A subsidiary of Duroc AB, a Sweden-based investment firm that invests in industrial manufacturers, Drake Extrusion produces polypropylene-based colored filament yarn and staple fiber used for home furnishings and automotive manufacturing. The company established its roots in Henry County in 1995, and Parkinson has served at the helm since 2001.

In 2021, Drake acquired North Carolina-based yarn manufacturer Michael S. Becker, and Drake has expanded its Henry County footprint twice in the past 10 years and employs more than 200 people nationwide. Its most recent expansion, announced in 2020, established an additional manufacturing facility in a 120,000-square-foot building.

Parkinson is a member of the GO Virginia Region 3 Council, which encourages economic development in Southern Virginia. He also sits on the West Piedmont Workforce Development Board and is secretary and treasurer on the board of the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber’s Partnership for Economic Growth.

Parkinson received a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from Lancaster University in the U.K.

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Gov. Glenn Youngkin, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and other officials gathered with Shim in Chesapeake in April to break ground for LS GreenLink USA’s roughly $700 million advanced cable manufacturing and port facility. The site will include a 750,000-square-foot production facility with the state’s tallest structure: a 660-foot tower needed to support the production of massive cables. It’s expected to be in operation in early 2028.

Shim, who joined South Korean parent company LS Cable & System in 2023, has a background in investment on the West Coast. He launched 1927 Capital Management, a private investment firm co-founded with a winemaking family, and worked at Mirae Asset Financial Group and Hana Financial. He also served as a planning commissioner in Upland, California, from 2020 to 2022.

A graduate of Claremont McKenna College, Shim has become involved in his new community, joining the board of the Virginia Maritime Association in 2024. He also is a member of the American Clean Power Association’s Federal Legislative Affairs Committee.

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Since 2012, Bassett has served as president of Vaughan-Bassett, marking the fourth generation to lead the family company, which opened in 1919. Its brands include Vaughan-Bassett Furniture, Artisan & Post and Laurel Mercantile Co. Home by Ben & Erin Napier.

Vaughan-Bassett also bills itself as the nation’s largest manufacturer of wooden bedroom furniture for adults. The company, which employs more than 500 craftspeople, returned dining furniture to its product lines in 2023 after a three-year suspension. In April, amid tariffs on Chinese and other countries’ imports, Vaughan-Bassett announced it would not raise prices for 120 days in a letter to dealers and sales reps, and it reported in May that uncertainty around tariffs have boosted its own profits.

In 2024, Vaughan-Bassett relocated its showroom to the new Furniture First building in High Point, North Carolina, moving from the International Home Furnishings Center half a mile away. The company’s factory facilities remain in Galax.
Bassett serves on the executive committee of the High Point Market Authority’s board of directors.

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In early 2023, Danaher, a Washington, D.C., conglomerate encompassing biotechnology, diagnostics and life sciences businesses, announced plans to spin off its environmental and applied solutions segment into a separate public company headquartered in Massachusetts and called Veralto.
A subsidiary of Danaher since 2007, Glen Allen-based ChemTreat is now part of Veralto, and Collier is now president of Veralto after previously serving as president of ChemTreat since 2021.

He was succeeded at ChemTreat by Ashour Khamis, who previously worked in Dubai for automation machinery manufacturer Emerson, and Khamis now reports to Collier. Veralto has 600 employees in Virginia, and 300 of them work at ChemTreat, which was founded in 1968 by a grandson of U.S. President John Tyler, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, who died in May at the age of 96.

An alumnus of Georgia Tech and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, Collier was an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper in the Army. From 2012 to 2018, he was employed in ChemTreat’s marketing division, leaving to become president of McCrometer, a flowmeter manufacturer and a previous Danaher subsidiary that is now part of Veralto.

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Since 2019, Moore has served as president and CEO of Philip Morris USA, the largest cigarette company in the United States with brands that include Marlboro and Virginia Slims.

Morris has worked for parent company Altria Group since 2003, serving as vice president of its heated tobacco products division and director of marketing for NuMark, Altria’s defunct e-cigarette subsidiary.

Philip Morris USA reported its domestic cigarette sales fell 10.2% in 2024 compared to the previous year. However, Altria has expanded its product line to include heated tobacco and vaping products — while hitting occasional obstacles, including thousands of lawsuits filed against Juul Labs, in which the company had a significant financial stake.

In 1998, Philip Morris and the nation’s three other largest tobacco product manufacturers entered into a master settlement agreement with multiple states, including Virginia, for costs incurred by smoking-related illnesses and deaths. Some of those settlement funds support the Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, which awards grants to promote economic development in former tobacco farming communities. In June, Gov. Glenn Youngkin reappointed Moore to the Virginia State University Board of Visitors for a second term.

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NewMarket is the parent company of subsidiaries that specialize in petroleum additives and critical performance additives used in space launch and military defense applications.

Gottwald, whose grandfather Floyd Gottwald’s Albemarle Paper Manufacturing purchased the Ethyl Gasoline Corp. in 1962, is a member of one of the nation’s wealthiest families. Ethyl, now called NewMarket, now has multiple spinoffs, including Afton Chemical and NewMarket Development, which focuses on real estate projects.

A Virginia Military Institute graduate, Teddy Gottwald joined the family company in 1984 and became president and CEO in 2004. He succeeded his father, Bruce Gottwald Sr., as board chairman in 2014.
In April, NewMarket’s board approved a $100 million capital investment by subsidiary American Pacific Corp. to expand the company’s capacity to produce components for solid rocket motors.

A member of VMI’s board of visitors, Gottwald served as interim board president earlier this year to fulfill the remaining term of John Adams, who resigned from the post. The board generated controversy in February for not renewing the contract of the school’s first Black superintendent, Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins. Gottwald is a major donor to Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

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Ledesma became the plant manager of DuPont’s Spruance site in 2021 after serving in the same role at its facility in Buffalo, New York.

Built in 1929 to manufacture rayon, DuPont’s Spruance site sits along the James River and is the largest of the company’s manufacturing facilities worldwide. Ledesma manages more than 2,000 employees, some of whom had parents and grandparents who worked at the plant. Materials produced there include Nomex, which is used in automotive hoses, electrical insulation and aircraft, and Kevlar, which is used in body armor.

In 2024, DuPont de Nemours announced it would split into three publicly traded companies, separating its electronics and water units. However, in January, the company announced it had decided to keep the water business within its portfolio.

Previously, Ledesma worked at Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), a Texas oil producer, as production manager in Michigan and Texas.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of South Florida and an MBA from DeVry University.

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