Greg Fairchild Appointed UVA’s Director of Northern Virginia Operations

Professor Gregory B. Fairchild will be the first director of Northern Virginia operations for the University of Virginia.

Fairchild, Isidore Horween Research Associate Professor of Business Administration at UVA’s Darden School of Business, will oversee the University’s programs and facilities in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area, including those currently offered by Darden, the McIntire School of Commerce and the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, among others.

“I have spent the last three years working on the launch of Darden programs in the area,” said Fairchild, who is also Darden’s associate dean for Washington, D.C. area initiatives. “My excitement at being part of the larger portfolio of UVA’s efforts in Northern Virginia is without parallel, and my early conversations with partners across Grounds have only strengthened my sense of the possibilities.”

Fairchild – recently named the Poets & Quants 2017 MBA Professor of the Year – will retain his current academic appointment at Darden throughout his two-year term as director and continue his work in the classroom.

His appointment is indicative of UVA’s growing presence in the Washington region.

Darden opened new facilities in Rosslyn last year, which support the school’s Executive MBA and executive education program and provide event space for students, faculty members and alumni. Those facilities will serve as Fairchild’s home base.

Also last year, the University announced a partnership with the Inova Health System, a large nonprofit health care system based in Falls Church. The partnership includes a research institute, the Global Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Institute, created by Inova, UVA and George Mason University to support work in genetics and genomics, bioengineering and biology. The research could lead to new treatments, drugs and medical devices improving the lives of patients in Virginia and beyond.

UVA will also establish a UVA School of Medicine regional campus, expected to open in March 2021 at Inova Farifax Hospital. The new campus will eventually accommodate up to 72 medical students for their clerkship and post-clerkship rotations in the last 2½ years of medical school.

“Northern Virginia is an important region for UVA for numerous reasons, and especially because of our new partnership with Inova,” University President Teresa A. Sullivan said. “Greg Fairchild’s experience has prepared him well to assume this leadership position for UVA, and I’m grateful to him for his willingness to take on this new role.”

Fairchild said he sees tremendous potential for a wide variety of programs and initiatives in a region that is not only the political heart of the country, but a global capital with a very educated population.

“The Washington, D.C. area is a global gateway with residents and relationships that touch every corner of the planet,” he said. “The area thrives on ideas – artistic, commercial, political and technological. … I am excited to assist in furthering our engagement in the discourse.”