

Although some of UNOS’s woes — including Senate and White House investigations in recent years — predate McBride’s tenure as CEO, she has been with the organization since 1995, when she took a position as senior biostatistician. In 2014, she became its chief operating officer overseeing the federal OPTN contract. She was named interim CEO in 2022 and became the nonprofit’s permanent head seven months later.

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