LEESBURG, VA 

For seven years, Lasaunia Thompson battled a rare disease that left her with wounds no doctor could explain and pain so severe her sheets couldn’t touch her skin. She didn’t stop serving women during those seven years. She built a women’s organization. She showed up every day making great efforts not to look like her situation. Today, she leads So Be It, a women’s organization dedicated to developing women for greatness through retreats, workshops, and community, while also co-founding All Things PG, a nonprofit raising awareness for the rare disease Pyoderma Gangrenosum that nearly broke her. This is a story about faith, purpose, and what it looks like to go through something in order to get through it.

Dr. Mary Jean Stack spent her early years as a ballet dancer accumulating injuries and spending time in physical therapy offices. She paid close attention. When her final foot injury ended her dance career, she channeled everything she’d observed into building the kind of PT practice she always wished she’d had — one-on-one care for the full hour, a team built around deep individual specialties, and a model that doesn’t discharge patients at graduation but bridges them into long-term wellness. Great Falls Physical Therapy has grown through COVID, expanded into a second location, and become one of the most trusted practices in the community. This is how it happened — and why the magic is in the intentional staying small.

When Megan McGlynn knelt beside her sister-in-law during chemotherapy and began massaging her legs, she wasn’t thinking about a career change. She was thinking about the person in front of her. That moment of quiet care — and the ten-out-of-ten it produced — sent Megan to massage school, then to Costa Rica for oncology training, and eventually to building Valo: a holistic wellness center in Ashburn built on the belief that wellness isn’t just the absence of disease, it’s also the presence of peace. From 90-minute massage and reiki sessions to sound baths, lymphatic drainage, and a forthcoming ASMR experience unlike anything else in the area, Valo is in a category of its own.

Colleen Brooks spent years in corporate digital marketing watching other brands come to life, always dreaming of building something of her own. When she and her husband Jim launched All Aboard Virginia — the only business in the state pairing curated winery tours with custom charcuterie boards — they turned a love of the Virginia countryside that started at UVA into a full-blown hospitality experience built around one thing: making people feel special. Five months in, tours are selling out within hours and reviews are calling the experience “luxurious and effortless.” This is how a dream became a destination.

Carissa Francis started her career in criminology, watching young people repeat painful patterns no one had ever helped them break. That realization sent her back to school, into trauma-focused therapy, and eventually into building Francis Wellness Services — a practice dedicated to helping women, teens, and adults heal from trauma, navigate life transitions, and step into a different future than the one they were handed. From therapy dogs that ease nervous first-timers into the room, to EMDR intensives that compress months of healing into days, Carissa’s approach is built around one conviction: safety, education, and the right support can change everything. This is her story — and an invitation to start yours.

Rob and Jeff of Adapt Stretch and Bodywork have never run a single advertisement. Seven years in, they book back 90% of their clients — in an industry where 20% is the norm. What they’ve built in Loudoun County isn’t just a massage and stretch practice. It’s a place where people with real, lingering problems finally get heard, properly assessed, and given the tools to actually change. In this feature, Rob shares how discovering fascial stretch therapy upended everything he thought he knew about bodywork, Jeff talks about bridging the gap between recovery and strength, and together they make the case that one session is never the answer — but the right few might just change your life.

When a homeowner in a Northern Virginia HOA community asked Scott Kim about getting a better roof, Scott saw something most contractors would have missed: an opportunity to upgrade the entire neighborhood. The result was the Chapel Cross Way project — a community-wide transformation built on education, long-term thinking, and a commitment to leading with value instead of sales. In this feature, Scott shares how WGM Contracting approaches HOA communities differently, why Da Vinci composite roofing changes the math on lifetime roofing costs, and the personal discipline that keeps him sharp, motivated, and growing every single day.

Dr. Bibhu Misra left the pharmaceutical industry. Julianne Misra left CNN. Both had seen enough of a healthcare system built around disease management to know they wanted to offer something different. Twenty years later, the OM Center in Loudoun County has been voted Best of Loudoun five consecutive years, expanded into a historic downtown Leesburg building, and trained a generation of healthcare professionals who carry its values into their own careers. This is the story of how two people from completely different worlds built one of the most trusted wellness practices in Northern Virginia — and why they believe that listening, education, and treating people like family makes all the difference.

Fonati Pennoh has been through things that would stop most people cold — two combat deployments, losing his mother at 22, sleeping in his car during COVID while his newborn daughter entered the world. But FP, as he’s known, didn’t stop. He went to the library every day, worked out on a playground every morning, and built his way back up from nothing. Today, he’s a Navy veteran, fitness motivator, and co-founder of Family First Fitness — a brand rooted in the belief that if you have 10 free hours in a day, you have no excuse not to move. This is his story, and it’s one worth hearing.

When Andrew Blate and Craig Schneibolk started Beautiful Home Services in 2006, they made each other a promise: never sacrifice quality, no matter what. Through a Great Recession, a pandemic, and two decades of keeping that promise, they’ve built one of the DC Metro area’s most trusted residential remodeling companies — and a friendship that’s still the backbone of everything they do. In this feature, the two co-owners share how a high school friendship became a business, why they signed their operating agreement at Andrew’s wedding, and what they believe every homeowner deserves from a contractor. If you’ve ever had a bad experience with a contractor — or you’re about to start a major remodel — this is the conversation you need to read first.