Spilman has led Bassett Furniture as its CEO since 2000, also becoming the company’s board chairman in 2016. He has been with the home furniture retailer, manufacturer and marketer for four decades and succeeded his father, Robert H. Spilman Sr., as its chief executive.

A network of 87 company- and licensee-owned Bassett Home Furnishings stores accounts for approximately 60% of its wholesale business. For the first quarter of 2025, Bassett Furniture reported consolidated sales of $82.2 million, a drop of 5.1% from the same quarter in 2024. Part of the decline is continued low demand for home furnishings, Spilman said in July, but tariffs have been less disruptive to the company than in the retail sector.

The company has 1,228 employees and factories in Martinsville, Alabama and North Carolina. It plans to open facilities in Cincinnati and Orlando, Florida, by early 2026.

A Vanderbilt University alumnus, Spilman serves on the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges’ board, and he has been a member of Dominion Energy’s board of directors since 2009.

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In 2023, tobacco giant and Altria Group competitor Philip Morris International obtained full ownership of Swedish Match AB. The company develops, manufactures and distributes products including chew bags, moist snuff, tobacco-free nicotine pouches, matches and lighters.

Hayes began working for the Swedish tobacco products manufacturer in 2006, serving as chief financial officer and senior vice president before becoming president of Swedish Match’s U.S. division in 2020. A graduate of Wake Forest University, Hayes worked for nearly two decades at PricewaterhouseCoopers earlier in his career.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized Swedish Match’s Zyn nicotine pouches, making them the first and only authorized nicotine pouch sold in the United States.

A federal class-action lawsuit was filed in November 2024 against Swedish Match and Philip Morris International, alleging that by restraining competition in the oral nicotine pouches market, the companies violated federal and state antitrust laws.

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Paliotti has been president of Afton Chemical since 2023, after having joined the company in 2008 as operations finance director and working for its parent company, NewMarket, as senior finance director. Afton develops and manufactures lubricant and fuel additive packages and markets and sells the products globally.

Afton maintains operations in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. The company has about 450 employees in research, development and testing. In 2024, the company began developing new engine-oil products for passenger cars and commercial trucks.

Paliotti later became the company’s vice president and chief financial officer before being tapped for the top spot. Before joining Afton, he worked for Lenel Systems International and Eastman Kodak in finance.

NewMarket reported about $2.63 billion in sales for petroleum additives in 2024, compared with
$2.69 billion in 2023.

Paliotti completed his bachelor’s degree in business from Duquesne University’s Palumbo-Donahue School of Business in 1998. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s general management program and holds an MBA from Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania.

He will sit on the board of directors for the American Chemistry Council through 2027.

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A subsidiary of Duroc AB, a Sweden-based investment firm that invests in industrial manufacturers, Drake Extrusion produces polypropylene-based colored filament yarn and staple fiber used for home furnishings and automotive manufacturing. The company established its roots in Henry County in 1995, and Parkinson has served at the helm since 2001.

In 2021, Drake acquired North Carolina-based yarn manufacturer Michael S. Becker, and Drake has expanded its Henry County footprint twice in the past 10 years and employs more than 200 people nationwide. Its most recent expansion, announced in 2020, established an additional manufacturing facility in a 120,000-square-foot building.

Parkinson is a member of the GO Virginia Region 3 Council, which encourages economic development in Southern Virginia. He also sits on the West Piedmont Workforce Development Board and is secretary and treasurer on the board of the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber’s Partnership for Economic Growth.

Parkinson received a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from Lancaster University in the U.K.

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Gov. Glenn Youngkin, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and other officials gathered with Shim in Chesapeake in April to break ground for LS GreenLink USA’s roughly $700 million advanced cable manufacturing and port facility. The site will include a 750,000-square-foot production facility with the state’s tallest structure: a 660-foot tower needed to support the production of massive cables. It’s expected to be in operation in early 2028.

Shim, who joined South Korean parent company LS Cable & System in 2023, has a background in investment on the West Coast. He launched 1927 Capital Management, a private investment firm co-founded with a winemaking family, and worked at Mirae Asset Financial Group and Hana Financial. He also served as a planning commissioner in Upland, California, from 2020 to 2022.

A graduate of Claremont McKenna College, Shim has become involved in his new community, joining the board of the Virginia Maritime Association in 2024. He also is a member of the American Clean Power Association’s Federal Legislative Affairs Committee.

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Since 2012, Bassett has served as president of Vaughan-Bassett, marking the fourth generation to lead the family company, which opened in 1919. Its brands include Vaughan-Bassett Furniture, Artisan & Post and Laurel Mercantile Co. Home by Ben & Erin Napier.

Vaughan-Bassett also bills itself as the nation’s largest manufacturer of wooden bedroom furniture for adults. The company, which employs more than 500 craftspeople, returned dining furniture to its product lines in 2023 after a three-year suspension. In April, amid tariffs on Chinese and other countries’ imports, Vaughan-Bassett announced it would not raise prices for 120 days in a letter to dealers and sales reps, and it reported in May that uncertainty around tariffs have boosted its own profits.

In 2024, Vaughan-Bassett relocated its showroom to the new Furniture First building in High Point, North Carolina, moving from the International Home Furnishings Center half a mile away. The company’s factory facilities remain in Galax.

Bassett serves on the executive committee of the High Point Market Authority’s board of directors.

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In early 2023, Danaher, a Washington, D.C., conglomerate encompassing biotechnology, diagnostics and life sciences businesses, announced plans to spin off its environmental and applied solutions segment into a separate public company headquartered in Massachusetts and called Veralto.
A subsidiary of Danaher since 2007, Glen Allen-based ChemTreat is now part of Veralto, and Collier is now president of Veralto after previously serving as president of ChemTreat since 2021.

He was succeeded at ChemTreat by Ashour Khamis, who previously worked in Dubai for automation machinery manufacturer Emerson, and Khamis now reports to Collier. Veralto has 600 employees in Virginia, and 300 of them work at ChemTreat, which was founded in 1968 by a grandson of U.S. President John Tyler, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, who died in May at the age of 96.

An alumnus of Georgia Tech and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, Collier was an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper in the Army. From 2012 to 2018, he was employed in ChemTreat’s marketing division, leaving to become president of McCrometer, a flowmeter manufacturer and a previous Danaher subsidiary that is now part of Veralto.

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Since 2019, Moore has served as president and CEO of Philip Morris USA, the largest cigarette company in the United States with brands that include Marlboro and Virginia Slims.

Morris has worked for parent company Altria Group since 2003, serving as vice president of its heated tobacco products division and director of marketing for NuMark, Altria’s defunct e-cigarette subsidiary.

Philip Morris USA reported its domestic cigarette sales fell 10.2% in 2024 compared to the previous year. However, Altria has expanded its product line to include heated tobacco and vaping products — while hitting occasional obstacles, including thousands of lawsuits filed against Juul Labs, in which the company had a significant financial stake.

In 1998, Philip Morris and the nation’s three other largest tobacco product manufacturers entered into a master settlement agreement with multiple states, including Virginia, for costs incurred by smoking-related illnesses and deaths. Some of those settlement funds support the Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, which awards grants to promote economic development in former tobacco farming communities. In June, Gov. Glenn Youngkin reappointed Moore to the Virginia State University Board of Visitors for a second term.

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