Black History Month traces its origins to an annual weeklong observance started in 1926 by historian and scholar Carter G. Woodson, a Virginia native. And since then, the February celebration of Black history makers and events has been intertwined with commemorating successful business icons like fellow Virginia-born greats Maggie Walker and Booker T. Washington.
With this in mind, Virginia Business presents our 2023 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards, recognizing a reader-nominated group of some of the state’s most accomplished Black executives. On this inaugural list are 17 leaders, chosen from 108 nominated executives in finance, federal contracting, higher education, law, technology and other sectors. Our editorial team selected the 17 winners, scoring nominations based on factors including overall professional achievement, community impact and mentoring.
Additionally, Virginia Business’ editors selected four of these 17 award-winning executives for additional recognition as inaugural members of our Virginia Black Business Leaders Hall of Fame, celebrating their outstanding careers and general excellence in business leadership. Our 2023 Hall of Fame members are: Gilbert Bland of the Urban League of Hampton Roads; Victor Branch of Bank of America; Victor O. Cardwell of Woods Rogers Vandeventer Black; and Warren Thompson of Thompson Hospitality Corp.
In this feature, you’ll read about our winners’ influences, what they’ve learned in the professional world and how they continue to pay that knowledge forward to others.
In Halifax County, where Wilkins grew up, people took care of one another, he says. That compassionate culture, plus seeing his father go through rehab after a car accident, inspired him to become a physical therapist. But Wilkins wanted to do more to help people be well and safe, so he went back to school to earn his master’s degree in health administration from Virginia Commonwealth University. That enabled him to serve in leadership positions at health care systems all over Virginia, including a stint as the first BlackCEO of LifePoint Health in Wytheville. He also serves on the state’s Health Workforce Development Authority board, which addresses staffing shortages in health care.
As head of Bon Secours‘ St. Francis Medical Center in Chesterfield County, Wilkins has to deal with a lot of spreadsheets and data, although he also helped out as a physical therapist to fill staffing gaps during the pandemic. “My duty,” he says, “is to get them the care that they deserve.”
Conston saw early on the value that education has for marginalized communities. She knew her goal was “to become someone to effect change in the lives of young people. And I knew that education would be the path to do that.” Conston began her career as a college administrator at her alma mater, Mississippi’s Jackson State University, and served as a vice president at Central Piedmont Community College in North Carolina for almost 20 years.
Since taking the reins in 2020 at TCC, the state’s second-largest community college, Conston has emphasized the importance of workforce training in fields such as logistics, offshore wind energy and health care. She often shares her mother’s advice: “You have to truly believe that you have the ability to achieve.”
Of all those whom Pharrell Williams has made happy, Virginia Beach government officials and business owners could be at the top of the list with the return of the music superstar’s Something in the Water this spring.
Williams’ three-day music festival debuted in April 2019 at the Oceanfront and was a smash hit, with 25,000 tickets sold in less than half an hour, prompting the sale of an additional 10,000 tickets, which also sold out.
SITW‘s economic impact on Virginia Beach was $21.76 million, and the entire Hampton Roads region benefited to the tune of $24.11 million, according to a joint report from Old Dominion University and the city. Virginia Beach’s costs were roughly $1.1 million, which was covered by an estimated tax revenue of $1.19 million. Hotel occupancy for the region that weekend was 86% or higher, spreading all the way up to Williamsburg.
“It was, by far, the largest event we’ve had in Virginia Beach, period,” says John Zirkle, who operates two hotels in the city and is president of the Virginia Beach Hotel Association. Many people who didn’t even have tickets to the three-day concert came for the festival’s other activities, he adds.
City leaders are similarly excited about the prospects for the 2023 festival, which returns to Virginia Beach April 28-30, after two years of COVID-related cancellations and the festival’s 2022 detour to Washington, D.C.
In November 2022, Williams, a 49-year-old Virginia Beach native, Grammy-winning musician and businessman, was joined by the city’s mayor and other officials as he announced Something in the Water would return to the city. The announcement, which was made during Williams’ Mighty Dream forum in Norfolk, was a surprise for many, given the contentious relations between Williams and Virginia Beach officials that had spilled into public view a year earlier.
In October 2021, a letter Williams wrote to City Manager Patrick A. Duhaney landed in local media like a hand grenade. Williams was pulling the SITW festival from Virginia Beach in 2022, he wrote, saying, “I love my city, but for far too long it has been run by — and with — toxic energy.”
At his Mighty Dream business forum in Norfolk last fall, Pharrell Williams announced his music festival would be returning to his hometown, Virginia Beach, in April.Pharrell Williams photo by Mark Rhodes
Williams was angered by the city’s response following the March 2021 police killing of his cousin, Donovon Lynch, as well as what he considered negative attitudes among city leaders toward Williams’ economic development projects. Williams explained that SITW had been intended to “ease racial tension, to unify the region [and] to bring about economic development opportunities” amid spring break festivities.
Virginia Beach officials tried to change Williams’ mind, but in July 2022, Williams held the second SITW festival in Washington, D.C., with no indication he would bring it back to the beach.
“I was shocked and hurt by it, because it was such a huge success,” says George Alcaraz, who owns two restaurants in Virginia Beach as well as events promotion company Resort Management LLC. “I don’t know what [Williams] did, but I swear … it was magical.”
Seeking solutions
Planned in less than a year, the 2019 SITW festival came about after Virginia Beach’s then-police chief, James Cervera, approached Williams for help in easing racial tensions during College Beach Weekend, which attracted students from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) up and down the East Coast. In recent years, the event had been marred by violence, and some Oceanfront business owners were worried.
“They had a problem with the students when they came down [for spring break],” Williams told Virginia Business in January 2022, and Cervera “asked me what I thought we could do. He was the one that agreed with me when I said, ‘Let’s do a festival.’ The next thing you know, the hotel association, the restaurant association and all those things, they all showed up.”
Alcaraz, who helped organize the first SITW, recalls a jubilant atmosphere in April 2019. “When I saw our safety personnel out there, doing high fives and hugging our guests who came to Something in the Water … I’ve never seen that before. That was a miracle.”
But when the pandemic led to the cancellations of the 2020 and 2021 SITW festivals, “the fear built back up” surrounding the prospect of big crowds at the Oceanfront, Williams said. On top of that, he said in early 2022 that he felt city leaders were concerned more about the future of the festival than the loss of his cousin’s life. “While we have a community that’s getting to accept such toxicity and extending toxicity, I can’t be a part of that.”
Williams didn’t entirely abandon his hometown. For instance, his $340 million Atlantic Park surf park project at the Oceanfront is still in development. But he also pointedly focused more of his attention on Norfolk. He hosted his Elephant in the Room and Mighty Dream business forums in fall 2021 and 2022 there and joined a team of developers vying for the opportunity to redevelop Norfolk’s Military Circle Mall property. As of early January, Norfolk officials were still negotiating with Williams’ group about its proposal.
Williams and his spokespeople didn’t respond to interview requests for this story, and city officials declined to give many details, but Williams met with four Virginia Beach officials in New York City last August, and that’s likely when relations began to thaw.
Taylor Adams, Virginia Beach’s deputy city manager and director of economic development, joined Duhaney and then-City Council members Linwood Branch and Aaron Rouse (who is now a Virginia state senator) on the trip, which coincided with Williams throwing out the first pitch at a Yankees-Mets game.
The group discussed Atlantic Park, in which the city has a $53.4 million stake. To be located on the former Dome site between 18th and 20th streets, the surf park is being developed by Williams and Virginia Beach-based Venture Realty Group, but it has seen some delays due to financing. While the group had hoped to start construction in late 2022, a groundbreaking date still has not been set.
During the New York meeting between Williams and city officials, the Something in the Water festival also came up in conversation, Adams says, but it was not dwelled upon.
“The real intention of the meeting was really just to work on the relationship and work on getting to a more productive place in our communication with each other,” Adams says. “I think the sincerity of that gave us a way forward. It’s important to give Pharrell a lot of credit. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think there is a power in Virginia Beach being his home.”
In late 2022, the city approved making a $500,000 financial contribution to the SITW festival, as well as footing the bill for an approximately $2 million city sponsorship funded through its Tourism Investment Program. The festival’s organizers would retain admissions, meals and local sales tax revenues within the festival’s footprint between Fourth and 15th streets, as well as online ticket sales. The final sponsorship amount will be determined after the festival, and if it exceeds $2 million, City Council must vote again to approve the amount.
It may also have helped that the city agreed in December 2022 to settle a federal wrongful death lawsuit brought by Lynch’s family and estate for $3 million, though the matter was still not finalized in early January.
In his announcement that SITW was coming back home, Williams acknowledged that demand for the festival “in Virginia Beach and the 757 [region] among the people has never wavered. If anything, it has only intensified. College Beach Weekend continues every year, and the city of Virginia Beach leaders have been eager to reconcile and move forward.
“I need to come back home. There is a pervasive feeling by almost everyone that the festival belongs in Virginia Beach, and the time is right to bring it back.”
Also, with more time for preparations this year, city officials’ expectations and plans have grown. Says Adams: “This one will be larger.”
More than music
Restaurant owner and event promoter George Alcaraz, who helped organize the 2019 Something in the Water, says Pharrell’s team dealt well with logistical challenges. Photo by Mark Rhodes
The prospect of a larger Something in the Water has Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads officials understandably excited. Adams expects the city’s hotels to have a “hard sellout” well before the festival, which would be “unprecedented.”
“There are weekends in the summer where we’ll sell out the resort,” he says, “but to sell out the resort in late April, that’s unheard of.”
Zirkle, with the hotel association, agrees: “I’ve been telling folks this is kind of like getting a bonus Fourth of July weekend or Memorial Day weekend. It’s that kind of impact — with even more demand, to be honest.
“It has an effect on everybody, because these folks will be going throughout the city. Airbnbs and rental homes will be used as well — the restaurants, the attractions, the adventure parks, the aquarium — it’s just good for everybody.”
The festival’s main draw is, of course, its big-name music acts, such as Williams himself and Virginia musicians Missy Elliott, Pusha T and Dave Matthews, all of whom performed at SITW in 2019. But it also features a variety of other activities and marketing promotions. Sony and Timberland were among the brands with a presence four years ago, and this year’s festival is set to include more partnerships, as well as opportunities for local businesses to get involved.
“I’ll tell you what I love about Pharrell and his team,” says D. Nachnani, Atlantic Avenue Association president and owner of Oceanfront clothing shop Coastal Edge. “I think there’s a real thoughtfulness in bringing our business community, our art community and our music community into the fold of the overall experience.”
The city’s contract with the festival also includes language that confirms that the event is much more than just music to Williams. Under “responsibilities of the producer,” organizers will “create a festival where young people will meet others who are pushing business and culture forward,” and “where these bright young minds may find their first job out of college, or they will be inspired to start a company of their own.”
For a city that relies heavily on tourism, the festival also is a prime opportunity for positive publicity. Condé Nast’s Traveler magazine recently named Virginia Beach as one of the 23 best places to visit in the U.S. in 2023 — citing the return of Something in the Water as one of the reasons.
“After the first festival, there were articles internationally, nationally, regionally — in all sorts of publications, related to Something in the Water,” says Kate Pittman, executive director of the city’s ViBe Creative District. “That brought attention to Virginia Beach, and the ViBe District was fortunate enough to be mentioned in many of those publications. Something in the Water has had a lasting impact on the reputation of the district.”
As the festival grows, so do its logistical challenges. But if the first event four years ago is any indication, Williams’ team appears up to the task, Alcaraz says.
“The magnitude of the infrastructure and what he did throughout the resort was incredible,” he adds. “I didn’t see or hear any problems.”
There were of course some issues, mostly revolving around parking and traffic, and some restaurants complained that barriers restricted customer access and hurt their businesses. Pittman notes that the ViBe District was particularly impacted by ongoing road construction, but city officials have promised to get a better handle on traffic congestion this time around.
Another potential speed bump is the ongoing labor shortage. Staffing for hotels and restaurants continues to be a challenge everywhere and will test Virginia Beach during the festival.
But now that the city has SITW back, it hopes to never let it go.
“It was hard to see it go to D.C., losing that momentum,” Pittman says. “But we’re so, so happy to have it come back. I think everybody loves a comeback story.”
Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center
Virginia Beach at a glance
What was once Princess Anne County became the city of Virginia Beach in 1963. Located where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Chesapeake Bay, the approximately 310-square-mile beachfront city is a major East Coast tourism draw. Other local industries include defense, bio and life sciences, advanced manufacturing, maritime and logistics, IT/cyber and offshore wind energy. Regent University and Virginia Wesleyan University are based in Virginia Beach, as well as campuses for Tidewater Community College, Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University.
Population
457,672
Top employers
Naval Air Station Oceana Dam Neck Annex (10,227)
Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story (5,020)
Sentara Healthcare (4,900)
GEICO General Insurance Co. (3,600)
STIHL Inc. (3,300)
Major attractions
Virginia Beach’s 3-mile boardwalk along the Atlantic Ocean draws beachgoing tourists from around the world. For a more secluded beach experience, visitors enjoy the city’s Sandbridge area, sometimes referred to as Virginia’s Outer Banks. But the resort city also has access to the Chesapeake Bay,
providing even more beach access. The city is also home to attractions such as the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, the historic First Landing State Park and the Cape Henry Lighthouse.
Top convention hotels
The Founders Inn and Spa 240 rooms, 40,000 square feet
of meeting space
Marriott Virginia Beach Oceanfront 305 rooms, 25,000 square feet
of meeting space
Holiday Inn Virginia Beach – Norfolk 317 rooms, 22,000 square feet
of meeting space
Wyndham Virginia Beach / Oceanfront 244 rooms, 16,247 square feet
of meeting space
Boutique/luxury hotels
The Cavalier Resort 400 rooms, 26,912 square feet
of meeting space
The Westin Virginia Beach
Town Center 236 rooms, 11,266 square feet
of event space
Hyatt House Virginia Beach / Oceanfront 156 rooms, 1,943 square feet
of meeting space
Beach Quarters Resort 168 rooms, 2,400 square feet
of meeting space
Getting ARDX up and running was not a 9-to-5 job. “It took saying ‘yes’ when others said ‘no,’” says Reddix, who founded her health care management and IT consulting firm in 2006. Her years of heavy lifting paid off, and ARDX has won more than $200 million in government contracts and is planning a $2.4 million facility expansion in Norfolk.
A James Madison University alum who was named to Old Dominion University’s Strome Entrepreneurial Center Hall of Fame, Reddix wants to leave behind a legacy of excellence and service. Through her Norfolk nonprofit, Envision Lead Grow, she also hopes to help girls, especially girls of color, overcome long odds to become successful entrepreneurs. “The notion of privilege is real,” Reddix says, but through Envision Lead Grow, she intends to show that “little girls with little means can still reach their dreams.”
Tim and Ben Jordan are first-generation grape growers on a Shenandoah Valley farm that has been in their family since the 1700s.
Although the brothers “leapt off the ground quite blindly” to pursue their passion, Tim Jordan says — first planting grapes in 2007 — their dream of building a winery on the farm proved “a wall of investment” they couldn’t scale.
Instead, with business partner Patt Eagan, they opened Common Wealth Crush Co., a collaborative winemaking business in Waynesboro‘s Virginia Metalcrafters complex. Over three years, the company plans to invest $1.5 million in ongoing renovations of 17,000 square feet of space, including a tasting room expected to open this spring.
Their vision, Jordan says, is to provide the resources needed for growth “for others like us who were bootstrapping every step of the way.”
The facility provides a range of services for small-scale growers to build their brands, from full production to helping experienced growers who lack the equipment to make their own wine, Eagan says.
The winery began operation in August 2022 with the necessary equipment — from grape presses to fermentation tanks — to produce 11,000 cases of wine from the 2022 harvest. The vintage represents eight distinct brands, in addition to their own house wines.
The goal over the next three years is to process an estimated 450 tons of Virginia-grown grapes with a market value of $1.1 million and create six jobs, likely five full-time and one seasonal.
If it meets those metrics, the company will receive a $25,000 grant from the city of Waynesboro matching an award announced in October 2022 from the state’s Agriculture and Forestry Industries Development Fund.
The city’s contribution will come primarily as reimbursement of local taxes and fees paid by the company during its first three years, says Greg Hitchin, director of Waynesboro’s Office of Economic Development.
The city expects the winery and a brewery already located in the complex to attract tourists from the Shenandoah National Park corridor. The state has more than 300 wineries that draw 2.64 million visitors and contribute $1.7 billion to the economy annually, according to the governor’s office.
Eagan says the winery is focused on but not limited to the Shenandoah Valley.
Virginia’s varied geology produces “really dynamic and interesting wines,” he says. “Wine as a beverage is such as great storyteller of the place it comes from.”
A former University of Virginia defensive back and high school athlete from Lynchburg, Cardwell has built a career in labor law. After graduating from Washington & Lee University School of Law, he worked at the Department of Labor’s Benefits Review Board before joining Woods Rogers, the Roanoke-based law firm (now Woods Rogers Vandeventer Black, after a 2022 merger), in time becoming the firm’s first Black partner and then its chair.
Cardwell credits his success partly to a philosophy of bringing positivity to his life and work: “If there’s someone around you who is vexatious to your spirit, who is not uplifting you … that’s a person who you don’t want to spend much time around.”
Immediate past president of the Virginia Bar Association and a member of the Virginia State Bar’s Diversity Conference board, Cardwell underscores the importance of mentoring and supporting others: “I want to be sure that young professionals are given every opportunity to succeed.”
A Hampden-Sydney College and University of Virginia Darden School of Business alum who grew up in the town of Windsor in Isle of Wight County, Thompson started his company in 1992 after purchasing 31 Big Boy restaurants from Marriott Corp., his former employer. Today, Thompson Hospitality is the nation’s largest minority-owned hospitality business, providing food service for universities and corporations all over the country, as well as holding stakes in multiple restaurant chains, including Matchbox and Velocity Restaurant & Hospitality Group, a partnership started in 2022.
A former member of HSC’s board of trustees who has also served on U.Va.’s board of visitors and Pepsi-Cola’s African American Advisory Board, Thompson says he intends to continue growing his company’s restaurant portfolio, which is rebounding to pre-pandemic levels. His advice to younger entrepreneurs: “Spend some time in that industry working for someone else. Put in your time; make mistakes on their dime.”
During summer 2020, racial inequities took center stage in the United States as protesters took to the streets after the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, by a Minneapolis police officer was captured on video and widely disseminated via social media and news outlets.
Corporate America also responded, primarily through public statements vowing to focus on diversifying their workforces and especially C-suites, which have long been dominated by white men. Amid national grief and outrage, executives seemed open to discussions about race- and gender-related inequities in pay and promotions, as well as the whiteness of corporate boards.
Quite a few companies and other institutions hired diversity, equity and inclusion executives — some of whom were the first and only Black members of their companies’ C-suites — in 2020 and early 2021. According to LinkedIn, hiring of DEI officers increased by 84% during the 12-month period ending Aug. 30, 2020, and by 111% for the same period in 2021.
But nearly three years after Floyd’s killing, progress has stalled at some businesses and educational institutions, sometimes spilling out in public forums.
More than 88% of the 681 Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies surveyed for executive search firm Crist | Kolder Associates’ Volatility Report 2022 continue to be led by white CEOs; the percentage is roughly the same for companies led by men. Additionally, a study released last year by Mogul Inc., a diversity recruitment firm, found that 69% of Fortune 500 board members are male, and 78% of Fortune 500 board members are white.
Meanwhile, DEI officers are averaging a three-year turnover rate, reports LinkedIn, and many companies do not report the demographic makeup of their workforces, making public accountability difficult or impossible to achieve.
“I see more businesses really refraining from speaking on DEI because it is no longer popular or advantageous for them. This, to me, is concerning,” says Narketta Sparkman-Key, associate provost for inclusive strategies and equity initiatives at James Madison University and formerly Old Dominion University’s director of faculty diversity and retention.
A recent CNBC report supports Sparkman- Key’s concerns about the regression of DEI initiatives.
Citing research from Glassdoor, CNBC reported that access to DEI programs nationwide surged to 39% in 2020 and peaked at 43% in 2021. In 2022, however, it dropped to 41%. “Many companies are starting to reorganize and find ways to cut costs, leaving progress toward diversity, equity and inclusion on the back burner,” a CNBC reporter concluded.
Kristen Cavallo, global CEO of MullenLowe Group and CEO of The Martin Agency, has made pay equity and inclusive hiring high priorities. Photo courtesy MullenLowe Group
Putting up walls
DEI efforts can falter for many reasons, including the current challenges with labor shortages and inflation, which makes hiring and retention more difficult.
At other workplaces, politics can interfere.
Virginia Military Institute, which came under scrutiny in 2020 following reports by The Roanoke Times and The Washington Post of racist attacks on Black cadets and alumni, hired its first Black superintendent, retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, that year. In May 2021, Wins in turn hired the institute’s first chief diversity officer, Lt. Col. Jamica N. Love, who was tasked with making VMI more welcoming to women and minorities.
However, a group of conservative, mainly white alumni have advocated for Wins’ firing, with some accusing VMI of adopting critical race theory to change the tradition-bound military academy, a claim Wins has said is “categorically false.”
The backlash — focusing on a politically tilted definition of a relatively narrow academic theory — has taken place nationwide, with conservatives opposing nearly any discussion of racism or slavery in K-12 schools and, in some cases, colleges.
CRT was a key element of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial campaign in 2021, and in his first act as governor, he signed an executive order banning “inherently divisive concepts” from being taught in school, including that a white person is inherently racist as a result of their skin color.
Youngkin also changed the title of the state’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer position, swapping out “equity” for “opportunity.” In November 2022, former Heritage Foundation fellow Martin Brown became the third appointee to the position in less than a year, after the first appointee, Angela Sailor, left because of a family matter. Subsequent hire Rosa Atkins departed quietly last fall and took a job as interim superintendent of a North Carolina school system.
The atmosphere and the job were quite different in 2019, when then-Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, named Janice Underwood as Virginia’s — and the nation’s — first state Cabinet-level chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer.
In a 2021 interview with Virginia Business, Underwood recalled that Northam’s administration approached her while Northam was under fire for a blackface photo appearing in his medical yearbook, a discovery made in February 2019. After weathering calls for his resignation, Northam said he wanted to improve diversity among state employees and vendors, a job he handed to Underwood, who said in 2021 that she took the job because she had “a plan to interrupt racial oppression, as opposed to just [being] the window dressing.”
In 2022, she became the federal government’s chief diversity officer, after President Joe Biden created the Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council, convened by the Office of Personnel Management. She joined the Biden administration as director of the diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility office, leading efforts to increase diversity and equity within the federal government.
Today, Underwood says that society has always experienced ebbs and flows in its commitment to diversity and inclusion. It can be hard to change the culture of a workplace, she says, especially after only a year or two.
Racial equity commitments take on urgency in the middle of crises — such as the national racial justice protests of 2020 or Northam’s political catastrophe — but, she notes, “then when we get away from a crisis, there’s somewhat of a malaise.”
The business case
Politics and inertia aside, Underwood and many other equity-focused executives say there’s a strong business case for diversity, equity and inclusion.
In 2021, Virginia became the first state to win the top slot in CNBC’s prestigious Top State for Business rankings two years in a row. The state government’s focus on ending inequities was cited as a reason for Virginia’s second consecutive win. The General Assembly passed a bill requiring all state agencies to develop DEI plans, and the Virginia Values Act expanded antidiscrimination laws to include LGBTQ residents, making Virginia the first state in the South to do so.
“We found that businesses wanted to come to Virginia because of our diversity, equity [and] inclusion strategy,” Underwood says. “The major Fortune 500 … [and] Fortune 100 companies that were coming into Virginia were meeting with me, and they were very excited about our diversity strategy. They told me their employees would want to move to Virginia to work and raise a family because of the inclusive nature that Virginia was moving toward.”
At Richmond-based The Martin Agency, one of Kristen Cavallo’s first actions as CEO was to double the number of women on the advertising firm’s executive committee to achieve the gender balance she was seeking. Like the Northam administration and Underwood, Martin was in rough waters when Cavallo was hired in 2017 just weeks after an internal investigation into an allegation of sexual harassment concluded. The agency’s chief creative officer left, although he denied wrongdoing.
Cavallo started making big changes, including promoting Carmina Drummond as chief culture officer. Pay equity became a higher priority, especially increasing pay for women and all people of color, and since 2018, the percentage of people of color at the agency has doubled from 14% to 28%.
“I have been a long-term believer in the benefits of diversity,” Cavallo says. “Research has shown that a diverse leadership team has higher margins, higher revenue, higher employee participation, higher morale. And that, ultimately, as a CEO of a publicly held company, is what I am judged by.”
In November 2022, Cavallo was promoted to global CEO of MullenLowe Group, in which she will lead 13 companies while remaining CEO of Martin.
Cavallo says she draws “a red line” from the agency’s commitment to a diverse leadership team to its business successes, including campaigns for Geico General Insurance Co., Old Navy, UPS and Walmart Inc. Martin won Adweek’s Agency of the Year award twice, in 2020 and 2021, and grew its revenue during the pandemic, at a time when many firms were losing income.
‘Best decision’
Drummond says Cavallo was committed to diversity and an inclusive culture from the beginning — proactively so. “She realized that for a company to be creative, it needed different voices and different lenses. When she came in, she said she wasn’t an incrementalist, and that she was going to make changes and do it fast.”
Cavallo says there is plenty of research that shows adopting the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion can make a business stronger and more profitable.
For instance, global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. released a study in 2019 finding that companies in the top quartiles for gender diversity among its executives were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile. Similarly, McKinsey found that the top 25% of companies with an ethnically and culturally diverse leadership were 36% more likely to report above-average profits than the companies with the least executive diversity.
“The research is so clear and so available,” Cavallo says, “that I’m continually surprised that the majority of CEOs, especially those of publicly held companies, don’t adhere to these practices.”
Sparkman-Key, who worked to increase the number of minority faculty members at ODU, is now part of a similar effort at JMU as associate provost for DEI in the school’s academic affairs division.
“I think there is a need for public action related to DEI — action focused on increasing diversity and inclusion in the talent pipeline,” Sparkman-Key says. Specific pathways need to be created for underrepresented populations to work within various businesses, she says, as well as a need for succession planning that is focused on the inclusion and promotion of underrepresented populations.
For its part, JMU — whose student body is 75% white and only 4% Black — recently hired Malika Carter-Hoyt as its inaugural vice president of DEI and chief diversity officer. The university also has created a working group to improve conditions for teaching faculty, particularly focused on making minority faculty feel more accepted and welcomed, which can lead to improved retention. In 2020, JMU’s full-time faculty was 80% white and only 3.6% Black, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.
This fall, Sparkman-Key plans to roll out the “Inclusive JMU” initiative, featuring speakers and interventions to guide the university toward what she calls “inclusion and the welcoming of all voices and experiences in our community.”
As for the business community, Cavallo says The Martin Agency is proof that a company can become more financially successful while also increasing diversity.
“There is a statistical correlation between revenue uplift and investment in diversity, and it’s 100% in the control of the CEO,” says Cavallo. “It’s not only morally correct, it’s the best business decision you can make.”
Smoot is a unicorn — a Black woman overseeing 4,700 employees in the highly technical field of manufacturing components for nuclear reactors. Named last summer as head of the Lynchburg-based federal contractor‘s nuclear division, Smoot spent 30 years as a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy, ultimately serving as executive director for logistics, maintenance and industrial operations for the Naval Sea Systems Command. She also earned degrees in electrical engineering and engineering management from Virginia Tech and Old Dominion University.
She has learned a lot about leadership and earning trust, she says. “You can charge the hill, but if no one is following, what is the point?” Smoot asks. Her leadership was put to a tragic test in 2013 when a gunman went on a rampage at the Washington Navy Yard. Two of her employees were among the 12 people killed. “I had to pull on every piece of my training,” she says of that horrific time. “It was a defining moment for me as a leader.”
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