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Wakefield named to 2026 Virginia Business Women in Leadership list
August 13, 2026
Jennifer Wakefield, president and CEO of the Greater Richmond Partnership, has been named a 2026 Women in Leadership award recipient by Virginia Business. The honor recognizes top women executives across the commonwealth for their professional accomplishments, civic engagement, mentorship and role in breaking glass ceilings.
Wakefield leads the Greater Richmond Partnership, the region’s lead economic development organization serving the City of Richmond and the counties of Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico. She has served as president and CEO since February 2021 after two stints as interim CEO and prior roles as chief operating officer and senior vice president of marketing. Since taking the helm, she has been a driving force behind Greater Richmond’s push to become a top midsize region for business investment. Her tenure has included landing major economic development wins representing thousands of new jobs for the region including Amazon’s robotics fulfillment center, CoStar Group’s multibillion-dollar corporate campus expansion and The LEGO Group’s carbon-neutral manufacturing facility. She is also one of the driving forces behind Greater Richmond’s air service initiative to bring direct European flights to the airport.
This isn’t the first time Wakefield has earned this recognition. She was also named to Virginia Business’s Women in Leadership list in 2022, honored at the time for positioning Greater Richmond as a magnet for major relocations and for her commitment to building a diverse local economy so the region’s young people don’t have to leave the market to find good jobs. Being named again in 2026 underscores a leadership track record that has held up and grown over several years, cementing Wakefield as one of the state’s most consistently recognized economic development leaders.
Virginia Business selects Women in Leadership honorees through its leadership team, honoring executives who “are making significant contributions to their organizations and communities as trailblazing mentors” who encourage the next generation of professional women to pursue their own ambitions.
Wakefield and this year’s other honorees will be celebrated at an awards banquet on October 6th at the Science Museum of Virginia’s Dewey Gottwald Center in Richmond. Networking begins at 5:30 p.m., followed by dinner and the awards program at 6:15 p.m.
Winners will be featured in the October issue of Virginia Business and online at https://virginiabusiness.com/event/womeninleadership/.
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