Stamp leads Fortune 500 pharma manufacturer Merck’s location in Elkton. A former analytical chemist at the start of his career, Stamp joined Merck in 1997 as a project engineer and worked his way up.

The company founded a plant in the Rockingham County town in 1941. To expand its human papillomavirus vaccine manufacturing capacity, in 2022 Merck completed a major expansion of its Elkton facility, where 1,200 employees work.

In March, the company opened a $1 billion vaccine manufacturing facility in Durham, North Carolina.

Also in March, a federal judge ruled in Merck’s favor in a lawsuit that accused the company of concealing the risks of Gardasil, an HPV vaccine. In June, the FDA approved Enflonsia for prevention of respiratory syncytial virus in infants. Merck reported more than $64.16 billion in 2024 sales, up from about $60.11 billion in 2023.

WHAT MAKES ME HAPPIEST: I like to fire up the smoker on the weekends — brisket and ribs are my go-to.

TRAITS I ADMIRE: When someone can read a room, understand what’s going on and respond in a thoughtful way, that makes a big difference in how teams work together.

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Smits joined Civica as head of its sterile injectable manufacturing facility in Petersburg in fall 2023. A group of U.S. hospitals and philanthropic organizations established Civica in 2018 to address chronic generic drug shortages, and the nonprofit is part of Petersburg’s pharmaceutical hub.

The Utah drugmaker received the occupancy permit for its $140 million, 140,000-square-foot Petersburg facility in late 2022. The facility isn’t manufacturing commercial drugs yet; Civica anticipates drugs from the facility will be available in 2026. The plant will produce three types of insulin, along with other drugs on the Food and Drug Administration’s shortages list. Civica currently has about 240 employees at the site but plans to hire approximately 300 for the facility.

Before joining Civica, Smits was Sage Therapeutics’ vice president of quality. Prior to that, she served as site quality head of Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.’s Massachusetts biologics operations.

She has a master’s degree from Utrecht University’s medical school and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

Civica expects to start building a roughly $25 million, 50,000-square-foot lab in Chesterfield County this year, with plans to hire about 50 employees for it.

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As the head of Valley Health, Nantz oversees about 6,000 employees and six hospitals, as well as more than 70 medical practices. The not-for-profit health system serves a population of more than 500,000 in the Shenandoah Valley, West Virginia and Maryland.

Before joining Valley Health in 2020, Nantz held executive roles at Bon Secours Mercy Health, including as chief administrative officer and president of the Atlantic Group, a role where he was responsible for 14 hospitals and other services in South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Florida.

Nantz has a degree in accounting from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a master’s in health administration from Pfeiffer University in North Carolina. He chairs the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association’s board.

In May, the health system broke ground on the Valley Health Behavioral Health Pavilion on the Winchester Medical Center campus. The freestanding center will consolidate the health system’s mental health services offered in Winchester. Its expected completion is late summer 2026. In July, Nantz warned that Valley Health expects to lose more than $50 million in revenue following federal Medicaid cuts in a bill signed July 4 by President Donald Trump.

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Following its mission to promote the health of its Shenandoah Valley community, Augusta Health, which Mannix has led since 2008, launched its mobile medical unit to help expand access to primary medical care in April.

Mannix oversees roughly 2,400 employees (as of 2023) who work at the community-owned hospital, family practices and other outpatient facilities. The health system has expanded over the past year, with Shenandoah Valley Orthopedics and Sports Medicine and Rockingham Family Physicians joining the Augusta Medical Group.

After beginning her career as a surgical intensive care nurse at the University of Rochester, Mannix moved to health care management. She spent nearly two decades working for the Pennsylvania-based Guthrie Clinic, leaving in 2007 as president and chief operating officer of the Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital.

Mannix sits on the boards of the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association and the Shenandoah Valley Partnership.

In July, during a congressional debate over cuts to Medicaid proposed in a federal budget bill, Mannix said in an interview with WHSV that about 70% of her health system’s patients rely on Medicare or Medicaid, which will cause a decrease in revenue for Augusta Health.

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Blackley founded Evolent Health in 2011 with fellow Harvard Business School alums Frank Williams and Tom Peterson with a goal of providing technology to help health systems shifting to value-based care — where payment is connected to patient outcomes.

In 2015, Evolent debuted on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $195 million. Initially serving as president of the company, Blackley, who is also on the company’s board, became CEO in 2020 when Williams stepped down.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Blackley started his career in 2001 as an analyst in the Washington, D.C., office of consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Later, he joined The Advisory Board, a global health care research, consulting and technology firm, where he worked with Williams and Peterson.

In August 2024, Reuters reported that Evolent was in talks with private equity firms and health care services providers for a potential sale, but the company has not announced a deal in the year since.

Evolent reported 2024 revenue of $2.55 billion, up from $1.96 billion in 2023.

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An internist who has served in the federal government and as chief medical officer at WebMD, Whyte assumed leadership July 1 of the 178-year-old AMA, the nation’s major association of physicians. As of 2021, the association that advocates for physicians and works to better public health had 271,660 members.

Although Whyte travels to AMA’s Chicago headquarters, he resides in Northern Virginia.

He previously held leadership roles at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Discovery Channel, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Whyte also serves on Virginia’s Cannabis Public Health Advisory Council, which advises the governor on medical marijuana policy, and boards for the Alliance for Aging Research and the Health Systems Agency of Northern Virginia.

An author of five books, Whyte earned his medical degree from Hahnemann University School of Medicine and his master of public health from Harvard University.

INTERESTING PLACE I’VE TRAVELED: Chennai, India. I visited there while working on a documentary for Discovery Channel about the global epidemic of diabetes. People wanted to look “big” because that meant they were rich and successful. A very different mindset. ■

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