UVA, Monticello announce recipients of 2024 Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medals

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - The University of Virginia is handing out its highest external honors on this Founder’s Day in honor of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday.

In conjunction with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, Julieanna Richardson was honored Friday, April 12, as a leader in citizen leadership.

Richardson is the founder and president of The HistoryMakers, a nonprofit that has curated, presented, and preserved on video the histories of thousands of African Americans.

More information from UVA on this year’s awardees:

• Architecture: A UVA alumna and nationally recognized expert in landscape architecture, urban design and climate adaptation, Kate Orff has spent her career understanding how landscape architecture can aid and enhance areas being reshaped by a warming planet and rising seas. In 2007, she founded SCAPE, a landscape architecture and urban design studio firm in New York that employs more than 80 individuals who design parks, waterfronts, greenways and streetscapes, with a focus on ecological restoration and social engagement. Among her best-known works are the Living Breakwaters on the South Shore of Staten Island, created after Superstorm Sandy. The project is often heralded as a model for climate adaptation in vulnerable areas. Orff has been named a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellow and was included in Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2023.
• Citizen Leadership: Julieanna L. Richardson is the founder and president of The HistoryMakers, a national non-profit educational institution that has curated, presented and preserved on video the histories of thousands of African Americans. The Chicago-based organization describes itself as “the digital repository for the Black experience” and serves as a unique resource for students and educators from kindergarten through college along with the media and other disciplines. The project, founded in 2000, is an outgrowth of Richardson’s experience in theater, television production and the cable news industry. She is a graduate of Brandeis University where she majored in Theater Arts and American Studies, and chronicled the oral history of the Harlem Renaissance and, later, poet-writer Langston Hughes. She is also a 1980 graduate of Harvard Law School. Richardson is the 2021 recipient of the Chicago History Museum’s John Hope Franklin Making History Award, an honor recognizing Chicagoans who have improved the city and its culture.
• Law: Roger L. Gregory was a fire-scarred baby with “rickety legs” and asthma when he was adopted by Virginia tobacco workers. He grew up to become the first Black judge to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He joined the majority in 2014 in Bostic v. Schaefer, which declared Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Before joining the bench, Gregory co-founded the Richmond law firm of Wilder & Gregory in 1982 with future Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder. He has served on numerous associations and boards in law, government and philanthropy. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Virginia State University and his law degree from the University of Michigan School of Law.

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