Elizabeth McClanahan

As the Virginia Tech Foundation’s CEO, McClanahan provides leadership and management to maximizing the benefit of Virginia Tech’s private assets in support of university programs and initiatives. The foundation’s real estate portfolio includes properties across the state of Virginia as well as Switzerland. These properties range from innovational, such as the Corporate Research Center and the Virginia Tech Research Center-Arlington, to academic, which include the Steger Center for International Scholarship and the Reynolds Homestead, to recreational, which encompass The Hotel Roanoke and the Pete Dye River Course. The current value of the endowment is $1.14 billion. The Virginia Tech Foundation’s assets total nearly $2 billion.

Elizabeth McClanahan is a former justice on the Supreme Court of Virginia, she now serves as president and dean of the Appalachian School of Law. She has also served as the Williamson Fellow at the College of William and Mary Law School and taught at the Wake Forest School of Business and Accountancy. She has chaired the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and has also served on the Board of Visitors for the College of William and Mary as vice-rector and the Board of Trustees for Emory & Henry College. Her contributions also include having served as a director on professional and nonprofit boards, including the North American Coalbed Methane Forum, National Chamber Foundation Board of the United States Chamber of Commerce, Energy and Mineral Law Foundation, Virginia Oil and Gas Association, Wellmont Bristol Regional Medical Center, Virginia Museum of History and Culture, the Virginia 4-H Foundation, VCOM, and other local nonprofit boards.

McClanahan earned her bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary and her law degree from the University of Dayton School of Law. She is admitted to the bar in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Her law career includes having served as a shareholder and director at Penn, Stuart, & Eskridge; being chief deputy attorney general for Virginia; and serving as a Virginia Court of Appeals judge before joining the Supreme Court of Virginia.