Southwest Virginia has two new centers welcoming outdoor adventurists and another on the way.
With a grand opening set for August, the $1.5 million Back of the DragonWelcome Center opened in Tazewell in May 2020. In Coeburn, Spearhead Trails opened a 22,000-square-foot activity center in its renovated Coeburn headquarters last year. And the $2.67 million Three Rivers Destination-Discovery Center should open in St. Paul in 2025.
Outdoor adventures are part of the region’s transition from a coal-based economy — and “outdoor adventure” is an expansive term.
“Our biggest draw is motor sports,” explains David Woodard, the Heart of Appalachia Tourism Authority’s executive director.
More than a decade ago, retired veteran Larry Davidson enjoyed riding his motorcycle through the 438 curves and 3,500 feet of elevation change on the 32-mile stretch of Virginia Route 16 between Marion and Tazewell. Davidson dubbed it the Back of the Dragon and persuadedlocal tourism folks to promote it. According to the Virginia Tourism Corp., tourism brought more than $36 million to Tazewell County in 2019.
Appalachian Back Roads, a collection of 14 routes for riding and driving enthusiasts, grew from that concept. “We jumped on their coattails,” Woodard says.
“It’s not unusual to roll into Big Stone Gap or Tazewell or St. Paul or Pennington Gap and find a car club of Porsches or Maseratis or — I mean, just pick one, even Beetle bugs,” Woodard says.
The original Back of the Dragon welcome center was a doublewide trailer. Now it’s a 5,000-square-foot building featuring self-serve ice cream, self-serve beer and a coffee shop.
Spearhead Trails has more than 600 miles of off-road vehicle trails, equestrian, biking and hiking trails, nine river access points and a shooting and archery range. The center features a climbing wall and axe-throwing lanes. They’re working on adding cornhole, basketball and archery. The Virginia Beach-based Institute for Service Research estimates the headquarters alone will add $637,000 to the local economy annually.
The money is significant for the localities, but to Woodard, the new tourism industry’s biggest impact is that it allows families who have lived in the area for generations to stay.
“That means a whole lot when somebody’s kids don’t have to leave to find work,” he says. “If they can start a business and they can make a decent, good living out of it, that’s a big deal.”
David Argabright’s background in construction came in handy when Feeding Southwest Virginia opened its Community Solutions Center in a high-crime, poverty-stricken area of Roanoke.
“I actually was over there for six months in a hard hat overseeing the building of that,” says Argabright, chief financial officer of Feeding Southwest Virginia. Before joining the Salem-based regional food bank, Argabright oversaw development projects for family business Argabright Contractors Inc. for 35 years. For him, the hard hat was nothing new.
For Feeding Southwest Virginia, however, his presence on the job site meant the nonprofit could save some money and ensure compliance with funding requirements of municipal partners on the project. The center opened in May 2018 as a community gathering space and a culinary training center that helps feed at-risk children in Roanoke. Partners in the project included the Northwest Roanoke community, the city of Roanoke, Food Lion and the Roanoke Police Department.
It’s not surprising that Argabright jumped in to oversee construction, as he’s known for “doing whatever it takes,” says Pamela Irvine, president and CEO of Feeding Southwest Virginia.
“His passion for the work that we do … drives him to go beyond the call of duty and expectations in his role as a CFO,” Irvine says. The food bank serves 26 counties and nine cities.
Argabright’s dedication became even more critical during the pandemic, she says.
“He stepped out of his role as a CFO to work with the [chief operating officer] to secure every type of government funding we could apply for,” Irvine says. “He tried continually to get access to resources we wouldn’t get otherwise.”
During that time, Argabright became a bit of an expert on federal Paycheck Protection Program loans and “also shared that knowledge with other organizations around the state,” Irvine says. Instead of outsourcing the PPP application work, which would have cost significantly more, Argabright spent countless hours preparing it himself. Feeding Southwest Virginia ended up securing a PPP loan and forgiveness grant totaling $498,000.
Sometimes, he even takes on responsibilities that don’t have anything to do with the organization’s financial security. For instance, there was a time when a flood made it nearly impossible to travel in a nearby county. “He actually drove a truck to deliver supplies,” Irvine says.
Argabright’s financial skills have helped the organization gain grants and earn the trust of partners and donors, she says. “We generate revenue from multiple sources.” Revenue has quadrupled over the past two years, in part because of his oversight and the trust people put in him.
“That’s critical for a nonprofit,” Irvine says.
Before joining the food bank, Argabright had been involved in mission work. He coordinated more than 100 mission trips across five continents. He also founded an organization called Compassion 575, which raises funds to aid poor children in South Asia through sponsored bike rides in the United States. He jokes, “I had to switch my mission field from South Asia to Southwest Virginia.”
Particularly in 2020 and 2021, as food needs escalated in Southwest Virginia, “we had to stretch to meet those needs,” Argabright says. “It’s been challenging.”
Feeding Southwest Virginia runs food distribution centers in Salem and Abingdon and serves as the hub for more than 380 partner feeding programs. An affiliate member of Feeding America, the organization distributes food and grocery items worth about $31 million annually.
“All of our employees have worked so hard, especially in these last three years during the pandemic,” Argabright says. “We’ve moved a lot of food.”
Switching from real estate development in a family business to overseeing the finances of a food bank was a “significant change for me,” says Argabright. He holds a master’s degree in accounting from Liberty University, but it has been decades since he’s worked as a certified public accountant for KPMG. “I’m very thankful to be here. It’s been a great seven years.”
Read about Virginia Business’ 2022 Virginia CFO of the Year award winners:
It’s renovating an armory on its main campus in Winchester where National Guard soldiers once trained before D-Day, turning it into a Hub for Innovators, Veterans and Entrepreneurs — the HIVE.
“This building will be a game changer for economic development in the Northern Valley and for Shenandoah University and its partners,” says Shenandoah’s president, Tracy Fitzsimmons.
The HIVE will house a veterans’ center, job training, a business incubator and community gathering areas, all centered on technology fields ranging from cybersecurity to augmented and virtual reality to data analytics and artificial intelligence. It will create pathways to “emerging technologies and jobs that we can only imagine in a space with a deep history,” says Provost Cameron McCoy.
The HIVE will serve as the information technology anchor for the area, building on partnerships already in place, says Frederick White, an executive fellow at the school and an analyst with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
The university already converted the armory’s detached garage into an e-sports arena.
The $8 million to $10 million renovation of the main armory building should be completed in 2024, with work to begin late this summer or in early fall. Through private donations and local, state and university funds, SU has raised about $3.5 million. It’s seeking a $5 million state grant through Winchester city government.
A ceremonial groundbreaking is planned for Veterans Day to mark the armory’s historic significance. The brick structure — once Virginia’s oldest active armory — opened in 1940 and housed the Virginia National Guard unit (116th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Battalion) that participated in D-Day.
“From this armory, guardsmen served in World War II and every major international conflict since then,” Fitzsimmons says. “It’s where you dropped off your loved ones to serve our communities and country.”
The university acquired the armory in 2006 from Winchester and allowed the National Guard to continue using it until a new armory opened in Frederick County in 2009.
The renovation includes a yearlong effort to stabilize the 18,000-square-foot building, remove asbestos and install new systems. The design will feature open, flexible spaces with glass cubicles to encourage collaboration and will preserve architecture and historic pieces.
“The design will honor the past and cast a vision to the future,” says Wendell D. Brown, lead architect on the armory project and principal with Nashville-based ESa.
Editor’s note: This article has been amended to correct Shenandoah University’s sources of funding for the project. The earlier article stated county and state funds.
As companies across Virginia continue to adjust to workplace changes created by the COVID-19 pandemic, many human resources managers say one thing is clear: The way people work has changed for good.
“This is a new work environment — the workplace has changed now,” says Kirstin Shelton, vice president of human resources for Octo Consulting Group, a Reston-based technology company that has about 85% of its workforce on a hybrid work model, with employees alternating some days in the office and some days remotely.
“I think the hybrid model is how things are going to continue going forward,” Shelton
says. “It definitely impacts what we are doing in recruiting. We have seen a shift because of the opportunity a remote workforce allows.”
In a post-COVID workplace, she adds, “employers have really got to be creative on how people do their work. It is no longer about people coming into the office from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and sitting at their desk. People are coming in [to the office] for collaboration. They are coming in to connect.”
Nevertheless, for any employer or supervisor, the primary complication with remote and hybrid work remains staff engagement, Shelton says. “When you are no longer physically co-located with your team five days a week for eight to 10 hours, there is just the general lack of being able to read someone’s body language. You have got to be creative and make sure you are connecting with your staff. That is our biggest challenge: ensuring that managers spend time and have the tools they need.”
Finding the right balance between remote and in-office work is a key opportunity for businesses if they want to remain competitive in recruiting, HR managers say.
“The reality is there is a portion of the workforce that simply prefers to be remote,” says Clare Miller, chief human resources officer for Richmond-based Atlantic Union Bank, which has about 2,000 employees in Virginia. “How do you strike a balance between flexibility where it makes sense, while also accounting for the business needs and strategy of an organization?”
Thinking ahead
In April, Atlantic Union announced it was moving to a hybrid work model, in which most of its corporate staff would be alternating between two or three days a week in the office and two or three days of remote work.
Miller says about half of the company’s employees are now working a hybrid work schedule, while about 15% are fully remote and about 33% work in the office full time.
Amid an ongoing labor crunch, companies that offer flexible work schedules have an advantage in recruiting, Miller and other HR managers say. “The current environment is competitive for talent,” Miller says. “I think flexibility is just another lever we can employ.”
Offering hybrid or remote work “has become a bit of a competitive advantage from a recruiting perspective,” says Michelle Link, chief human resources officer for Maximus Inc., a government contractor with more than 34,000 employees spread across all 50 states, including 5,000 in Virginia.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s policy placing strict limits on telework upset many state employees, says Dylan Bishop, a lobbyist for the Virginia Governmental Employees Association. Photo by Matthew R.O. Brown
About half of the company’s employees at a call center in Chester are working remotely, and almost all its employees who worked at a call center in Hampton continue to work remotely. The company also consolidated the two administrative offices it once had in Falls Church and Reston into a single corporate headquarters in Tysons, which reduced its headquarters office footprint from 130,000 square feet to about 90,000 square feet. Employees at the company’s headquarters work a hybrid schedule.
“We are not seeing a slip in our productivity” because of the shift to increased remote or hybrid work, Link says. “Our customers are happy, and we are going to do this for the future.”
The transition has pushed Maximus’ managers to think more about managing for outcomes than managing for time, she adds. “What you want is to manage … what people produce,” Link says. “You don’t want to be focused on when they come and when they go — you want to be focused on delivery.”
The company is also seeing that jobs requiring an in-office presence require extra salary inducements.
“Right now, you need to pay a 10% premium if you want people to be on site and if you are recruiting IT or technical talent, it can be higher than that,” Link says. “Why would they come to work for you on site if they can do the same job somewhere else in a hybrid environment?”
‘Rapidly changing’
With more people working remotely, some companies have decided to scale back on office space while others are taking a wait-and-see approach about office needs.
Atlantic Union, for instance, relocated employees from an office in Caroline County to other locations.
“That change was prompted by our move to a flexible work environment,” Miller said. “We have not yet planned to consolidate any other corporate offices at this time but that is something we will continue to monitor. It is a rapidly changing environment.”
HR professionals need to consider many challenges that employees face in returning to the office for work after two years of remote or flexible work, says Linda Fisher Thornton, an adjunct associate professor at the University of Richmond’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies.
For example, many workers cared for children at home during the pandemic, and people who are required to come back to the office may not have access to affordable or reliable child care, Thornton says.
Additionally, “many people have enjoyed working in their sweatpants or enjoyed working casually, such as out in their backyards, and that is a lot to give up if they go back to working part of the time in the office,” Thornton says.
Thornton also notes that the cost of commuting is an issue because gasoline prices have ballooned, climbing to nearly $5 per gallon in June. Grocery prices also are up, so “resuming the commute back to the office — even part time — leaves employees with a higher added cost as compared to their pre-pandemic commute, representing a higher percentage of an already tighter budget.”
Thornton says remote work has been “a win for employees, improving their quality of life, removing child care barriers and eliminating commuting expenses and time.”
Employers have seen some financial wins from shifting to remote or hybrid work, such as reducing costs for office maintenance and associated overhead. But those that haven’t adjusted for office footprints are facing pressures “not as visible to employees,” Thornton says. Those include “the cost of maintaining empty buildings and campuses,” as well as “the challenges businesses face in building cohesive remote teams, the difficulty retaining good employees with none of the usual on-site perks available, and more.”
Thornton says there is clearly an opportunity for businesses to consolidate office space after switching to hybrid work, but companies should make sure to consider how it will impact workers.
“Employers who make sweeping decisions without considering individual situations will send a message to employees that ‘our needs are more important than yours,’ a message they cannot afford to send during a talent exodus,” Thornton says.
The bottom line, she says, is that “businesses that are not flexible about remote work will be at a disadvantage in recruiting and retaining top talent, because employees enjoy the improved quality of life that remote work affords, and desirable remote job options will exist elsewhere,” Thornton says.
Retention fears
For some companies, the transition to hybrid work came naturally because they were already moving in that direction. For instance, Stride Inc., an education technology company based in Herndon, already had about 85% of its staff working remotely before the COVID-19 pandemic. It ranked No. 6 on FlexJobs’ list of the top companies in the nation hiring for hybrid jobs in 2022.
“We actually saw productivity go up when we went fully virtual,” says Val Maddy, senior vice president of human resources for Stride. With a corporate staff of about 500 people, Stride is downsizing its headquarters office space from 130,000 square feet to about 30,000 square feet.
“I think it is really all about making sure you keep a connection with employees,” Maddy says. “We have instituted more virtual events for individuals to participate in. We do virtual yoga and meditation and high-intensity interval training exercise classes.We do that to promote camaraderie, but also mental and physical wellness.”
While private sector companies grapple with the transition to a more remote work environment, Virginia’s state government employees are dealing with a mandate that they return to office work.
In May, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced a policy that required state employees to return to in-person office work five days a week by July 5 unless they receive approval for a “telework agreement.” Getting such approval isn’t exactly an easy task — an agency head must approve a worker telecommuting one day a week; teleworking two days a week requires approval from a Cabinet secretary; and telecommuting three days a week or more can only be approved by the governor’s chief of staff.
The policy shift was upsetting for many state employees who have benefited from being able to work from home, says Dylan Bishop, a lobbyist for the Virginia Governmental Employees Association, which unsuccessfully sought an extension until September on the return to office work.
“There were hard and fast deadlines set in place that we were concerned about,” Bishop says, adding that state employees had only two weeks to submit applications to continue at-home work. “We have 122,000 state employees, so to give these folks a two-week turnaround time to submit telework agreements … we were skeptical of that.”
Bishop says a survey of the association’s members, which garnered 400 responses, found that more than 50% were concerned about the rising cost of commuting to work because of gasoline prices.
Another issue cited as a top concern among about 25% of survey respondents was “child care and elder care,” Bishop says. “It takes two to three months to find placement for a child in day care under the best of circumstances, and that problem became more acute in the shadow of COVID.”
While the state workers’ association recognizes that many state jobs, such as law enforcement and corrections, cannot be performed remotely, Bishop contends that mandating in-office work for white collar jobs such as information technology will hurt worker recruiting and retention for state government jobs.
“We have longstanding recruitment and retention issues in state employment, particularly in high-skilled and high turnover positions — that is IT, health care and public safety,” he says. “The No. 1 reason attributed to issues with recruitment and retention is compensation. The average state employee’s compensation lags the market by about 10%.”
This issue predated the pandemic, Bishop says, and flexible work options are one way that the state government could compensate for its inability to compete with private sector wages.
Telework and hybrid work, Bishop says, would make “state employment more appealing and [make] it easier to keep people in the commonwealth.”
Virginia Business’ 2022 Virginia CFO of the Year award winners represent large and small businesses and large and small nonprofits.
Small business|Cynthia Macturk, CFO Fahrenheit Advisors, Richmond
When Cynthia Macturk wants to consult with professional peers, she doesn’t have to go far.
“Here, I have an entire in-house network of wonderful CFOs,” says Macturk, chief financial officer of Fahrenheit Advisors in Richmond and the Virginia CFO of the Year winner in the small business category.
Fahrenheit, which had fewer than 90 employees at the end of 2021, now has nearly 130 consultants who work with business clients to provide help and expertise in areas such as finance, accounting, human resources and investment banking. About 50 of Fahrenheit’s consultants are CFOs, Macturk says.
Macturk joined a much smaller Fahrenheit in 2017. “I had used the company in the past … so I was familiar with their reputation,” she says. Still, the company’s growth during the past five years — it has more than tripled its consultant base and branched into new business areas — has been exciting.
She has worked with Fahrenheit’s leaders to manage that growth, a role she’s familiar with because she did the same thing earlier in her career when she was CFO for Monument Consulting, which grew steadily and was later sold to an Atlanta-based staffing company.
“I like to have a seat at the table,” she says, and Fahrenheit’s founders are happy to have her there.
“We were looking for someone to come in and put in a foundation for scalable growth and she has done that,” says Keith Middleton, co-managing partner and co-founder of Fahrenheit.
Macturk developed forecasting models that have been critical as the firm has grown. “That’s been a game changer,” he says.
In addition to her financial skills, Macturk “understands people,” Middleton says. “She’s an advocate for our employees … and lives our principles.”
The firm’s leaders joke that Macturk’s the general manager, Middleton says, because she knows the answer to almost any question. She oversees the company’s facilities and IT and has even stepped in to do some marketing work here and there. “She’s a good project manager and she definitely gives attention to details,” Middleton says.
For Macturk, the flexibility of working for a smaller company is gratifying: “I’m bringing with me the understanding of how an accounting department can run without being held back by corporate structure.”
She enjoys being part of the discussions about where Fahrenheit is headed, and what it’s going to try next. “It’s a very entrepreneurial spirit here, so we’re willing to try new things. … It’s okay if we fail.”
For instance, Fahrenheit sold its human resources advisory division to a competitor in 2016. Then, it turned around in 2020 and dove back into that area of business, and it has been “wildly successful,” Macturk says. “What I like here is that I’m able to weigh in on some of those decisions.”
As the financial nucleus for Fahrenheit, “my group is supporting all of the consultants in the field,” Macturk says. “We’re in the center of it.”
The pandemic, it seems, only intensified clients’ needs for temporary help and consulting guidance. “With this Great Resignation … they’ve turned to us to do some fractional or interim work.”
Macturk enjoys working with the rest of the Fahrenheit team. “Accounting can be very vanilla,” she says. “You do the same sort of things every month, or every quarter or every year.” But it’s much more interesting in a growing firm where the CFO can work with colleagues to solve problems and set up strategies for the future, she says.
Her career path started at Big Four accounting firm KPMG before she joined Capital One Financial Corp. as director of external reporting and then accounting manager. During her 11 years with Capital One, the company grew from about 1,700 employees to a Fortune 500 corporation with nearly 40,000 workers worldwide. She worked to establish an office in England and set up the credit card and banking company’s joint venture accounting in South Africa, all while managing more routine accounting duties at home.
“I really got to see the broader, bigger picture,” she says.
Read about Virginia Business’ 2022 CFO of the Year award winners:
The top trending stories on VirginiaBusiness.com from June 15 to July 14, 2022, were led by a surprise economic development announcement from a Danish toymaker known for its iconic and colorful interlocking plastic bricks.
1|Lego to build $1B factory in Chesterfield
The Lego Group plans to erect a $1 billion toy manufacturing plant in Chesterfield County’s Meadowville Technology Park, creating more than 1,760 jobs. (June 15)
2|Sentara taps new president and CEO
Sentara Health Plans President Dennis Matheis will succeed Howard Kern as Sentara Healthcare’s president and CEO on Sept. 1. (June 24)
3|Virginia ranks third in CNBC’s Top States for Business
After a record-breaking two consecutive years at No. 1, Virginia slipped to third place in CNBC’s 2022 America’s Top States for Business rankings, ceding the top spot to North Carolina. (July 13)
The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol opened in a temporary space in a former Belk department store. (July 8)
5|Dollar Tree overhauls C-suite
The Chesapeake-based Fortune 500 discount retailer shook up its top-tier leadership, moving to replace five executives, including the chief operating officer and chief financial officer. (June 28)
These are some of the state’s biggest economic development announcements in 2021 and 2022, expected to create at least 100 jobs each.
CENTRAL VIRGINIA
Chesterfield County: Lego Group, the manufacturer of the iconic brightly colored interlocking plastic toy bricks, announced in June it will build a $1 billion plant in Chesterfield County’s Meadowville Technology Park, a deal expected to create more than 1,760 jobs within 10 years. The Danish company’s plans include a 1.7 million-square-foot facility on the 340-acre site. Beginning in 2024, it expects to begin operations from a temporary building, initially hiring 500 workers.
Richmond: CoStar Group Inc. is expanding its footprint in Richmond with a $460 million campus on the James River, a project expected to create 2,000 jobs. The Washington, D.C.-
based commercial real estate data and analytics company also has purchased the former SunTrust office on the southern side
of the James for $20 million, where about
400 employees will be located.
EASTERN VIRGINIA
Accomack County: Rocket Lab USA Inc. selected Wallops Island for a launch site and manufacturing and assembly complex for its Neutron rocket, the company announced in February. The project, which will involve building of a 250,000-square-foot complex on 28 acres next to the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, is expected to create up to 250 jobs. The Neutron rocket is set to be operational in late 2024.
Norfolk: The 111-acre Lambert’s Point Docks is set to become a maritime operations and logistics center for the offshore wind, transportation and defense industries, creating more than 500 jobs and bringing in more than $100 million in capital investment. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. owns the land, which has been leased for the next 30 years by Virginia Beach-based Fairwinds Landing LLC, a special purpose company established in 2021.
Portsmouth: Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy S.A., the Spanish wind energy company involved in Dominion Energy Inc.’s $9.8 billion offshore wind project in Virginia Beach, announced plans in October 2021 to build the first U.S. offshore wind blade factory at Portsmouth Marine Terminal. Siemens is investing $200 million to build the factory, which is expected to be completed in early 2023, creating 310 jobs.
NORTHERN VIRGINIA
Fairfax County: Qualtrics, a data analytics and experience management software company based in Seattle and Provo, Utah, is expanding its presence in Northern Virginia with a new location near the Reston Metro station, part of a development boom in the western part of Fairfax County. The company expects to create 400 jobs in Reston, it announced in December 2021, as Qualtrics closed its $1.13 billion purchase of Reston-based software company Clarabridge Inc.
Loudoun County: Hanley Energy, an Irish energy management company with its U.S. headquarters based in Loudoun, plans to expand its electrical division in Ashburn, creating an expected 343 jobs. Hanley announced the $8 million investment in June, about a year after it said it would base its U.S. headquarters in Virginia, bringing 170 jobs to the commonwealth.
Stafford County: Amazon.com Inc. continued its march across Virginia, with an announcement in November 2021 that it would build a cross-dock fulfillment center in Stafford County that would create an expected 500 jobs. The 630,000-square-foot plant is the first link of a supply chain where products from third-party vendors are sorted, repacked and sent to other Amazon distribution centers.
Augusta County: In February, Amazon announced another big fulfillment center project, this time in Fishersville. The 1 million-square-foot center is expected to create 500 jobs and open in spring 2023. Workers there will pick, pack and ship bulky or larger items like patio furniture, outdoor equipment and rugs, according to the governor’s office. Amazon employs about 27,000 people in Virginia and has more than 30 fulfillment centers and delivery stations in the state.
SOUTHERN VIRGINIA
Henry County: Schock GmbH, a German quartz composite sink manufacturer, announced in September 2021 it would invest $85 million into a new manufacturing facility that is expected to produce 355 jobs. Construction at the Patriot Centre Industrial Park is set to start in the first quarter of 2023.
Pittsylvania County: Tyson Foods Inc. broke ground in fall 2021 for its $300 million manufacturing facility in Pittsylvania County’s Cane Creek Centre just outside Danville. With completion scheduled in early 2023, the plant is expected to produce 376 full-time jobs. Tyson has long had a footprint in Virginia’s Eastern Shore and Henrico County.
Wythe County: Blue Star NBR LLC, a rubber and nitrile glove manufacturer, is investing $714 million to build a manufacturing facility in Wythe’s Progress Park. The company is expected to create 2,500 jobs by 2028 and establish six glove manufacturing plants total, with the first opening by March 2023. When it’s operating at full capacity, Blue Star expects to produce 20 billion gloves a year.
A member of the university’s first cohort of 40 undergraduate biomedical engineering students who graduated in spring 2022, Thomas designed a dress and headpiece fitted with biosensors for a biotech couture fashion show.
She collaborated with another biomedical engineering student and two industrial engineering students to create fashions that displayed the model’s biosignals to the audience. Her water-inspired dress and headpiece moved rhythmically with the model’s brain waves by incorporating EEG sensors.
“That was a big passion project,” the Williamsburg native says. “As much as I love the technical side, I’m also creative and this combined high fashion with biomedical sensors.”
She initially planned to major in mechanical engineering, but the opportunity to flex her creative muscles drew Thomas to Virginia Tech’s newly-established biomedical engineering program in 2019. “It combined my love of making things and design with helping others,” she says. With her degree, Thomas is moving to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to join Stryker Instruments as a design engineer.
Integrating biological sciences with engineering design, biomedical engineering aims to enhance health care with engineering solutions for assessing, diagnosing and treating medical conditions.
Virginia Tech has partnered with Wake Forest University for nearly two decades on master’s and Ph.D. programs in biomedical engineering but determined there was strong demand for an undergraduate degree that emphasized foundational mechanics.
“This is an increasingly popular major, not just in the United States but internationally because of its connection to health care,” says Jennifer Wayne, head of the Virginia Tech’s biomedical engineering and mechanics department. “Virginia Tech has such a strong college of engineering. This degree gives us an opportunity to apply engineering principles to improve the delivery of health care since biomedical engineers work hand-in-hand with health care providers to solve problems or to make solutions better.”
Last summer, Thomas interned with Virginia Tech’s Carilion Clinic, where she designed circuitry and coding on a sleeve that can be worn by lymphedema patients to alleviate pain. “It’s a combination of vibration and compression,” she says. “We’re working on getting a full patent.”
The first cohort faced unprecedented challenges during COVID. “The students excelled and were able to perform research in faculty labs, internships and co-ops,” Wayne says.
Meanwhile, the program is growing, with 60 seniors, 80 juniors and 80 sophomores enrolled this fall. ”
Not long after D’Ivonne Holman became director of development for Northern Virginia family services nonprofit Britepaths in 2018, she signed up to participate in Leadership Fairfax, a leadership development organization focused on local and regional challenges in Fairfax County. Her boss, a Leadership Fairfax alum, encouraged her to apply.
She was accepted into Leadership Fairfax’s class of 2019 and joined a cohort of 50 classmates over the next 10 months for a series of discussions, workshops, field trips and trainings.
Holman acknowledges she had some reservations at first, but she quickly became a fan. Not only did she interact with people from across the county she might never have met otherwise, but she also got the chance to visit professionals at their workplaces and gain insights into health care, law enforcement and the justice system.
“We can’t operate unless we collaborate,” says Beth Rhinehart, president and CEO of the Bristol Virginia/Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the Executive Leadership Institute. Photo by Earl Niekirk
One memorable road trip brought the class to Richmond and the General Assembly, where they learned about Virginia’s legislative process. Another time, a chance comment during a discussion — “always assume good intent” — shifted the way she looks at leadership, she said.
Would Holman recommend programs like it? “It was great team building, it was great networking, it was very beneficial to me as a leader. … What I got out of it was leaps and bounds beyond what I had anticipated,” said Holman, now development director of the nonprofit Lamb Center, a Fairfax homeless shelter. “It was also more of a time commitment than I anticipated. But it absolutely was worth it.”
Over the past half-century, leadership development programs like Leadership Fairfax have sprung up around the state. Many are managed by local chambers of commerce; others are run through universities; some operate as standalone nonprofits.
Despite variations — some focus on civic leadership, others on business professionals, politicians or nonprofit leaders — the programs share common elements. They bring together class cohorts of business and community leaders to discuss and learn about important issues, with the aim of fostering connections that will last far beyond the time spent in the program.
While many participants join to strengthen their résumés, the programs themselves have loftier goals. They aim to create connections that can reach beyond the boundaries of class, race, gender and politics.
In these divided times, is that even possible?
Smells like twin spirit
It is if you ask the leaders of Bristol, Virginia. Or Bristol, Tennessee — the twin cities with the same names are famously divided down the middle of State Street, with Virginia on one side and Tennessee on the other.
In Bristol, “we have two of everything,” says Beth Rhinehart, president and CEO of Bristol’s Chamber of Commerce. Two state legislatures and two city governments. Two sets of state laws and city ordinances. Two public school systems. And so on.
“No matter what part of the country you go to, there’s always talks about regionalism,” Rhinehart observes. “That means on a very core, basic level that you’re collaborating for something bigger that’s more beneficial than the way you do it already. We have to do that in Bristol. … We can’t operate unless we collaborate.”
To help bridge those divides, the Bristol chamber created the Executive Leadership Institute. Participants, who pay $2,500 tuition, meet for a full day every month from September through May. The institute targets “more seasoned” leaders from the community, Rhinehart adds.
Participants may live in Tennessee but own businesses in Virginia, or vice versa. By building connections and learning how things get done across the region, and by whom, they gain insights into ways they can solve complicated cross-border problems. That includes complex and thorny ones like the Bristol, Virginia, landfill, which has been sending odiferous fumes wafting onto properties in Tennessee.
The city of Bristol, Tennessee, filed suit over the landfill in May, accusing its Virginia sister city of air and health violations. In June, following recommendations by the Department of Environmental Quality and a panel of experts, the city of Bristol, Virginia, announced a settlement, saying it would close the landfill by Sept. 12 and fix the odor emissions, an engineering project estimated to cost at least $15 million. The Virginia city also agreed to pay $250,000 in compensation to Bristol, Tennessee. But as of early July, it was still unclear how Bristol, Virginia, would dispose of its trash in the future.
“It’s not a quick solution but it’s a step toward a solution,” says Rhinehart, herself an alum of the Sorensen Institute, a leadership program based at the University of Virginia. “When you see something successfully demonstrate what can happen with collaboration and working across all different kinds of lines — perceived or real — it’s hard not to be an advocate for it.”
‘Swimming upstream’
The Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership launched in 1993, a time of political turmoil in Virginia. George Allen, a pugnacious Republican, won election for governor in a landslide that ended 12 years of Democratic leadership in the commonwealth.
Since then, the institute has pursued a straightforward goal: to connect Virginia’s civic leaders and help them find common ground, no matter how many other things may divide them. Well over 1,000 participants have graduated from the nonpartisan program, including state senators, county supervisors, city council members, local administrators and many more, including current Attorney General Jason Miyares and the directors of other leadership programs.
“There is an element of career development,” says Sorensen’s director, Larry Roberts. “There’s also a desire to understand what civic leadership means. These are people who are frustrated by the tone of politics.”
Roberts, who served as legal counsel to Gov. Tim Kaine and chief of staff under
Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, went through Sorensen in 2001. “I did not know about the various regions,” he recalls. “I spent most of my adult life in Northern Virginia. … To be able to visualize the settings and have professional contacts across Virginia was really helpful.”
Sorensen’s flagship Political Leaders program gathers one weekend a month, from March through December. Participants visit regions across Virginia, hearing from local experts. Topics include collaboration, civil discourse and building trust. (Other Sorensen programs, such as Emerging Leaders, are less time intensive.)
Recently, Roberts says, Sorensen has seen an increase in applicants “who want to know how government works,” including health care executives.
“We view it as our mission to help people navigate a divided society, and one where cooperation is not always rewarded,” Roberts says. “We see so much tribalism. People really value a place where they can get other perspectives.
“They’re not checking their political philosophies at the door,” he adds. “But not every issue has to be political. … Are we swimming upstream? Yes, I really do feel we are sometimes. But the vast majority of the public wants to see collaboration.”
Founded in 1980, LMR is among the most established leadership development organizations in Virginia. Its creation dates to a time of deep tension in the state capital. Reeling from the civil rights battles of the 1960s and ’70s, which led to legal conflicts over county boundaries and annexation, Richmond and its regional neighbors seemed to be at constant odds with each other.
The city’s chamber of commerce created the program to encourage civic discourse. LMR’s first class of 40 people drew from a wide range of professions, including a city council member, an architect, a corporate lawyer, and several business leaders.
While the issues LMR addresses have shifted as the community has evolved, LMR’s goal has not, says Myra Goodman Smith, LMR’s CEO and president. “It’s still a space for challenging, courageous conversations,” Smith explains.
LMR classes work to resolve “top-level challenges” submitted by community advocates and nonprofit organizations, such as the shortage of mental health facilities for people in crisis. As LMR class members learn about these issues, they are taught methods to help them work together to solve these problems across divides of race, class, culture, education and income.
“People will say that LMR has changed their lives,” Smith adds. “That’s the power of LMR: to have conversations with people who don’t agree with you and won’t agree with you. We don’t do debate — we do dialogue.”
Smith sees LMR’s influence everywhere in the region. LMR’s more than 2,000 alumni include members of Congress and the General Assembly as well as business, civic and nonprofit leaders. “Whenever I open the paper,” Smith says, “I see LMR graduates.”
Concrete results
Much the same can be said of Lead Virginia. Launched in 2004, with the strong support of then-Gov. Mark Warner, the Richmond-based organization works to build leadership across the commonwealth.
In its earliest years, Lead Virginia focused on local leaders. Since then, befitting Warner’s résumé as a CEO-turned-politician, Lead Virginia has shifted toward bringing together business and nonprofit leaders and high-level government administrators.
The program aims to make these leaders familiar with communities and people all over Virginia and, especially, with each other. Traveling to regions across Virginia, participants “build relationships” during the roughly seven-month program through shared tours, meals and experiences, says Susan Horne, Lead Virginia’s president and CEO since 2007.
And that can lead to concrete results, she adds. When she took part in the program in 2006, one of her classmates was the CEO of a large gas company. During a trip to Martinsville, the class saw firsthand the high unemployment rate in that part of the state. Inspired to act, the CEO brought a call center to the area, creating 200 jobs. He never would have known about that need if not for Lead Virginia, Horne says. “He saw it firsthand in our travels.”
Lead Virginia focuses on top-level management — “We are not an emerging leaders program,” Horne explains — and emphasizes the value of seeing and solving problems. “We’re not just telling a chamber of commerce story,” she says. “We want people to understand the good and the not-so-good.”
There are more than 800 Lead Virginia alumni. Horne has seen a positive impact from introducing participants to parts of the state they may have been unfamiliar with, while connecting leaders and teaching them the tools of civic engagement.
“I have a sense that there is a cultural shift happening in Virginia,” Horne says, “an appreciation for working across jurisdiction lines that benefit multiple areas.”
That shift may not always be visible in politics, she acknowledges, but “Virginia is in a better place today than we were before Lead Virginia.”
Local leadership
Like people, communities come in all ages, shapes and sizes. Leadership programs follow suit.
While programs like Lead Virginia focus on statewide issues, smaller programs do much the same on a local level. Take, for example, Smith Mountain Lake Leadership Academy.
Smith Mountain Lake, a fresh-water reservoir in the Roanoke region that was formed when Appalachian Power built the Smith Mountain Dam on the Roanoke River in the early 1960s, is a popular vacation and tourism spot. The 32-square-mile lake spans three counties — Bedford, Franklin and Pittsylvania — and its chamber of commerce has more than 700 business members.
To work across those county lines and the divides that could form between recent arrivals and longtime residents, the regional chamber created a leadership development program in 2020.
Andy Bruns, a former Roanoke regional newspaper publisher for Lee Enterprises Inc., was hired as CEO and president of the chamber soon afterward. He had participated in leadership programs in his former career and says, “Programs like this are extremely valuable for communities. I was so happy when they developed the one here.”
Tuition is $750 and includes monthly half-day sessions for a full year. Participants make site visits — to a local creamery or an alpaca farm, for example — and explore the challenges of a region where million-dollar lakefront properties sprawl alongside aging doublewide trailers.
“Smith Mountain Lake is an extremely wealthy pearl in the middle of a poverty pocket of Western Virginia,” Bruns says. “There’s got to be a way to connect the guys in the $7 million house with people down the road that are food-insecure.”
Classes take on projects to address such issues. “We know we’re not going to fix poverty, though sometimes really good ideas come out of those projects,” Bruns says. “But more importantly, people come to understand that these problems are very complex and take a whole lot of people to solve them.”
He adds, “If we can generate even a handful of people who are better educated about their community and have met the right people in order to engage in the community, we can make a difference.”
(L to R) Kassie Hall, David Wyman, Johnny Mitchell and Candy Bittner of the YMCA of Greater Richmond
(L to R) Debbie Yancey with Lachman Consultants, Dick Yancey and Beth Llewellyn of Brown Edwards
(L to R) Jennifer Davis, Colette Sheehy, Julie Richardson, Melody Bianchetto, Maddie Davis and Lily Roberts of University of Virginia with Kathleen Bianchetto (daughter of Melody Bianchetto)
2. (L to R) Phil Stone, Cherrill Stone, Mary Pope Hutson and Claire Griffith of Sweet Briar College
Truist Virginia Region President Thomas Ransom and his wife, Christy Ransom
L to R) Russell Walker, Pat Burke, Olesya Sidorkina, P.J. Ross and Tim Whitney of Hitt Contracting Inc.
(L to R) Virginia Business Editor Richard Foster; Dan Bryant, Altria Group Inc.; David Argabright, Feeding Southwest Virginia; Hossein Sadid, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Cynthia Macturk, Fahrenheit Advisors; and Virginia Business Publisher Bernie Niemeier
Virginia Business held its 17th annual Virginia CFOAwards banquet at The Jefferson Hotel in Richmond on June 16. Sponsored by Truist and Brown Edwards, the event honored 51 CFOs from around the commonwealth, nominated in four award categories, representing a variety of for-profit businesses, nonprofits and government agencies. (See Pages 59-64 for the full list of nominees and finalists, with profiles of each of the category winners.) Photos by Rick DeBerry.
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