Mavis McKenley Honored with the 2024 Barron F. Black Community Builder Award

Many years ago, Mavis McKenley began her banking career as a front-line teller at a retail branch.

The bank where she worked offered free classes. McKenley enrolled in a class on the trust business. These financial professionals manage trusts for individuals, families or organizations, and they ensure the trust remains in good standing. 

“It was different. It was interesting. It was something very outside of where I thought I would go,” McKenley said. “Back in the day you could hop from department to department, and when a position opened up in trust operations, I applied for it.”

That class decades ago changed her life. McKenley is now the Vice President and Senior Trust Officer at AMG National Trust, where she has worked since 1997. She is also the 2024 recipient of the Hampton Roads Community Foundation’s Barron F. Black Community Builder Award. The honor was inspired by the Foundation’s first board chair and is given annually to an outstanding community-minded professional advisor. It is the Foundation’s highest honor.

McKenley received the award in a ceremony at the Town Point Club in Norfolk on December 12, 2024. 

“By any measure, you have been a wonderful advocate for philanthropy and the truest of true friends to the Hampton Roads Community Foundation,” said President and CEO Deborah M. DiCroce. “In so many ways you exemplify the spirit of Barron F. Black, and all of us are the better for your leadership, for your good work, and for your fundamental humanity.”

McKenley couldn’t imagine such an honor when she was a girl with an easel in her room teaching math to her dolls, she said.

“I’ve always looked at the people who won the award as really impactful people doing the work to propel estate planning and also to encourage our community to use their estate planning to give back to the community,” she said. “It never occurred to me that my name would be part of that conversation. It’s very humbling.” 

McKenley is a highly accomplished trust officer, with more than 45 years of experience. She is an accredited estate planner, a certified trust and financial advisor, and a certified financial planner. She is a member of the Hampton Roads Estate Planning Council and a board member of the National Association of Estate Planners and Councils. 

She has repeatedly been recognized for her dedication to her work and to her community, including by her alma mater, Virginia Wesleyan University. In 2021, the school named its Martin Luther King Jr. award “the Mavis McKenley ’11 Award” in her honor. It is awarded each year to a student who practices the ideals set forth by Dr. King – courage and conviction in valuing differences, commitment to seeing beyond borders by building inclusion, compassion for humanity and commitment to social change.

“My education through Virginia Wesleyan has given me the confidence to do many of the things that are on my resume,” she said. 

She applied to the City of Norfolk to serve on a board or commission and was selected to serve on the Norfolk Public Library Board of Trustees. She served as the Chair of the Board of the Samaritan House. And she served on the Alumni Council and later the Board of Trustees Executive Committee for Virginia Wesleyan. 

“During difficult times in my life,” she said, “I always thought, ‘I may be having it bad, but someone is having it worse. What can I do?’”

With each new role, she thought she would confine her activity to behind-the-scenes, background support. But each time she found herself pushed out front.

“It’s a little scary, to be honest with you,” she said. “This is more than I could have thought about for me. It’s wonderful, but it’s just – wow.”

As part of the Barron F. Black award, McKenley selected the YWCA of South Hampton Roads to receive a $5,000 grant from the Foundation. 

The YWCA South Hampton Roads is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women, and promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all. CEO Michelle Ellis Young called McKenley a “sister and friend” as she thanked her for the donation. 

“We show up until systems are eroded from injustices, until communities are transformed, and until the world really does see women and girls as we do every single day as equal, as powerful, and as unstoppable,” Ellis Young said.

Additionally, McKenley received a work by local artist Clayton Singleton. 

Singleton is an artist and retired art teacher from Norfolk’s Lake Taylor High School. He was named the 2023-24 City-Wide Teacher of the Year. He has designed sets for The Virginia Opera, notably for “Porgy and Bess.” He serves on the Norfolk Arts Commission and the d’Art Center Board of Directors and is a board member of The Hermitage Museum and Gardens. 

The work he created for McKenley is entitled “3 Sunflowers and 2 Pears.”

Congratulations, Mavis!