Andrea Brunais

New River Valley artist and writer

I was a veteran journalist before taking a corporate job. My sharp, thoughtful new boss saw that I needed civilizing. Journalists are marvelous people, but newsrooms are chaotic. Someone might jump on a desk to make a point, or a balled-up candy wrapper might come flying over your head. Egos are big. Communication is blunt. Thanks to coaching from , I soon said, "How might instead of, “Are you expertise might be needed?" instead of, “I wouldn’t trust so-and-so to pour piss out of a boot without instructions on the heel.” I was thankful that she instilled in me a modicum of diplomacy. (I no longer had to duck because some yahoo was

Founder of three technology companies in the region

, who was hired as President of FiberCom in 1987, probably helped me most. He had been a senior executive at a couple of large companies. While I had a solid engineering background, Dick taught me to fully understand the company's financials and how to get the most benefit from them by looking at and assessing the metrics and trends. His mentoring gave me a solid financial background that I used when I started Millennia Systems as well as other businesses I was involved in since 2000. During these years I found that a number of CFOs that I worked with were great at cranking out the numbers but often didn't use metrics or trends and thus didn't fully understand the appropriate actions to take if the numbers were not good.

Kimberly Bratic

, the former President/CEO of the YMCA of the Roanoke Valley (now the YMCA of Virginia’s Blue Ridge), is my best boss and a life-long mentor. He is an exceptional people-first leader. He taught me much about leadership communication—specifically, setting a framework for a project, setting benchmarks and expectations. When something got off track, he empowered folks to fix it. He taught me how to lay out a clear argument to win support from board members, colleagues, leaders and more. As a perfectionist, he taught me to know when to let go and know when to call on others for support. He is thoughtful, respectful, emotionally intelligent and all around one of the best humans I know.

Amanda Cockrell

Hollins University professor

In a thousand different ways, my boss and mentor has been the late Richard Dillard. He hired me to run the Hollins children’s literature program when I didn’t know anything about the job. He backed me up in everything and gradually gave me my head as I learned. The same thing happened when he hired me as managing editor of The Hollins Critic. He was endlessly kind, endlessly encouraging, funny as hell, and I was never afraid to ask him anything or to confess when I screwed up. We had one memorable issue when, [in an essay a name was misspelled because of a software problem] … Richard took full blame for it [although] we had both proofread it.

Bob Schmucker

Executive at Optical Cable in Roanoke

My favorite boss goes back to early in my Air Force career in 1981. Colonel Malcolm F. Bolton was a fighter pilot, my wing commander and the epitome of a leader, the kind that people would follow to the gates of hell. He taught me that leadership and management are very different and that has stayed with me. As a manager, I've led diverse teams of engineers and support personnel by listening to all team members, empowering them to make decisions and always making sure they got full credit for good results. If things don't go as well, it was my failure to lead. I believe in personal accountability.

John Carlin

WSLS-TV news anchor

Jack Ruzak was a veteran photographer at WTVR in Richmond when I joined the team there as a reporter in 1984, as green as they come. At the time I thought the goal was only to cover the fire, the accident, or the Board of Supervisors meeting. But, as we rode around in the news van or chatted over the occasional beer, Jack kept prompting me to look for stories that really mattered to people where they live, and to use the amazing video he could shoot to convey the emotion or importance of a given situation. As Jack used to say, “The story isn’t at the meeting.” To this day, I carry that philosophy.