Sheehy carries on his father’s legacy as an auto dealer, manning the largest dealership group in Virginia and one of the largest in the nation. His late father, Vincent Sheehy III, founded Sheehy Ford in Maryland in 1965 as a suburban business near the newly built Capital Beltway.

Sheehy Auto Stores was ranked No. 33 in the nation’s top 150 car dealership groups as listed by Automotive News in May. According to the list, Sheehy reported $2.36 billion in group revenue for 2024 at its 28 dealerships.

After graduating from Dickinson College, receiving an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and working for Prudential and General Mills, the younger Sheehy joined the family business in the late 1980s and became president in 1998. Sheehy Auto Stores is the largest retailer of Fords and Nissans in the mid- Atlantic region, and it added two Maryland Toyota and Volvo dealerships in November 2024.

In 2023, the Sheehy family donated $3.65 million to Catholic University of America’s Metropolitan School of Professional Studies to endow the Sheehy Family Scholarship.

Sheehy is a trustee of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

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Thompson became an entrepreneur as a teen, when he purchased and ran his family’s hog farm in Windsor. He now heads the largest minority-owned food and facilities management corporation in the nation, which he founded in 1992 with the purchase of 31 Bob’s Big Boy restaurants.

Thompson Hospitality provides dining services for more than 200 companies, universities and hospitals, representing over $2 billion in business. The company also owns several restaurant chains, including Milk & Honey, Matchbox and Wiseguy Pizza, and runs more than 70 restaurants. In 2023, the company launched the Thompson Restaurants division, which is its fastest-growing business. In 2024, Thompson Hospitality generated nearly $1 billion in revenue.

Thompson graduated from Hampden-Sydney College and the University of Virginia’s business school, and he was later a member of both institutions’ boards. Attending U.Va. was meaningful, considering that racial segregation prevented his father, Fred Thompson Sr., from attending the school decades earlier.

Thompson is a member of the American Heart Association CEO Roundtable and sits on Performance Food Group’s board of directors.

Last year, Thompson bought Wildersmoor House, a 17-acre equestrian estate in Great Falls, for $14.75 million.

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Sever, a longtime Hershey employee, was named plant manager of the candymaker’s Stuarts Draft manufacturing facility in 2022. He had previously been site operations leader at the facility, which produces nut-based candies like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Almond Joy. The plant, which opened in 1982, is the second largest of Hershey’s seven manufacturing sites.

Sever managed the plant during a failed attempt by workers at unionization in 2022.

Hershey named a new CEO in August: Kirk Tanner, who was previously CEO of Wendy’s. In 2024, Hershey reported about $11 billion in net sales, slightly up from the previous year.

Sever’s 20-year career with the Fortune 500 company has taken him to China and included time as a plant manager in Hershey’s Lancaster, Pennsylvania, facility. In 2018, Sever became vice president of U.S. operations for educational travel company WorldStrides and started a small-batch confection company, Wild Blue Chocolate, with his wife, Jessie. He then held management roles at food and beverage companies Danone and Kerry’s locations in Virginia before coming back to Hershey.

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Lidl, a German discount retail grocery chain, entered the U.S. market in 2017. But it struggled to compete with its chief rival, Aldi, and Lidl has changed its U.S. CEO three times since 2018. In 2023, Rampoldt took the reins as the first American to lead Lidl’s U.S. division and its expansion.

As of July, the company operates more than 185 stores in nine states and Washington, D.C. — up from about 170 a year ago.

Rampoldt’s roots in the retail and grocery industry run deep: His first job was as a bagger at his local Kroger at age 15. After earning an MBA from Yale, he spent two decades advising leaders of U.S. and European grocery companies as a consultant at Oliver Wyman, KPMG and AlixPartners.

Lidl followed the appointment of Rampoldt by hiring four new executives and conducting layoffs in 2024. In stores, Lidl has relaunched its fresh meat and produce divisions.

In 2024, Rampoldt joined the board of directors of the Food Industry Association for a three-year term.

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In the late 1990s, Qreitem founded Capital Restaurant Group, the company behind Paisano’s Pizza, based in Chantilly. He opened his first Paisano’s location in the Shops at Fair Lakes 25 years ago and the brand became a franchise model in 2009.

The company now has more than 40 locations in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., and serves pizzas, pasta, wings, salads, subs, calzones, desserts and more, as well as being part of a joint venture with Seasons Pizza, a 32-store chain in the Northeast U.S. In 2024, Paisano’s sold nine franchise agreements in Northern Virginia, and this year, the company moved its flagship pizza shop to a larger site at East Market at Fairfax.

In 2024, Qreitem became a member of the statewide Virginia Growth and Opportunity Board, aka GO Virginia, a group that promotes regional economic development and workforce development across the commonwealth. He’s also served on several civic organizations’ boards, including Joe Gibbs’ Youth for Tomorrow Foundation and Visit Fairfax.

Qreitem also earned the title of honorary commander at Andrews Air Force Base in 2023 for his dedication to leadership and service to his community.

FAVORITE TEAM: Paisano’s is proud to be the official pizza of the Washington Commanders.

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Pohanka’s family has been selling cars since Frank Pohanka opened a Washington, D.C., dealership in 1919. Today, headed by Frank’s grandson Geoffrey, the company has more than 20 locations in Virginia, Maryland and Texas, and is one of the largest Virginia-based auto dealerships. It had revenue of roughly $2 billion as of 2024 and more than 1,400 employees in 2023.

Geoffrey’s children now work in the business — marking the dealership’s fourth generation. Automotive News ranked Pohanka Automotive Group at No. 34 on its list of the nation’s top 150 dealerships in 2025, up two spots from the previous year.

Pohanka was the 2023 chair of the board of directors of National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), ending his term in 2024. During his term, Pohanka said the Biden White House was moving too fast to encourage Americans to purchase electric vehicles and voiced concerns about Chinese electric car manufacturers.

Pohanka sits on the board of Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank. He also serves on the board of directors of NADA, representing the D.C. metro area’s new car dealerships.

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Nash began at CarMax in 1997 as an auction manager, working his way up to president and CEO in 2016. Founded in 1993 in Richmond as a subsidiary of electronics retailer Circuit City, Fortune 500 company CarMax is the country’s largest retailer of used cars, employing almost 30,000 people, including 3,300 in Virginia.

It reported $26.3 billion in revenue for fiscal 2024, and Nash became an eBay board member in September 2024.

This year, CarMax has focused on expanding its stock of newer used vehicles to meet consumer demand for modern features at lower prices amid rising tariff concerns on new car imports. The company is also leaning into AI, a move Nash calls “generative engine optimization,” or GEO. In Richmond, the company is the naming sponsor of CarMax Park, the Richmond Flying Squirrels’ forthcoming baseball stadium, and it is a sponsor of the Richmond Ivy Soccer Club.

A 1991 graduate of James Madison University, Nash started out working in payroll and accounting at Circuit City.

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