Hampton Roads Magazine

March/April 2006

The A-List

50 Very Important People Shaping Life in Hampton Roads

Written by Jessica Carlson, Bobbie Fisher, Meredith Hemenway, Michael Jon Khandelwal, Larry Maddry, Melissa Morgan, Ben Swenson and Melissa Starr

Sure, every area has its quirks. But it’s hard to deny Hampton Roads is really a great place to call home. And it’s our job at the magazine to explore the reasons why each day. Our community has seen many changes in recent years, and we’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about the people responsible for making our area thrive—those who shape our lives in Hampton Roads.

So we talked to community leaders, average joes and even our own staff and asked them all to nominate people they thought were important to our region’s success. When the results came in, we sorted through the numerous opinions and discussed, debated, deleted, added and deleted again until we came up with an A-List of people we feel are worth reading about. The 50 people we have selected have made contributions in all sorts of areas—arts and entertainment, development, technology, education, community service, business and more. Their commonality is that they all have recently made or are making positive contributions that affect large numbers of Hampton Roads residents.

Some of these people you are probably familiar with; others, we hope to teach you more about. Most of them deserve full-length features about all they have done, but in the short write-ups provided for each person, we tried to give you a good overview of their best accomplishments.

Part of the reason finalizing our list was so hard is because there are many more than 50 very important people in Hampton Roads. To all of our readers: these are the ones that topped our list, but we’d love to hear why you agree or disagree with our choices and who you may have added or subtracted. And to all of our VIP’s: we appreciate the things you have done and are doing for Hampton Roads and think you deserve some recognition. Following, in random order, you’ll find our A-list of people we feel are making the grade. End of Excerpt

For the rest of this story, including the full list of VIPs, see the March/April 2006 issue of Hampton Roads Magazine, currently available on newsstands.