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Business & Tech

McLean CEOs Selected as Top Leaders By Virginia Business Magazine

Six influential, McLean-based business leaders make the list.

Six McLean-based chief executive officers have been named to Virginia Business Magazine's list of 25 Best in Business Leaders. The publication compiled the list of Virginia's most accomplished CEOs, chairmen and company founders in celebration of their 25th anniversary covering major industries and business trends in the state.

The list, which was unranked, includes property developers and advertising executives, internet moguls and energy producers. "Some of these men and women were pioneers who went on to build Fortune 500 companies," the article, which appeared in the March 2011 edition, states. "Others transformed their industries. Still others helped shape the landscape of entire regions."

The six top leaders who live in McLean or preside over a business here have, with their professional work, significantly affected the economic makeup of Northern Virginia. Below is a summary of our most powerful neighbors, as determined by the magazine.

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Name: Gloria Bohan

Position: Founder, President and CEO, Omega World Travel, Fairfax

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Resides: Crest Lane, McLean

From an inauspicious beginning as small firm in Fredericksburg, Bohan built Omega Word Travel into the third-largest travel management company in the country. Her company now has an excess of $1 billion in annual sales, and employs over 1,100 people worldwide, from their headquarters in Fairfax to Japan, the United Kingdom, and Bahrain. A forerunner of the computerized reservation system, Omega now owns Cruise.com, one of the largest sellers of cruises online, and Travtech, Inc., a technology development company. Bohan has been consistently recognized by diversity and women's business associations; she is the only woman to make Virginia Business's 25 Best in Business Leaders list.

Name: Steve Case

Position: Co-founder, America Online Inc., CEO of Revolution LLC, McLean

Resides: At Merrywood, the seven-acre McLean waterfront estate that was the childhood home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, off Chain Bridge Road in the Potomac palisades.

The notoriously private Steve Case is a low-profile McLean resident, but he has doubtless changed the landscape of the world with his work with AOL. He stayed with the company through its merger with Time Warner, creating one of the world's largest media, entertainment and communications conglomerates. Case stepped down as Chairman of AOL Time Warner in 2003, and pursued his passion of entrepreneurship by developing Revolution LLC—a company that makes investments in burgeoning health care, real estate and financial service companies.

Name: Richard D. Fairbank

Position: Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Capital One Financial Corp., McLean

Resides: Langley Place, McLean

Richard Fairbank's vision has made Capital One Financial Corporation not only a credit card company, but a broadly diversified financial services company ranked 130th on the Fortune 500.  It is the eighth largest bank in the United States, with nearly 1,000 branches on the East Coast, in the South, and abroad. (Capital One's new branch opened on Chain Bridge Road in October.) Unlike many of his competitors, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America, his company largely weathered the financial meltdown and recession by sidestepping the subprime mortgage market. He is the only banker to make Virginia Business's list.

Name: P. Wesley Foster Jr.

Position: Founder, Chairman, CEO, The Long & Foster Cos., Chantilly

Resides: Crest Lane, McLean

Like many leaders selected by Virginia Business, Foster's company had humble beginnings in 1968. Long and Foster has since outgrown its small Fairfax office to become the largest privately-owned real estate company in America. It is also one of the Washington area's largest private employers. Like Capital One, Long and Foster rebounded from the financial meltdown (despite some rumblings about the CEO's improper tactics in pushing in-house mortgages), and boasted more than $51 billion in sales in 2009.

Name: Gerald T. Halpin

Position: President and CEO, WEST*GROUP Properties LLC, McLean

Resides: A riverfront house on East Boulevard Drive, Alexandria and Moose, Wyoming

Without Gerald T. Halpin, Tysons Corner would look very different—or it might not exist at all. He and his co-founders of WEST*GROUP purchased the 125-acre plot of land now known as Tysons in 1962, and proceeded to pioneer the development of mixed-use, master-planned office parks and residential space in the Washington,  D.C. metropolitan area. In 2009, he spearheaded the construction of McLean's GreenHouse—the first carbon neutral single-family house in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Name: Dr. Ralph W. Shrader

Position: Chairman and CEO, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., McLean

Resides: Mainly resides in Sarasota, FL

Strategy and technology consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton is a venerable McLean behemoth, with annual revenue in excess of  $5 billion and over 25,000 employees. Last year, CEO Dr. Ralph W. Shrader guided the company through its debut on Wall Street—a move that turned out to be extraordinarily shrewd, considering the value of its stock rose by 13 percent during its IPO. He is very active in guiding Booz Allen's philanthropic ventures, especially in Washington, D.C.; the company has been recently involved with the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Personally, Shrader is on the Board of ServiceSource, the largest community rehabilitative program in Virginia.

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