Representing industries ranging from geospatial law, lunar space modules and the metaverse to agriculture, fashion and ice cream sandwiches, these creative, visionary trendsetters and entrepreneurs keep the Old Dominion new and relevant.
In 2017, Lex Avellino started a design studio specializing in 3-D animation and computer-generated imagery. As the studio dove into technology, it birthed Passage, a metaverse company that has created a platform for 3D immersive experiences that can be streamed on a browser. Passage plans to launch its product to the public in early 2023.
“We saw a lot of people doing events that were meant to connect people virtually, but didn’t really feel very human,” Avellino says. “We built something that was more accessible, that was more immersive, that was more intuitive.”
Avellino calls Passage an “anti-platform”; its blockchain elements create a passageway to connect to other platforms and opportunities for virtual experiences. Passage has hosted virtual events for Amazon.com Inc. and Capitol Records and in February 2023 will host the virtual Knostalgia hip-hop/martial arts festival,
featuring RZA from Wu-Tang Clan.
Photo by Randy Walker
Bernie Cosell Sheep farmer, Internet Pioneer Giles County
In 1969, Bernie Cosell was a computer programmer based in Boston, one of three people who programmed processors that allowed the internet’s precursor — the ARPANET — to work, launching the digital age. In 1992, Cosell and his wife were both ready to retire. They landed in Giles County, which reminded them of New Zealand, where they had vacationed. Fantasy Farm is not a business, Cosell maintains. “It’s basically a retirement home for old sheep. They’re happy every day of their lives.” Ironically, Cosell now lives with less-than-optimal internet access. “The internet I have right now is cell phone-based,” he says, but adds, “Almost everybody could get by with a much less fast internet connection if it were unlimited data.”
When browsing Norfolk State University’s bookstore, Ashley Jones realized it lacked what students wanted: trendy streetwear. In 2017, two years after graduating, she founded Tones of Melanin to fill that gap for students at historically Black colleges and universities. She now makes and sells apparel sold through HBCU bookstores, Fanatics and some major retailers. Jones was suspicious when she received an Instagram message from a Belk representative in March 2021, but it was legitimate — Belk now carries her apparel, as does Dick’s Sporting Goods. Although she’s proud to be one of the first Black woman-owned businesses whose products these retailers carry, she didn’t plan to trailblaze: “I just wanted to make some different stuff. … It was just like, I want to be able to rep my school.”
Philip Karp President, Soli Organic Inc Rockingham County
Philip Karp went from working as a director for Office Depot Europe to joining Shenandoah Growers in 2009 and becoming president of the controlled environment agriculture company in 2016. Last year, he oversaw the company’s name change to Soli Organic, better mirroring its mission of producing organic produce for more than 20,000 stores.
“It was time for a brand to tell people who and what we are, that embodies what we value as an organization,” Karp says.
If you ask Karp, working for a company that grows organic produce isn’t all that different from selling office supplies. “At the end of the day,” he says, “my true passion is for innovation and the consumer.”
A Crozet resident, Karp is a wine and food enthusiast who also enjoys birding and travel.
Jeff Kellogg Founder, owner, CEO, Woofy Enterprises LLC Henrico County
After leaving the packaging industry, Jeff Kellogg took a year off, researching, before he decided to enter the pet market. In 2016, he launched Woofy Bus LLC, which transports dogs to and from his day school, Woofy Wellness Ranch LLC. “We focus on teaching rather than disciplining,” which is what makes Woofy Wellness different, Kellogg says. The company also coordinates services like grooming and vet care during the day. “It’s an honor and it’s a privilege” to care for people’s dogs, Kellogg says. “That sounds kind of corny, but it really is.” The current roughly 150-dog facility has space to expand, but Kellogg is also looking at opening another Richmond-area location and two in the mid-Atlantic, outside Virginia, in 2023.
Sean Matson CEO, Matbock; co-founder, CEO, CardoMax irginia Beach
Sean Matson co-founded Matbock in 2010, while he was on active duty with the Navy, serving as a commissioned officer with the SEALs. He spent 13 years in the sea service.
Matbock works to develop better gear and technologies for warfighters, law enforcement and first responders. The company jumped from No. 1,033 to No. 805 on Inc. 5000’s list of fastest-growing companies in 2022. Matson also co-founded CardoMax, a vitamin and energy supplements company.
Inside its Virginia Beach office, Matbock has hung one of its early products, a lightweight, convertible stretcher that was used to carry a SEAL out of a firefight in Afghanistan.
“I want my work to make an impact,” Matson says.
Xavier Meers and Hannah Pollack Co-founders and co-owners, Nightingale Ice Cream Inc. Richmond
For many of us, ice cream sandwiches traditionally had only one form: a brick of soft-serve vanilla ice cream between thin, brown chocolate-ish cookies. But Hannah Pollack, who created the first Nightingale treat as an executive chef, has boosted the ice cream sandwich’s sophistication level and profile, collaborating with her husband, Xavier Meers, who also is a chef. They started the company in 2017 and have expanded sales to the East Coast, Texas and California. Flavors range from “Fat Banana” — banana ice cream with peanut butter cookies, dipped in chocolate — to “Nicky’s Blondie,” a vanilla-honeycomb ice cream concoction created with heiress Nicky Hilton Rothschild, with proceeds benefiting a food bank. Tuna melt connoisseur U.S. Sen. Mark Warner is also a fan. In 2023, the couple plans to expand their Richmond production facility from 5,000 to 20,000 square feet, but Pollack says they are sticking with ice cream sandwiches, not venturing into other products. “We do our own cookies, we do our own ice cream — it’s really important to us to control the quality ourselves.”
Dr. Ikenna Okezie CEO and co-founder, Somatus Inc. Arlington
Dr. Ikenna Okezie co-founded Somatus in 2016 to provide integrated kidney care after he saw racial disparities and inequities in care while he was working at DaVita Inc. Somatus partners with health care providers and helps patients between clinic visits, including having care workers teach patients how to monitor their diseases daily and arranging transportation. Okezie has a medical degree and an MBA from Harvard, and his degree programs overlapped for a year. Somatus is partnering with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Office of Minority Health and Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity to study the effect of social determinants of health on kidney care. Somatus will serve more than 150,000 people across 34 states by the end of 2022.
Jennifer Palestrant Director of business development for offshore wind for North and South America, Fugro Norfolk
Formerly chief deputy for the Virginia Department of Energy, Jennifer Palestrant continues to talk up Hampton Roads as an ideal location for offshore wind energy. People here really know large-scale maritime projects, she says: “Doesn’t matter whether it’s an aircraft carrier, a wind turbine or a submarine, we do it better than anybody else.”
Now director of business development for offshore wind for the Americas for Fugro, a Dutch geospatial intelligence provider specializing in offshore wind development, Palestrant consults with developers and government officials to ensure their projects are successful. “In the next 30 years, you will see offshore wind off the coast of every continent around the globe,” she says.
Kevin D. Pomfret Partner, Williams Mullen Tysons
Kevin Pomfret, who leads Williams Mullen’s unmanned systems and cybersecurity teams and teaches geospatial law and ethics at Johns Hopkins University, started out as a satellite imagery analyst before becoming an attorney. In May, he was named Geospatial Ambassador of the Year at the Geospatial World Forum, an award he received in part for “his evangelism and advocacy for legal and policy frameworks” for the collection and use of geospatial data, as well as privacy and national security. He’s also writing a textbook on geospatial legal issues in 2023.
“Geolocation privacy is a really interesting and fast-developing area of the law,” says Pomfret, who enjoys golfing, family time and travel outside work.
Sally Richardson Senior program director, Northrop Grumman Corp. Leesburg
Lots of children were inspired by the first moon landing; Sally Richardson was motivated by it.
She oversees a team building NASA’s Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module, the crew module and docking port for NASA’s Gateway, a space station that will orbit the moon, serving as a platform for lunar and space exploration.
A new grandmother, Richardson has served the past two years as president of the Washington Space Business Roundtable, which promotes the space business and education in the region.
HALO is expected to launch around 2025 and will be the culmination of Richardson’s 40-year career: “We are building a mini space station that’s going to go around the moon, and there could be nothing more exciting.”
The Shenandoah Valley has long been recognized as fertile ground for agricultural endeavors, but it’s now being seeded to grow an entirely different kind of crop — entrepreneurs.
During the past few years, local and regional governmental bodies, nonprofits, and private and educational organizations in the valley have been coordinating efforts to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem. They aim to provide regional startups with all the training, advice, contacts and access to funding needed to turn kernels of good ideas into successful, home-grown businesses.
As director of technology innovation and economic development at James Madison University, Mary Lou Bourne is intimately involved in this informal system, which she calls “a coalition of the willing.” Bourne also is executive director of James Madison Innovations Inc., a nonprofit corporation for intellectual property management and licensing for inventions developed by JMU researchers.
The university does not lead the regional entrepreneurship effort, she stresses, but plays an “additive” role. However, “additive” hardly does justice to the list of organizations based at JMU that are dedicated to helping fledgling businesses in the valley. Among them are the Shenandoah Small Business Development Center, one of 27 such centers in the commonwealth that provide free professional consulting and training for new and small businesses, and Virginia Is for Entrepreneurs, which helps startups find financing.
JMU also has the Gilliam Center for Entrepreneurship, which helps student entrepreneurs develop business concepts into reality. Also on campus is the JMU-affiliated Shenandoah Valley Technology Council, which offers networking opportunities for entrepreneurs, as well as GO Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley regional office.
Outside JMU’s campus, Harrisonburg’s economic development department holds 10-week boot camps several times a year to teach entrepreneurs essential skills such as marketing and bookkeeping. The Harrisonburg-Rockingham Chamber of Commerce and Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance, which promotes businesses in the central city, both offer training classes as well. The agencies collaborate to avoid duplication of services and to eliminate gaps in assistance programs.
“People start a business because it is their passion,” says Harrisonburg Chamber President and CEO Chris Quinn. “This [training] is the back-end stuff.”
This mother-and-daughters team — (L to R) Stephanie Auville Duncan, Chris Auville and Jessica Hall — started Harmony Harvest Farm in Weyers Cave. Photo by Norm Shafer
Elsewhere in the valley, there are plenty of other options for entrepreneurs seeking support. In Staunton, Shenandoah Community Capital Fund hosts a Business Bootcamp three times a year, says Anika Horn, SCCF’s director of marketing and ecosystem building. The eight-week virtual class helps budding entrepreneurs develop business skills and evaluate the viability of their ideas.
Additionally, each year SCCF hosts two or three Techstars Startup Weekends, offering an immersive 54-hour, three-day course that teaches people to become entrepreneurs. This year, SCCF also launched an annual two-day entrepreneurship summit with workshops, panel discussions and networking opportunities. The next summit will be held in October 2023, Horn says.
Nearby Waynesboro offers extensive help for startups, too, mostly online, and the city’s Grow Waynesboro program recently received a $45,000 Community Business Launch grant from the state to expand its efforts. It plans to use some of the funding to hold a business pitch competition next year, with winners receiving grants, marketing support, customized training, mentorships and technical assistance.
Cultivating businesses
Peter Denbigh is an example of someone developing the entrepreneurial ecosystem the valley is trying to nurture. He found success marketing a party game online, and he and his former wife, Alison Denbigh, co-founded a coworking space, Staunton Innovation Hub, in early 2017. The hub offers coworking and meeting spaces and private offices, as well as business programming and other opportunities for networking and sharing experiences that can be so important for budding entrepreneurs, Peter Denbigh says. For example, Shenandoah Community Capital Fund is headquartered in the hub and offers an accelerator program, Startup Shenandoah Valley (S2V).
About 110 companies have office space or are headquartered in the 30,000-square-foot Staunton Innovation Hub. Denbigh is looking to expand the entrepreneurial network he’s building by opening a similar size Harrisonburg Innovation Hub in late 2023.
“Local resources are your tribe,” Denbigh says. “Emotionally, technically and financially, they help you understand that you don’t know what you don’t know.”
Andrea Estep’s Harrisonburg women’s clothing and accessories shop, Charlee Rose Boutique, is another valley entrepreneurship success story. Estep started the business in her garage and now has a downtown storefront. “The community in Harrisonburg is like none other that I’ve experienced,” she says. “The support helped me survive through the pandemic.”
During the pandemic, Kirsten Moore also bucked the odds to start a coworking space in Harrisonburg, the Perch at Magpie. It has about 100 tenants housed in a 7,000-square-foot space atop her other new business, the Magpie Diner restaurant and bakery. “You have all of the right cheerleaders to walk you through the process” of building a business in the area, Moore says. “You can just walk into city hall and get your questions answered.”
Moore was fortunate to find private investors for her ambitious plans, which include a wine bar and retail and event space in a nearby building, but for many startups, securing capital financing is the biggest obstacle to starting and expanding their businesses.
Business loans from banks are sometimes hard to get, unless an entrepreneur has a big nest egg, and the valley’s lack of population density — the very demographic that makes the region appealing to so many would-be entrepreneurs — unfortunately correlates with a lack of available venture capital.
“You don’t have an extensive network like in NoVa,” Denbigh says. “You don’t have people here who go from zero to $100 million in six months.”
Crunching numbers
Only two local agencies (other than banks) offer substantial funding to valley startups.
One is Shenandoah Valley Angel Investors, a network of private funders capable of lending $50,000 to $300,000 to launch new businesses. Since its founding in 2015, facilitated by JMU’s Bourne, the fund, which is independent of the university, has invested $8.1 million in 23 companies.
The other major source of capital in the valley is Shenandoah Community Capital Fund in Staunton. Since it gave out its first loans in 2009, Horn says, the fund has invested $1.6 million to fund 108 businesses and support more than 450 others. That funding has come in the form of loans of $5,000 to $50,000.
Localities — including Waynesboro, Buena Vista and Augusta County — also make loans to small businesses, averaging about $15,000 each. Brian Shull, executive director of Harrisonburg Economic Development, says his agency can offer loans up to $25,000 to help entrepreneurs who are “not quite bankable yet.” So far, his agency has distributed 22 loans, adding up to $450,000.
Some other options have arisen recently to aid minority business owners, who typically have a harder time than white entrepreneurs in securing capital. In the first half of 2021, funding to U.S. Black startup entrepreneurs hit a record $1.8 billion but accounted for only 1.2% of the $147 billion in venture capital invested in all U.S. startups during the same period, according to a report by Crunchbase.
In Harrisonburg and Rockingham, the chamber of commerce’s B-Cubed program provides minority entrepreneurs with advice on crafting business plans and networking, as well as grants. So far, the organization has awarded 17 grants to minority entrepreneurs in amounts ranging from $1,700 to $5,000 since 2020.
In Lexington, the all-volunteer Walker Program was started in 2020 to assist businesses owned by people of color in Buena Vista, Rockbridge County and Lexington.
In addition to its own program teaching the nuts and bolts of doing business and offering advice on issues such as trademarks and patents, Walker has made 15 business grants between $5,000 and $25,000 each, program coordinator Gabrielle J. Cash says. Thanks to Walker funding, three Black-owned businesses now are operating in downtown Lexington, where until recently, there were none.
Photographer Tasha Coleman received a Walker grant of $10,000 to help her secure a studio space in Buena Vista for her business, Tasha Lamar Photography & Films. She is grateful for that assistance, but she still has not been able to get up and running, because she needs more funding for equipment.
“Finding other loans to help furnish the studio has been very difficult,” Coleman says.
“Raising capital in the valley can be hard,” Denbigh says.Organizations there “provide 101- and 201-level resources for entrepreneurs, but we need to get into 301 and 401 upscaling. That will be the tipping point when the money starts coming in.”
That extra push
To help more young businesses reach that tipping point, Shenandoah Community Capital Fund offers its S2V accelerator program, which more than 40 entrepreneurs have attended since it was established in 2020. Stephanie Auville Duncan of Harmony Harvest Farm in Weyers Cave is one of them.
Duncan, her sister, Jessica Hall, and their mother, Chris Auville, have been in the cut-flower business since 2013. The women started out by supplying flowers for weddings and other local events, and a few years later expanded into wholesale shipping to florists. Whole Foods stores up and down the East Coast started stocking their flowers, so business was great. Then, COVID-19 arrived, decreasing the need for flower arrangements, so florists and Whole Foods stopped buying from Harmony Harvest.
But with the help of the accelerator program, plus advice from Virginia Department of Tourism, Augusta County and Shenandoah Valley Partnership, Harmony Harvest was able to make a pandemic pivot and come up with a new business plan focused on shipping directly to customers. In 2020, its online sales increased by 1,600%.
The accelerator program, Duncan says, was “paramount to understanding the best way to grow” the family’s business, which has expanded to include agritourism.
This summer, Harmony Harvest began a pick-your-own-flowers operation and opened a retail store on the farm, a picturesque 20-acre property in Augusta County. Hall’s related business, Floral Genius, operates online and from the farm, too. Its pin- and cup-style flower holders called “flower frogs” got a welcome boost when Martha Stewart used them in a how-to video about flower arranging.
The bottom line, however, is that until more entrepreneurs like Duncan, Auville and Hall find ways to take their enterprises to the next level, finding financing is going to remain a sticking point for small business development in the valley.
The entrepreneurial ecosystem will be there, though, doing it’s dogged best to help them.
Shenandoah Valley at a glance
Shenandoah National Park Photo courtesy Shenandoah National Park
Settled in the 1700s, the approximately 140-mile-long Shenandoah Valley lies between the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny mountains. Agriculture remains a key industry for the region, which was known as the breadbasket of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Other notable industries include manufacturing, especially of food and beverages, and logistics. Bridgewater College, James Madison University, Mary Baldwin University, Virginia Military Institute, and Washington and Lee University call the region home.
Population: 373,472
Top employers
James Madison University: 3,887
Sentara Healthcare: 2,600
Augusta Health: 2,300
Cargill Inc.: 2,000*
Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.: 2,000*
Major attractions
The Shenandoah Valley is home to outdoor attractions such as Shenandoah National Park and the George Washington and Jefferson national forests. The region is also known for wineries and breweries, with the Shenandoah Beerwerks Trail and the Shenandoah Spirits Trail. Historical and cultural attractions include Civil War sites like the Virginia Museum of the Civil War and Melrose Caverns, as well as the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley and the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse.
Top convention hotels
The Omni Homestead Resort 483 rooms, 72,000 square feet of event space
Hotel 24 South (Staunton)
124 rooms, 8,500 square feet of event space
Best Western Plus Waynesboro
Inn & Suites Conference Center
75 rooms, 5,500 square feet of event space
DoubleTree by Hilton Front Royal
Blue Ridge Shadows
124 rooms, 3,933 square feet of event space
Boutique/luxury hotels
The Blackburn Inn &
Conference Center 49 rooms, 8,400 square feet of event space
The Mimslyn Inn
45 rooms, almost 5,000 square feet of event space
The Gin Hotel 39 rooms
Hotel Laurance 12 rooms
Notable restaurants
Local Chop & Grill House
American,localchops.com
The Butcher Station
American,thebutcherstation.com
In November, Grammy-winning music superstar Pharrell Williams hosted the three-day Mighty Dream forum in Norfolk and broke some news about his Something in the Water music festival and the status of his team’s proposal to redevelop Norfolk’s Military Circle Mall site.
Mighty Dream, a sequel to his 2021 Elephant in the Room business conference at Norfolk State University, featured Williams in conversation with corporate and cultural movers and shakers, including Google Inc. Chief Diversity Officer Melonie Parker; actor and comedian Hannibal Buress; SpringHill Co. CEO Maverick Carter; retired NASA astronaut Leland Melvin; and Annie Wu, H&M Group’s global head of inclusion and diversity. The conference, which focused on equity and inclusion, innovation, and entrepreneurism, also featured musical performances, a small business block party, and a pitch contest with $2.5 million awarded to three entrepreneurs from Williams’ Black Ambition nonprofit.
Comparing Mighty Dream to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “but for marginalized communities,” Williams challenged other local business leaders to host events to increase opportunity for disadvantaged groups, including Black, brown and LGBTQ people.
“I know it’s sort of kumbaya-ish, but this shouldn’t be the only forum dedicated to [diversity, equity and inclusion],” he said.
During the forum, Williams also announced that his Something in the Water music festival will be returning to its Virginia Beach birthplace on April 28-30, 2023.
The festival started at the Oceanfront in 2019 but was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. In fall 2021, Williams announced he would move the festival to another city, citing his hometown’s “toxic energy,” following the March 2021 police shooting of his cousin, Donovon Lynch, and a grand jury’s decision not to indict the Virginia Beach officer who killed Lynch. The festival was held in Washington, D.C., this year.
“The demand for the festival in Virginia Beach and the 757 — among the people — has never wavered. If anything, it has only intensified,” Williams said from the Mighty Dream stage, flanked by Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby M. Dyer and other city officials.
Also during Mighty Dream, Williams spoke out to urge Norfolk to officially approve his team’s Wellness Circle redevelopment project at Military Circle Mall, saying, “The ball’s in their court.” As of early November, Norfolk officials said the project, which would include a 15,000-seat arena, a 200-room hotel and 1,100 housing units, was still under negotiation.
As Gentry Locke Attorneys prepares to celebrate its 100th birthday in 2023, the venerable Roanoke law firm isn’t slowing down — it’s accelerating.
The firm hung out its shingle in 1923 and spent its first 40 years as a regional specialist representing insurance companies before adding corporate and business work in the 1970s and ’80s.
During the past eight years, however, Gentry Locke has added regional offices in Lynchburg and Richmond and opened Gentry Locke Consulting, a Richmond-based subsidiary specializing in lobbying and governmental affairs. The firm has expanded its practice areas to include expertise in emerging fields such as cannabis and renewable energy.
In all, the firm has grown to more than 80 attorneys. That makes Gentry Locke the eighth largest law firm in Virginia — yet still far smaller than behemoths like McGuireWoods, which has more than 1,110 lawyers, or Hunton Andrews Kurth, with its 900 attorneys.
“We remain relatively moderately sized, which is fine by me,” says Monica Monday, Gentry Locke’s managing partner.
Recent growth means the firm is large enough to handle major real estate transactions, Monday says, but also still small enough to be nimble and courageous enough to take on challenging cases.
Taking chances
Take, for example, a whistleblower case the firm fought for more than six years, in which a university employee reported fraudulent research at Duke University. Joseph Thomas, a former Duke research analyst, said a colleague had repeatedly submitted fake pulmonary data, drawing millions in federal funding.
Gentry Locke took on Thomas’ whistle-
blower case in 2015, filing a research fraud lawsuit against Duke on behalf of U.S. taxpayers in federal court. The firm took the case knowing the only way it would get paid for its services was by winning.
“It was an enormous effort, and, in many instances, put some pressure on the firm in terms of the resources we had,” Monday says. Over six years, the case involved more than 300 motions, orders and other legal filings. “There were times when it was scary, definitely,” Monday adds with a chuckle. “But we felt we were strong enough and smart enough.”
The case “should scare all [academic] institutions around the country,” attorney Joel Androphy of Houston-based Berg & Androphy told the journal Science at the time.
In 2019, Duke settled the lawsuit, agreeing to repay $112.5 million to the U.S. government; the whistleblower received $33.75 million of the settlement funds for fighting the case on the government’s behalf. The case, Monday points out, was the largest university research fraud case in U.S. history. “That was a real watershed moment for us,” Monday says.
Other notable Gentry Locke cases include settling a widely publicized defamation case against Rolling Stone magazine for a shocking — and quickly discredited — story involving rape accusations at a University of Virginia fraternity house.
More recently, Gentry Locke found itself on the losing side of a large case. Gentry Locke was one of the law firms representing Pegasystems Inc., a tech company that was accused of stealing trade secrets in a lawsuit filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court by McLean-based rival Appian Corp. A jury ordered Pegasystems to pay Appian more than $2 billion in damages, by some accounts the largest such award in Virginia court history.
Gentry Locke and Pegasystems say they will appeal. “We think the verdict and judgment are bad for business in Virginia and a misinterpretation of Virginia law, and we look forward to presenting what we believe to be strong grounds for appeal,” the law firm and tech company said in a joint statement.
Unique leadership
Gentry Locke’s recent growth spurt has occurred under Monday’s leadership. The William & Mary Law School grad is an unusual choice of managing partner, at least by the standards of venerable law firms. For one thing, she’s an appellate lawyer, not a trial attorney or corporate counsel. For another, her career path diverged from the stereotypical. After she got married, moved to Martinsville and had a child, the firm agreed to let her work part time so she could commute from Martinsville, more than an hour’s drive away from Roanoke. In 2013, she returned to full-time work and was named managing partner — very possibly becoming the first female managing partner of a Virginia law firm that large.
Monday says her experience is a good example of Gentry Locke’s supportive, innovative culture. “The firm took a chance on me,” she says. “So, when the opportunity arose to become managing partner, in a way it was a way for me to give back, for the grace and room that I had been given.”
In 2015, Gentry Locke opened its Lynchburg office, the firm’s first notable expansion outside Roanoke since its founding.
Three years later, the firm opened its Government and Regulatory Affairs office in Richmond with two attorneys, including Gregory Habeeb, a former five-term Republican state delegate who represented the Roanoke area. The Christiansburg native saw opportunity in Richmond.
Habeeb recalls meeting with John G. “Chip” Dicks, another former delegate and longtime lobbyist and attorney with a strong practice in renewable energy and real estate law. Building on Gentry Locke’s existing client base in Richmond as well as its many Roanoke clients who needed representation in the state’s capital, Habeeb and Dicks decided to join forces, with Dicks joining the new Richmond office in 2018. “I said, ‘I think we can enter the market not just as a presence but as a leader,’” recalls Habeeb.
In the center
With lower overhead than larger Richmond firms and access to the resources of the Roanoke office, Gentry Locke has found the state capital to be a good market for its services.
The Richmond practice has expanded to 20 attorneys, including former Virginia Secretary of Veterans and Defense Affairs Carlos Hopkins and John Scheib, former chief legal officer for Norfolk Southern Corp. It also opened a subsidiary, Gentry Locke Consulting, to focus on lobbying and strategic communications — partly, Habeeb says, so the firm can stay on the cutting edge of regulations and legal trends.
Gregory Habeeb, a former state delegate, heads up the firm’s Richmond-based Gentry Locke Consulting subsidiary. Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown
Despite the accelerated pace, Habeeb and Monday agree that expansion itself is not the firm’s goal. “We are very, very, very much opposed to growth for growth’s sake,” Habeeb says. “It’s not a numbers game for us.”
Serving as a stark reminder of too much growth, Gentry Locke’s Richmond office is in the same building that once housed LeClairRyan, the fast-moving, aggressively expansive law firm that added offices across the world at a startling clip before it collapsed abruptly into bankruptcy in 2019, followed by waves of lawsuits.
Habeeb says he sees LeClairRyan’s ignominious end as a cautionary tale of doing too much too fast. “The lesson from LeClairRyan is not that growth is bad; it’s about managing your growth, knowing your overhead, investing in your people, knowing who you are and working to be a better version of yourself.”
He’s also opposed to growing by merging with other firms for the same reason. “We have had firms in every single city in Virginia approach us for mergers, and we have never done that,” he says, in large part because different firms’ cultures and values can have trouble meshing.
Monday agrees. LeClairRyan’s failure, she notes, is “a reminder that you have to make really smart decisions and you have to be careful with your growth. That’s what we’re thinking all the time. It has to be smart growth. … We’re very, very cautious.”
Gentry Locke places great emphasis on its culture and on career development. By focusing on building a supportive culture, Gentry Locke aims to retain the younger attorneys it sees as key to the firm’s future success. “The culture is valuing the relationships that we have with each other and also valuing the relationships with our clients,” Monday says. “Many times, that means your very best friends are the people you work with. We really enjoy being together.”
A few years back, the firm’s leaders established a development program dubbed Gentry Locke University — or GLU (pronounced “glue”) — to provide leadership training, particularly for young and mid-career attorneys. Unlike some firms, where attorneys compete in-house and “eat what they kill,” at Gentry Locke all partners are formal shareholders in the firm so when any part of the firm flourishes, they all do.
“We see that young lawyers want opportunity, they want training and they want to see that there is a pathway to success,” Monday says. “That’s where we’ve been successful. We value our relationships, and we invest in our people.”
Investors itching to get in on the latest tech trend are zooming in on the metaverse — a presumed future virtual or mixed reality iteration of the internet in which users would navigate 3D environments for working, shopping, socializing and entertainment.
By some estimates, the metaverse market could balloon to $5 trillion in annual revenue by 2030.
Beware the hype, though, professional money managers warn. It’s a fledgling technology that is anything but certain.
“The metaverse — whatever it actually turns out to be — will impact many sectors, so investors are investing in it,” says Eileen O’Connor, CEO and co-founder of Falls Church-based Hemington Wealth Management. But, she says, her firm “would never target [the metaverse] as an allocation separately because, at this point, it’s just a concept.”
No one yet knows who the major metaverse players will be. Sectors likely to benefit include software, gaming, multimedia, social media and cryptocurrencies, experts say.
“Early adoption of a new trend in the investment world can mean great success — or you may lose all of your money,” cautions Rachel Boyell, director of investment strategy and operations for Cassaday & Co. Inc.
“Metaverse ETFs [exchange-traded funds] are extremely new; the oldest of the handful out there just began trading a little over a year ago,” Boyell says. “Investors should proceed with caution on such new products,” she adds, since those funds have not been battle-tested.
ETF rollouts include those from fund companies Fidelity Investments, ProShares and Horizons, enabling investors to gain exposure in the metaverse through an index made up of a basket of stocks.
As of early October, seven metaverse ETFs reported total assets of $438.2 million, according to Morningstar Direct. Top stock holdings are in companies such as Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc., Nvidia Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc.
Facebook‘s parent company, Meta, changed its name in October 2021, indicating CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s belief in the metaverse as the next technological frontier. But a little over a year later, the company’s stock plummeted 73%, losing more than $700 billion in market value — making it the worst performing stock in the S&P 500 this year. In November, Meta announced it would lay off 11,000 employees, about 13% of its workforce.
Many analysts chalked that up to Meta’s expensive and risky bet on the metaverse and virtual reality. The company spent more than $9.4 billion on metaverse research in 2022, and, as of October, its virtual reality platform, Horizon Worlds, had fewer than 200,000 active users — far below its goal of 500,000 users.
“Trying to predict which stocks will be winners and losers in this amorphous tech universe can be difficult for the average investor,” The Wall Street Journal remarked in an October article about the metaverse.
Driving interest among unafraid investors is the fact that some online gamers are already utilizing virtual reality headsets. Additionally, advancements in artificial intelligence could facilitate and expedite establishment of the metaverse in time.
“Similar to many other disruptive technologies, we are likely decades away from the full implementation of the metaverse at scale,” stated an April tech sector report from Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management.
“The reality is the metaverse is yet to evolve,” says Joseph W. Montgomery, managing director of investments for The Optimal Service Group of Wells Fargo Advisors in Williamsburg. “There are not a lot of specifics beyond speculation, and fear of missing out is rarely solid investment logic.”
Metaverse ETFs are tracking high-growth tech-stock ETFs, which makes sense, says Boyell, adding that, “no surprise, they have sold off this year as inflation was a headwind to high-growth valuations.”
Jeffrey S. Grinspoon, managing director and partner of VWG Wealth Management, says metaverse ETFs will have trouble increasing assets. “Putting the technology and probability of success in the future aside … high-growth, long-term horizon investments will continue to struggle in an increasing interest-rate environment.”
Most investors in this economy continue to favor investments that provide cash flow such as dividends, Grinspoon says.
“That doesn’t mean the metaverse won’t continue to gain traction, albeit slower,” he says. “I simply would prefer to look for growth managers who include these types of investments in the overall portfolio, as opposed to a narrow focus like a specific ETF.”
Jim McGlothlin had never really thought much about paintings. He was more of a music guy, a fan of Elvis, whom he saw in concert six months before the King’s 1977 death.
But the art of the deal — in this case, winning a valuable artwork at an auction — was a familiar feeling.
“That’s what I do — make deals,” reflects the 82-year-old Bristol, Virginia-based businessman who built a fortune from a gamble on coal mines during the 20th century and then pivoted to hospitality as the coal business began to recede.
Along the way, he and his wife, Frances Gibson McGlothlin, became major American art collectors and philanthropists. And in his ninth decade, McGlothlin is arguably the person most responsible for Virginia’s legalization of commercial casinos, as well as a partner in the $400 million Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Bristol, which opened in a temporary space this summer as the state’s first casino.
In recognition of his lifelong achievements in business, his significant philanthropic support for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and his impact on statewide economic development, Virginia Business has named Jim McGlothlin its 2022 Person of the Year.
The son of two Southwest Virginia natives, McGlothlin grew up in Buchanan County, in “a little place called Oakwood, which is about 15 miles from Grundy,” he says with a mountain lilt that conveys his origins. “We were in a little mining community, and I had two brothers, my mom and dad. School was wonderful. We played ball and [had] Boy Scouts, church activities. It’s just a wonderful place to grow up.”
His father was an accountant for a coal company and a graduate of Emory & Henry College, while McGlothlin’s mother was a Radford alumna who taught school before becoming a mother.
McGlothlin was a football and basketball player at the former Garden High School and was a strong student, especially in math. Early in his teens, he set his sights on attending William & Mary and becoming a lawyer.
A cousin returned from military service during World War II, and then went to William & Mary’s law school. “He came to our house to visit for a weekend,” McGlothlin recalls. “He told all kinds of stories about law school and his fascination with it. From that day on — I remember it like yesterday — I wanted to be a lawyer. That was the dream.”
And like many goals McGlothlin has set for himself, that dream came true.
Striking a deal
McGlothlin and six partners purchased a Buchanan coal company at auction in 1970, a deal that started United Coal Co., which became a billion-dollar business by the time it was sold in 2009. Photo by Earl Neikirk
Clyde Stacy, who has been McGlothlin’s friendly competitor and occasional business partner for much of the two men’s careers, was in eighth grade when he met McGlothlin, who was then a high school senior.
“I will tell you this story — he probably won’t like it — but when I met him in eighth grade, the reason I noticed him [was] one guy grabbed something of Jim’s, and they were going at it, wrestling around,” Stacy recalls. “Jim grabs [the other guy’s] tennis shoes and ties them together and tells him, ‘You give that back, or I’m going to throw these on top of the gymnasium.’ Jim threw the shoes on top of the building, which was probably 40 feet high. I don’t know how [the guy] ever got them back. It was really funny.”
Stacy says his friendship with McGlothlin started in earnest after the two were young adults and businessmen, and continues today.
“Most people know Jim as a very serious businessperson, and that’s the way he comes across most of the time, but he’s fun to be around,” Stacy says.
At William & Mary, McGlothlin majored in psychology, while also working as a waiter at King’s Arms Tavern, one of Colonial Williamsburg’s restaurants still open today. “Then, when school started in the fall, I drove [a] school bus in the morning and the afternoon,” he recalls. “I also belonged to a fraternity, and that was probably very distracting [to] getting all my work done. I was a very mediocre student in undergraduate school. By the way, I got rejected for law school at William & Mary.”
When that happened — a consequence of below-average grades and a low LSAT score — McGlothlin went to see W&M Law School Dean Dudley Woodbridge, “and he just flatly told me, ‘There’s no hope you could get through law school. I’d love to have you, but I can’t.’”
But McGlothlin found a back door into law school — changing his major to jurisprudence, “which is really the first year of law school, at least at William & Mary,” he explains. “I marched over the next day and went to his office, and I said, ‘I just have changed my major to jurisprudence.’ He said, ‘Are you kidding me?’”
Eventually, the two came to an agreement: If McGlothlin made the dean’s list both semesters, Woodbridge said, he could enter law school upon graduation. “I made the grades,” recalls McGlothlin, “and the rest was history.”
A temporary casino opened in July at the Bristol Mall, making it the first casino to open in Virginia, which legalized casinos in 2020. Construction on the nearby permanent casino is expected to be finished in 2024. Photo by Earl Neikirk
Birth of a coal company
As a young attorney in Grundy during the 1960s, McGlothlin joined forces with two of his cousins, starting the law firm of Street, Street & McGlothlin, a general practice in which McGlothlin mainly handled litigation, both criminal and civil cases. He also trained to become a pilot, and the firm purchased a small plane to make travel easier to courts around the commonwealth.
In 1970, at age 30, McGlothlin “lucked in” to the coal business, purchasing a Buchanan County coal company at auction. “I walked across to the courthouse to do something,” he says. “Then this young lawyer about my age was selling a piece of property on auction. It was a coal company. As I walked by, there’s 15 or 20 people there, [but] nobody was bidding.”
The other lawyer asked McGlothlin to start the bidding at $25,000, and he considered it a moment.
“This is a no-brainer,” he recalls thinking. “I had $25,000. Fifteen minutes later, I owned the coal company.”
Now he had to tell his law partners, who were happy to jump onboard. Later, at a poker game, McGlothlin’s father and three of his accounting clients — all coal mine operators — expressed interest in investing in the new enterprise.
“We agreed to put up $1,000 each. There were seven of us, and we’d go to the bank, borrow the $25,000 from the bank and pay for the company, and $7,000 would be the working capital,” says McGlothlin, and that’s how United Coal Co. started. “I took a leave of absence for six months from the law firm [and] here we are 52 years later. I never went back.”
In the early 1970s, United acquired dozens of smaller coal companies and mines in Appalachia. Its main competitor was Richmond-based Massey Coal. But by the mid-’70s, coal was just one division of United Co., which expanded into buying, reselling and distributing mining equipment and owning and running steel mills following the $40 million purchase of Birmingham Steel Co. in Alabama in 1980.
It was a boom time, although not every decision struck gold.
In 1981, United drilled a gas well in Scott County, leading to a massive fire, “which you could see blowing 400, 500 feet there,” McGlothlin says. “We hired a guy to come out of Austin, Texas, to put it out, which he did in about five or six minutes after he got there.”
An ensuing conversation led McGlothlin to strike a deal for United to drill 25 oil wells in Texas. “That turned out really successful,” says McGlothin. Ultimately, United bought the 25 wells from a partner in Texas who was retiring, “and that’s how the oil and gas thing was born,” McGlothlin says.
In the 1980s, United acquired a large Canadian oil and gas company, vastly expanding its portfolio. Then came sand and gravel holdings and even a gold mine in Tanzania.
“As I got older and older and the company got bigger, I wanted something that was big enough to make some real difference,” McGlothlin says. “In other words, I didn’t want something to sell a million dollars’ worth of product a year, because if you make 50% on it, you [only] make $500,000.”
By the 1990s, the coal industry was starting to decline, and McGlothlin sold off some of United’s holdings, including the Dal-Tex mine in West Virginia, which represented about half of United’s coal business.
“We decided the times weren’t so good in the business, and [Massey] came along,” so McGlothlin and his partners sold United to Massey in 1997. But in 2004, McGlothlin and a small group of investors reacquired the company. “Our opportunity came along to buy [back] all of those properties that Massey had,” he says.
Five years later, United divested its coal mine holdings to Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, whose mining and steel company, Metinvest Group, bought United Coal Co. for an undisclosed price, although news reports from that time pegged the deal at between $800 million and $1.4 billion. Metinvest still owns United Coal, which is now based in Johnson City, Tennessee.
McGlothlin remains chairman and sole owner of the remaining business, The United Co., which today has diversified into a hospitality and wealth management company, with other activities including real estate development and coal, oil and gas exploration services. Its holdings include golf courses, RV parks and a stake in the Bristol casino.
Frances and Jim McGlothlin split their time between Virginia and Florida, and have become influential donors in education, health care and the arts. Photo by Earl Neikirk
Roll of the dice
The Bristol casino came up in a similar way to McGlothlin’s other big deals. In 2018, Stacy bought the shuttered Bristol Mall, which McGlothlin also had considered buying but couldn’t think of anything to put there. “He said, ‘I’m going to put in a casino,’” McGlothlin says. “I said, ‘You do know that it’s not legal to have a casino?’”
But Stacy suggested that the two work together on legalizing casinos in the commonwealth, and McGlothlin called an old friend, Alan Diamonstein, the late Newport News lawyer and delegate. He briefed Stacy and McGlothlin on state Sen. Louise Lucas’ quixotic 18-year effort to legalize casinos. “There’s almost no chance, 15% at the most,” McGlothlin recalls Diamonstein saying.
But after talking to Lucas — who, like McGlothlin, wanted a casino to help improve the economy and job opportunities in her hometown, Portsmouth — McGlothlin, Stacy and some of United Co.’s executives began formulating a plan to garner legislative support. Bristol and its surrounding localities needed a new major employer and an industry to replace the coal jobs that had virtually disappeared.
“It just made so much sense, because first of all, [Southwest Virginia] was really in need of something,” McGlothlin says. “We called it ‘the moonshot,’ and it had to be big. It couldn’t just be another place to employ 40 people [because] we were going downhill — anybody could testify our debt was just escalating. The political people were difficult, but as time went on, they began to see this could have a big effect on investment in tourism.”
A political coalition — bringing together everyone from liberal Democrats like Lucas to conservative Republicans like former
Sen. Bill Carrico from Marion — began to form in late 2018. Two years later, the General Assembly passed a law allowing local voters in five economically challenged cities — Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond — to approve commercial casinos in their localities via referendum. In 2020, referendums passed in all of the cities except Richmond, where voters rejected a casino in 2021. Four casinos are now under construction or close to starting, and there’s a legislative battle underway between Richmond and Petersburg over the opportunity to build a fifth.
“It did take a lot of work, a lot more work than we thought,” Stacy says. “There were so many people who had oppositions to anything other than what had always been done.”
Lucas, in particular, has nothing but praise for McGlothlin — whose politics trend considerably to the right of hers. “Everything he does, he does with other people in mind. I just absolutely fell in love with the man.”
United Co. CEO Martin Kent, who joined the company as its president in 2014, was an integral player in building the political coalition for casino legalization. Formerly chief of staff to Gov. Bob McDonnell, Kent considers McGlothlin an important business mentor.
“Jim is very intuitive,” he says, “and Jim can sit down and listen to the financials verbally and can calculate a statement in his head quicker than most people can do in Excel. We rely on the calculator, but Jim has an innate ability. But at the end of the day, Jim is the relationship guy. He’s very intuitive as it comes to meeting with people. That’s just his nature.”
As the prospect of legal casinos became more likely, McGlothlin worked to find a corporate partner for Bristol’s resort casino. At first, he held discussions with Caesars Entertainment Inc., but a friend introduced him to a representative of Hard Rock, and within 24 hours, a deal was signed.
More than 25,000 people from 49 states visited the Bristol Hard Rock casino during its first two months, and casino President Allie Evangelista has hired about 600 people. Ultimately, the casino — expected to open in its permanent space on the Bristol Mall property in 2024 — is anticipated to employ 1,200 to 1,500 people by summer 2024.
Evangelista, a Brazilian native who has worked in the U.S. gaming business for decades, moved to Bristol in January.
“I knew Hard Rock was a company I wanted to work for,” she says, “but I wanted to make sure it was the right project. And so, I had an opportunity to meet with Jim and Clyde, and we went for dinner. It was one of those feelings where you know it’s the right move. You see their passion and what they went through to get this approved in the state, and I felt like I can be this person to make this dream successful.”
Personal lives
Outside of business, Jim and Fran McGlothlin have their own charitable foundation, which makes donations to higher education, the arts and health care institutions. They’re also involved with The United Company Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm. Focused more on the Bristol community, the foundation runs a soup kitchen and a food-box program and provides grants to local nonprofits.
One of McGlothlin’s dearest charitable endeavors is the Mountain Mission School, an institute founded in 1921 in Grundy to house and educate children in need, who receive college scholarships funded by The United Company Foundation.
“I really didn’t know much about it till I got out of law school, and I went up there,” McGlothlin says. “Well, they asked me to come up and think about coaching or helping with starting a basketball team. If you go there and see these kids, you immediately fall in love with them. That was in ’66, I think. I’ve had a love affair with Mountain Mission for all those long years.”
In 2018, The Olde Farm golf course, a course designed by Bobby Weed and founded by McGlothlin, hosted a celebrity tournament featuring golf legends Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, as well as NFL stars Peyton Manning and Dan Marino. It raised $56.6 million for the school, the largest single-day charitable gift in PGA Tour history.
Fran McGlothlin, too, has become deeply involved with Mountain Mission, which just dedicated a girls’ residence hall in her name.
“I thought it was a really good thing,” she says, “but I wanted to change the direction of the school. I thought that the board [was] thinking too small. Even though our company was providing the [college] scholarships, I learned it was mostly local colleges. I said, ‘I think we should think bigger than this. If they can get into U.Va. or William & Mary or Stanford, let’s give them a chance to do that.’”
Her work with the school has been part of her acclimation to life in Southwest Virginia, where she felt a bit like a fish out of water at first.
A Leesburg native, Fran McGlothlin graduated from William & Mary in the 1960s. She and Jim met in 1991 at a small dinner party in Williamsburg, when he was on W&M’s board of visitors and she was the wife of the college’s then-president.
“Well, I was trying to be a good dinner partner and talking to people on both sides,” she says. “When I spoke to him, I said — and I’m told you’re never supposed to ask this question at a dinner party, but I was just trying to find a hook — ‘What do you do?’ He said, ‘A little of this and a little of that.’ We just started talking and became friends first, and then eventually got married.” They wed in 1996.
Jim recalls that first meeting fondly, remembering her as a “very attractive, intelligent lady who it was exciting to carry on a conversation with.” As they got to know each other — and the high-end art world — the two spent time in Naples, Florida, where they now live much of the year in a waterfront condo.
“Jim’s world was a whole different world from mine,” Fran says. “I think in a way, that’s how we got into collecting art, because I said to myself, ‘If I’m going to be with this guy, we’ve got to find something in common that we can both do — because I don’t know anything about coal mines and I don’t play golf.”
In her wine cellar — a deal she made with Jim, in which he agreed she could spend the same amount of money on wine that he spends on golfing — Fran displays bottles of wine they served at their wedding reception, with custom labels featuring their first art purchase, “Listening Boy,” by Robert Henri.
Ultimately, the McGlothlins would give the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts nearly 90 pieces of artwork worth more than $250 million — largely 19th- and early 20th-century American paintings, including works by John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Andrew Wyeth and the museum’s first Norman Rockwell painting. In 2005, the couple promised to bequeath their art collection to the museum and donated $30 million to the VMFA’s 2010 expansion, which included a wing named for the McGlothlins. In 2015, the McGlothlins donated 73 American artworks worth approximately $200 million to the VMFA, and in 2022, they gave 15 more pieces to the museum.
Artists from the Metropolitan Museum of Art painted copies of the donated works, some of which now hang in the McGlothlins’ high-ceilinged, Italianate home on the edge of Olde Farm golf course.
In a hallway near the kitchen, there’s a small, sepia-toned photo of Fran and Jim McGlothlin cuddling on a sofa, taken by the legendary portraitist Annie Leibovitz. For her 60th birthday, Fran asked for the portrait by Leibovitz, who has taken iconic photos of subjects ranging from Queen Elizabeth II to John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
These days, the couple travels to see their children across the United States, and Jim golfs regularly at Olde Farm and in Florida and occasionally in Scotland, but he no longer pilots planes, after experiencing a few health issues.
In 2015, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer — his doctors spotted it early during a CAT scan and took immediate action, removing the tumor.
“I took chemo for six months,” McGlothlin says. “I couldn’t eat anything, couldn’t drink anything. That bottle of water would taste like tin. I just couldn’t get it down. I lost 65 pounds.”
Two months after finishing chemotherapy, McGlothlin suffered a stroke while at a restaurant with Fran, his daughter and her husband. Fortunately, they’d flown there in a helicopter, which was able to deliver him to a hospital in less than 20 minutes, and McGlothlin fully recovered — enough to fly with Fran in 2018 to a few baseball games around the country in a farewell to piloting.
In January, McGlothlin stepped down as United’s CEO, ceding the position to Kent, though McGlothlin remains the company’s chairman. They still talk daily, but Kent says that McGlothlin wanted to pass on some of the day-to-day operations and responsibilities.
The McGlothlins took their children and grandchildren to Bermuda this past summer, and while he acknowledges his love of making deals, McGlothlin says, “I’m more about family in my life than I am about business. … That’s important.”
In a state nationally recognized for its colleges and universities, these are the educators and leaders who continue to grow Virginia’s reputation for academic excellence.
Marianne Baernholdt Dean, School of Nursing, University of Virginia Charlottesville
In August, Marianne Baernholdt returned to U.Va. after a stint at the University of North Carolina’s nursing school, where she led global initiatives and was interim dean of research. Previously, she directed U.Va.’s Rural and Global Health Care Center and taught at the School of Medicine. Now, she’s taking on the important job of training more nurses and clinical nursing trainers — both of which are in short supply. “In the U.S., we are turning away about 80,000 students every year that want to be nurses” because hospitals don’t have enough personnel to provide hands-on training, she says. In addition to being dean, Baernholdt serves on UVA Health’s executive team, addressing workplace issues for current nurses, too.
Ann-Marie Knoblauch Director of the School of Visual Arts and associate professor of art history, Virginia Tech Blacksburg
In July, officials at Virginia Tech named Ann-Marie Knoblauch director of the university’s School of Visual Arts. Knoblauch had served as interim director of the school since January 2021. In that post, she says, she saw her job as “making sure the lights stayed on.” Now, that she’s been officially named director, Knoblauch feels freer to envision what the School of Visual Arts and the arts generally at Virginia Tech might look like in the future.
Knoblauch, who is also teaching a class on ancient Egyptian art and architecture this semester, enjoys shopping for antique art or vintage jewelry in her free time. “I love to find treasures,” she says.
Photo by Peter Means
Linsey Marr Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech Blacksburg
When Linsey Marr started researching how airborne illnesses could be transmitted in 2007, it was initially driven by personal reasons: She wanted to know why her child was always getting sick at daycare. But when COVID-19 took hold, suddenly her research was more relevant than ever. “I toiled in obscurity,” she says. “Then the pandemic hit and there was this 180-degree turn. Things I thought would take 30 years to change in our thinking have changed within two years.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and the White House sought her out, and she published more than 20 research papers in 2020. Marr also received a 2022 Outstanding Faculty award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). Her research led to the publication of a groundbreaking study that found flu virus in microscopic droplets that were small enough to remain floating in the air for an hour or more, and that flu seasonality is associated with humidity, according to The New York Times.
Melissa J. Perry Dean, College of Public Health, George Mason University Fairfax
A cousin of pop star Katy Perry, Melissa Perry has a résumé that runs deep, having written more than 150 papers on epidemiology and public health. In August, she became dean of GMU’s College of Health and Human Services — which in November rebranded itself as the College of Public Health in a move to address a critical need for skilled health professionals and research across the state. Perry had previously chaired George Washington University’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health since 2011.
Perry’s realm of research has focused on the impact of climate change on the properties of pesticides and other chemicals, as well as pesticide exposure effects on farming communities, agricultural workers and the public.
No word on whether she has the eye of the tiger or if we’ll hear her roar.
Carole Tarrant Coordinator of development, Virginia Western Community College Roanoke
A former Roanoke Times editor, Carole Tarrant found herself in 2013 as part of the growing club of laid-off journalists. That fall, the Roanoke resident started working in marketing for VWCC, and in 2014, she was promoted to development coordinator, running the college educational foundation’s fundraising. Unlike some community colleges, VWCC’s enrollment was up this year, good news for the school. Both jobs — journalism and fundraising — “are so much about relationships and connections,” says Tarrant, who keeps a hand in the reporting world, serving on the board of nonprofit digital news outlet Cardinal News, which covers Southern and Southwest Virginia. “I’ve been their No. 1 fan from the beginning.”
Jerry Wallace President, Danville Community College Danville
Jerry Wallace, who became DCC’s president in July, started his career in education as a substitute teacher, before ultimately deciding to pursue a career in higher education. Previously president of Nebraska’s Central Community College’s Hastings campus, he’s now in his second college presidency, in Danville, a city that he says mirrors his hometown of Muskegon, Michigan. DCC has many projects on the horizon he’s excited about, including collaborating with Caesars Virginia to help prep the forthcoming casino‘s workforce and building an aviation maintenance program. But at home, he has an even bigger project — getting ready for his first child, expected in May. Wallace and his wife spend their weekends at car shows with their black 1976 Ford Thunderbird. They also flip houses in Michigan and expect to do it in Virginia soon.
Tommy Wright President, Southwest Virginia Community College Cedar Bluff
Tommy Wright isn’t a guy content to stick with the status quo.
Since becoming Southwest Virginia Community College’s president in 2018, he’s launched a full athletic program with 14 teams and about 250 athletes. Since about 75 of those athletes were recruited to play for SWCC and hail from outside the localities the community college primarily serves — Buchanan, Russell, Tazewell and Dickenson counties — they needed housing.
Wright worked with the community college’s foundation to authorize a loan for $3.5 million to build two dormitories. In addition to athletes, Wright thinks the housing also will be used by students who’ve aged out of foster care, as well as those who have long commutes to Cedar Bluff.
In early November, Wright said he hoped to see students moving into the first 48-person dorm in a couple of weeks. “We’re excited to get that open,” he says.
Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown
Troy Wiipongwii Affiliated faculty member, William & Mary Global Research Institute Chesterfield
Troy Wiipongwii, whose biological parents came from the middle class, was adopted by his godparents at age 9 and grew up in New Jersey’s wealthy suburbs outside of New York City. The differences he witnessed made an impact; Wiipongwii says he feels a “duty to create opportunities that can improve the lives of the middle class.”
Wiipongwii founded William & Mary’s blockchain lab as an extension of his graduate work; he earned a Ph.D. in data science and technology from Capitol Technology University in September. He also taught a blockchain course at Emory & Henry College.
Now he’s focused on designing an algorithm that balances food supply chains with environmental impacts and an individual’s eating preferences with health needs. He’s also working on a grant to help Indigenous communities build and support a local, sustainable food supply chain.
Warmer winters mean ski resorts must manufacture more snow to keep slopes open, but improved technology has helped offset costs and streamlined the process.
WintergreenResort has more than 400 snow guns that over the season can cover 26 trails in 3 feet of snow, says General Manager Jay Gamble. Under optimal conditions over 24 hours, the equipment could cover a football field with 35 to 40 feet of snow.
“Wintergreen has a very powerful snowmaking system,” he says, but “every year it always comes down to the weather.”
While climate conditions vary from year to year, snowmaking has long been a constant for Virginia’s resorts.
“It’s built into our business model,” says Kenny Hess, director of sports and risk management at Massanutten Resort, which will operate 21 trails this season with the help of about 275 machines.
Gamble and Hess say major advances in energy efficiency and automation over the past two decades help resorts contend with climate inconsistencies.
Ten years ago, it took hours to get the snowmaking system into gear, Hess says. Now the operation has shorter snowmaking windows thanks to automation and can even be controlled by cellphone.
Under ideal conditions, an acre can be covered with 2 feet of snow in one hour, but typically it takes 24 to 36 hours of snowmaking in early season to open the slopes.
More efficient technology also has cut labor and energy costs.
“We’re making more snow, but we’re making it at a lower cost than we used to,” Gamble says. Weather stations at different points on the mountain provide real-time readings so that snow guns can be adjusted for subtle temperature variations.
But nature’s still in charge.
Optimally, snowmaking requires a 28-degree wet-bulb temperature, which is temperature adjusted for relative humidity. “The lower the relative humidity, the more snowmaking production we can achieve,” Gamble says.
The science of snowmaking is something guests don’t always understand, Hess says.
“A cold weather weekend comes in and they expect you to have snow,” he says. But it might be 29 or 30 degrees “and we can’t make snow because it’s humid.”
Another misconception is that the snow is artificial. “It’s real snow,” he says, but more durable because of its higher water content.
Water is the key ingredient, Hess says. It takes 175,000 gallons to make 1 acre-foot of snow.
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