Kudos! March 2024

March 1, 2024
By W&M Alumni Magazine

Congratulations to William & Mary alumni who are making moves in the world! This is where we celebrate awards, job changes, promotions, recognition and other career and civic engagement news we collected between Dec. 1 and Feb. 29. For more updates from your classmates, check out the Class Notes at magazine.wm.edu/class-notes and in the print edition of the W&M Alumni Magazine!

If you would like to submit an item for Kudos, email the W&M Alumni Magazine staff at alumni.magazine@wm.edu. We will also share your news with your class’s reporter.

Awards and Recognition

Kendrick Ashton ’98 and Craig Dixon ’97, J.D. ’00 were among the winners of the 2024 Virginia Black Business Leaders Awards from Virginia Business magazine. The two are co-founders and co-CEOs of The St. James Group, which develops and operates sports and wellness facilities. Their original location, The St. James, opened in Springfield, Virginia, in 2018, and they later added smaller, more streamlined versions in Reston, Virginia, and Bethesda, Maryland. Read more about them in the spring 2019 issue of the W&M Alumni Magazine.

Eric Bonnette ’01 and his team at the Stifel Bonnette Wealth Management Group were recently named among Forbes’ 2024 Best-in-State Wealth Management Teams.

Philip Clark ’02, M.A.Ed. ’03 has won the Publishing Triangle’s 2023 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry for co-editing “Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski.” This is the third book he has edited, following “Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS” and “In the Empire of the Air: The Poems of Donald Britton.”

Debbie Mackler Fisher ’88 was profiled in Voyage LA magazine for her work as an architect. Debbie founded Mackler Fisher Architecture in 2016 and works on projects in the Los Angeles area.

Jim Ledwith ’79 was honored with the Family Physicians Who Are Changing Our World Award from the Family Medicine Education Consortium. The award recognized Jim’s service and advocacy for responsible care for patients who depend on opioid medication, and his leadership in training family physicians on how to treat pain and opioid use disorder.

Nicole Lynn Lewis ’03 was named one of the 2023 Washingtonians of the Year for her work as founder and CEO of Generation Hope, which was founded in 2010 with a mission to help student parents succeed.

Jon Rogers ’02 was recognized as a TechPoint Tech25 honoree in the Tech Innovation Strategy & Community category. His State Earn and Learn (SEAL) IT program also won back-to-back StateScoop 50 State IT Innovation Awards, a National Association of State Chief Information Officers State IT Recognition Award in Enterprise IT Management and an HR Impact Award from the Indianapolis Business Journal.

Brittany Wood ’13 was a part of the winning team for the bronze award for medium-length documentary at the 2023 Social Justice Film Festival in Seattle for the documentary “HEART: Serving our Neighbors in Crisis,” about the city of Durham’s new Community Safety Department.

Job Changes and Promotions

Eric Charity J.D. ’13 was elected partner in Kilpatrick’s 2024 partner class. Eric is a commercial finance attorney in Atlanta. His practice is focused on a wide range of credit transactions, representing agents, lenders, financial institutions, private equity groups, public and private companies and other business organizations.

Stephen Cobb J.D. ’07, with the law firm Cozen O’Connor, has been appointed as the inaugural Democracy Fellow to the Defending Democracy initiative of the American Bar Association (ABA) Section of State and Local Government Law. Stephen will work with ABA’s Election Law and Voting Rights Committee to enhance scholarship and develop programming related to democracy, voting rights, politics and the law at law schools and other venues.

Alan Edwards ’88, Ed.S. ’93, Ph.D. ’01 was selected by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia to be the interim director of the Commonwealth's postsecondary coordinating agency, SCHEV. He has been on staff there since 2002. As interim agency director, Alan assists the SCHEV Council in fulfilling its statutory duties as Virginia’s coordinating body for higher education and manages the operations of the 60+-staff state agency.

Allen Fawcett ’97 was named director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland in College Park that brings together expertise in research, modeling and analysis to advance scientific understanding of how human, energy and environmental systems interact.

Gus Herbert ’13 has joined Frost Brown Todd’s Louisville office as government relations principal in the firm’s Lobbying & Public Policy Practice Group. With more than a decade of experience in numerous high-stakes political campaigns, Gus is an established political strategist. Before joining Frost Brown Todd, Gus managed political campaigns for the U.S. Senate, Kentucky governor and other statewide races and served in several roles for Kentucky’s Commissioner of Agriculture.

David Massaron J.D. ’04 was named chief economic development and real estate officer for General Motors. David joins GM from Wayne State University, where he served as chief business officer and chief financial officer, as well as treasurer for the University’s Board of Governors.

Andrew Scarafile ’20 was among Faegre Drinker’s 2023 first-year associate class. With Faegre Drinker, Andrew counsels clients in litigation and dispute resolution and serves at the firm’s Washington, D.C., office.

Sam Wheeler ’10 was named executive director of the Writers Guild of America East. He begins his new role on April 1. He is currently the national executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists.