Loudoun County has landed approximately $8 billion in new commercial investment for fiscal year 2024, according to the county’s economic development department. This year, construction began on the $3 billion Rivana at Innovation Station project, a 6.4 million-square-foot mixed-use development.

Rizer has headed Loudoun’s economic development for 17 years and is best known for helping build the county’s Ashburn area into one of the top data centers in the world. 

After his first career as a radio DJ, Rizer says he reinvented himself as an economic developer. He serves on the Northern Virginia Technology Council board and the GO Virginia Region 7 Council, and is an ex-officio member of the Washington Airports Task Force board.

Rizer earned his bachelor’s degree from Towson University and expects to finish his MBA with a concentration in economics at Longwood University in the fall.

WHAT PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED TO LEARN ABOUT ME: I am the proud owner of over 10,000 vinyl albums of all genres, but mostly rock albums, including original pressings from Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones and Frank Sinatra.

IF I HAD A TIME MACHINE, I’D MEET: Benjamin Franklin

Lynch joined Fortune 500 tech company Oracle in January 2023. As Oracle’s executive vice president of government intelligence and defense, Lynch has executed Oracle’s growth strategy and driven innovation in cloud technology.

In August 2023, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure was approved to host top secret/sensitive compartmented information missions, allowing the intelligence community and the Department of Defense to use Oracle’s cloud offerings.

For fiscal 2023, Oracle announced revenues of $50 billion, up from $42.4 billion the previous year.

Before Oracle, Lynch spent 24 years at Booz Allen Hamilton in numerous positions, including executive vice president and client service officer to the intelligence business unit.

Lynch is a past board member for The Women’s Center in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the Potomac Officers Club 4×24 Intelligence Leadership group. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and George Washington University, Lynch was named this year to the Professional Services Council board and Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 list of top government contracting executives.

When Democrats took control of the House of Delegates in 2020, Herring became the first woman and first African American to serve as majority leader. After Republicans retook the chamber following the 2021 elections, she became caucus chair but returned to her majority leader role when her party narrowly reassumed power this year.

Early experience with homelessness helped shape Herring’s outlook, and she attended George Mason University through the school’s Student Transition Empowerment Program, which assists disadvantaged students in transitioning to a college environment. Herring later became a lawyer and was first elected to the General Assembly in 2009. She served as chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia from 2012 to 2014.

In recent years, Herring has carried several of Democrats’ signature pieces of legislation, including bills to legalize marijuana possession and join Virginia to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate carbon market. She has also been active in criminal justice reform issues.

As the head of Valley Health, Nantz oversees more than 6,000 employees and six hospitals, including two in West Virginia, as well as more than 70 medical practices and other facilities. The health system serves a population of more than 500,000 in the Shenandoah Valley, West Virginia and Maryland. It reported $77.8 million in revenue for fiscal 2023, after losing $71.8 million in revenue in 2022.

Before joining Valley Health in 2020, Nantz held executive roles at Bon Secours Mercy Health, including serving 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.

In spring 2023, Valley Health and Anthem settled a $15 million lawsuit filed by the health system over unpaid reimbursements. The two entities managed to come to a consensus again in December 2023 and announced a five-year agreement ensuring in-network access to Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield members, Valley Health providers and facilities.

A Buchanan County native, McClanahan has led the Virginia Tech Foundation since 2021. She was previously a state Supreme Court justice and president and dean of the Appalachian School of Law.

McClanahan, who fondly recalls attending 4-H Congress on the Virginia Tech campus as a teenager, also serves as a senior adviser to the dean of Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business and is an adjunct professor of finance.

In 2024, the Virginia Tech Foundation marked its 75th anniversary managing the university’s endowment and real estate holdings, valued at $2.8 billion. The foundation also owns the for-profit Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center.

A Virginia Chamber of Commerce board member, she received her bachelor’s degree from William & Mary and a law degree from the University of Dayton School of Law. McClanahan was Virginia’s chief deputy attorney general before becoming a state appeals court judge.

INTERESTING PLACE I’VE TRAVELED: The Breaks of the Cumberlands, where the elk roam

WHAT PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED TO LEARN ABOUT ME: I love to be at the barn with my donkey, Fiona, and my horses, Puddle Duck, Ranger and Dink.

Morris has spent nearly 30 years in organizations dedicated to protecting the environment, a passion she developed while teaching in Namibia. She saw how the health of the community she was working with in southwest Africa was impacted by the unhealthy environment. Morris heads a global staff of 4,000 in more than 70 countries and all U.S. states, where it works to combat climate change, protect lands and oceans, and find sustainable food system solutions that will allow the world to feed the growing population. Locally, The Nature Conservancy helps support nature-based economic and community development projects in Southwest Virginia through the Cumberland Forest Community Fund.

Morris earned a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University, then spent 23 years with Conservation International. She joined The Nature Conservancy, which calls itself the world’s largest conservation nonprofit, in 2020. She also is board chair of Enduring Earth, a collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, The Pew Charitable Trusts, World Wildlife Fund and ZomaLab to accelerate conservation worldwide by securing long-term investment in large-scale conservation projects.

Under Malone’s leadership, Groundworks is covering a lot of new ground; as of late June, the water management solutions company already had announced nine acquisitions this year. 

This year, Groundworks purchased businesses in Seattle, California and Texas, and expanded into Canada with its acquisition of a Calgary basement contractor.

The firm’s rapid growth garnered it a spot on Inc.’s 2023 Best in Business list in the construction category, and it has appeared on the Inc. 5000 list seven years in a row.

Founded by Malone in 2016, Groundworks has 71 offices across 36 states and Canada, and employs more than 5,500 people, including 1,000 in Virginia. The company provides residential foundation and water management solutions, including foundation repair, basement waterproofing, crawl space repair and encapsulation, plumbing, gutter installation and concrete lifting services, and soil stabilizing solutions for residential and commercial projects.

Malone also is managing partner of private equity firm Succession Capital Partners, which he founded in 2009. A Rotary International Ambassadorial Fellow, he has a master’s degree from Adam Smith School of Economics and Finance at Scotland’s University of Glasgow. 

Kroger tapped Mora to lead its mid-Atlantic division in August. She replaced Lori Raya, who retired after holding the role since 2021.

Mora joined Kroger in 2022 as vice president on special assignment supporting End-to-End Fresh, an initiative designed to get the freshest food to shoppers. She went on to serve as vice president for merchandising in the company’s Michigan division.

Before coming to Kroger, Mora worked for more than 26 years at Walmart, leaving in 2021 as a vice president managing a section of the mid-Atlantic region, according to her LinkedIn page.

Mora holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania.

The company’s mid-Atlantic division operates more than 100 stores in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, staffed by about 18,000 associates. It has 68 stores in Virginia.

In 2022, Kroger and Albertsons Cos. announced plans for a $24.6 billion merger agreement set to be completed in 2024. However, in February, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit aiming to stop the merger, alleging that it would reduce competition and lead to higher grocery prices. Nine attorneys general joined the complaint.