Dr. Danny Avula, a pediatric specialist, first alights on Virginia Commonwealth University’s medical buildings. “I think about the place where I spent an ungodly number of hours at the hospital during residency,” he says, laughing. Next is Capitol Square and facilities such as the Patrick Henry Building, “where I was in the basement every day during the situation room,” working to drive up COVID-19 vaccination rates in the commonwealth.
“I see the river that I love,” the longtime Church Hill resident continues, “with my favorite spot in the city: the [T.] Tyler Potterfield [Memorial] Bridge.” The James makes Avula recall “so many stories of my kids going to Passages [Adventure] Camp — my son Luke worked as a kayak instructor on the river” and “so many family treks across the pedestrian bridge to Belle Isle.” He ends with the revitalized Main Street Station, which to him is a “beautiful, emblematic” convergence of old and new in Richmond that shows “where we are as a city that has such deep history but also is barreling into the future.”

Mayor-elect Danny Avula speaks at the RVA Rapid Transit “Cooling the Commute” premiere and fundraiser at Triple Crossing Beer - Fulton on Dec. 3. (Photo by Jay Paul)
History Repeating
The 46-year-old father of five is himself representative of the past comingling with the present. The city’s first mayor, William Foushee, was a physician. So, too, is Richmond’s first immigrant and Indian mayor. Avula arrived in America at 6 months old and grew up in a Northern Virginia household, the child of U.S. Department of Defense employees. He studied biology at the University of Virginia, where he met his future wife, Mary Kay. It was at VCU’s School of Medicine, however, that Avula determined he was destined to work beyond the four walls of a hospital.
“When I started to get into the patient-serving work, being at VCU, serving a largely underserved, low-income population, it started to become more and more clear to me that the things that we were doing to try to address health issues were so secondary to what patients were actually wrestling with,” he says. “Every day, I would see the impact of not having stable housing or not having regular access to food or not having a job with a steady income, and all of those inputs leading to stress and medicine noncompliance and mental health issues.
“Thinking that this path in primary care, which is where I was headed, was only going to be so effective with a lot of patients who are really on the brink — financially, emotionally, relationally — I decided I was much more interested in pursuing the macro solutions, like how do we look at policy or ways that we address the community and improve community health,” Avula continues. In his last year of med school, he worked near and far, including stints in the Richmond City Health Department and studying global health in Kenya. Those experiences underlined for him the impact of what are known today as the social determinants of health.
From there, Avula would become director of the Richmond City and Henrico County health departments, Virginia state vaccination liaison, and commissioner of the Virginia Department of Social Services.
“My career began to intersect more and more with housing and economic development and community development,” he says, “and I think that period is when folks started saying, ‘You should think about running for office someday.’ That’s probably when the seeds were planted for this journey.”
Now, as mayor, Avula says he can take his work one step further. “Nobody has more influence than the mayor and City Council in really trying to co-create that vision for our city and then put our investments in places that are going to create more affordable housing and to protect low-income residents from being displaced, [as well as] increasing access to healthy foods and [expanding] the mass transit network. That’s the work of the next four years, and it’s super exciting.”

In his role as Virginia’s coronavirus vaccination coordinator, Dr. Danny Avula speaks to the press at a Richmond COVID-19 vaccination event in January 2021 as then-Gov. Ralph Northam looks on. (Photo courtesy Office of the Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam)
Restoring Trust
Most Virginians met Avula five years ago as he delivered vaccination updates alongside a fellow pediatrician, then-Gov. Ralph Northam, during the state’s frequent pandemic press conferences. Besides building community resilience to COVID-19, Avula’s other tall tasks included restoring trust in government and combating misinformation. Both were complicated by voices “that want to cloud reality,” as Avula puts it. As he once again finds himself in a leadership role with Donald Trump as president, the new mayor says there are lessons to be carried from the pandemic response into City Hall.
“It’s brutal,” he says about separating fact from fiction, “and I think it’s a sign of our times about the way that people not only ingest information, the sources they go to for information, but what information actually takes root. ... There’s this reality that the salacious stuff, the negative stuff, goes viral in ways that good, credible, solid, evidence-based information does not, and that’s what we were up against in public health during the pandemic.
“I think it’s what we’re going to be up against as I venture into this new job, whether it’s health-related stuff, or what is happening with public housing redevelopment, or what [our plans are] to develop the South Side.”
The antidote, according to Avula, is consistent, transparent communication. As an example, he says that because “I was on the local news three, four, five times a week” during those pandemic press conferences, he was often recognized as “the doc from TV” while campaigning for mayor.
“It did reaffirm that having that kind of consistent presence does build connection,” he reasons, “and if you are able and willing to just say the truth and say, ‘Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know, here’s what we’re trying to do to move us forward,’ people actually are comforted by that. I think that was a big part of Virginia’s story during the pandemic.”
That work also taught him how to build rapport with skeptics.
“I had a lot more trouble with my constituents in Southwest Virginia and Appalachia than I did in other parts of the state, and so [I needed to understand] what were some of their hesitancies and what was the history of that community,” Avula says. “Twenty years prior, the opioid epidemic had ravaged Appalachia and, for people living there, the experience of that was the federal government [rubber]-stamped the use of oxycodone and put it in the hands of doctors everywhere and promoted its usage, and that led to the absolute devastation of communities.
“Now here we were, 20, 25 years later, saying, ‘Hey, the federal government has approved these vaccines that are going to save your lives.’ And people are like, ‘Really, we’ve done this before.’ And so I think part of that trust-building is listening, validating, understanding where people are coming from and what’s driving their behavior, and then trying to provide a factual message that either supports or counters that.”
Avula says the biggest lesson from battling health care misinformation — as Trump puts forward Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine and water fluoridation critic, as his nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services — is that the work that needs to be done here doesn’t change regardless of who is in charge nationally.
“The call for local leaders is to protect and support healing and thriving in our community, and that means really looking out for the best interests of people here in Richmond. Whether these are conversations about fluoridation, we can continue to work with our state counterparts to ensure that that’s happening. We control the water supply, and so we do have local decision-making authority and autonomy around things like that.
“There will be some hard times where funding streams around things that are really important, like public housing, I would imagine, may start to get clawed back. Then it becomes even more important for us at the local level, working with our regional partners and our state partners, to really get access to the resources we need to take care of folks here in Richmond.”

The Avula family: (from left) David, Kiran, Mary Kay, Danny, Abby, Arjanae and Luke (Photo courtesy Friends of Danny Avula)
‘You Are Needed’
In the run up to inauguration day, Avula has maintained his usual frenetic pace. He has generally been able to work “about once a month” as a pediatric hospitalist (specializing in the care of hospitalized patients) at Chippenham Hospital in Henrico County but says, “I think I will totally have to reevaluate in this new job, in this new season of life.”
And rather than kick back on the sofa, he spent much of his Thanksgiving break in the hospital, managing pediatric patients. “I worked 7P to 7A Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights,” he says, noting that he did find some time to celebrate family and keep things low key. “My family is all in town,” he adds, “and so my brother and sister-in-law, who are physicians here in the area, they hosted [Thanksgiving] at their house in Hanover.”
For his family, Avula says, it “will be interesting to see how they adapt to this new chapter of our lives. ... There’s both a sense of excitement but also uncertainty. I don’t think any of us know what the new rhythms are going to look like. And thankfully, our family has been through really hard seasons of work. The early months of COVID, both in 2020 and then when I took over the vaccination effort in 2021, those were 100-hour weeks for a couple months, and so my family didn’t see me at all, and my wife basically said, ‘You are needed in this time.’ She saw it as a deployment, like she was sending me out to do this work, and she would hold the fort down at home, and she did that in really beautiful and amazing ways. ... We couldn’t do it without the strength of our family and the strength of the community that we’re a part of.”
As he looks over the city he now leads from Church Hill, a similar sentiment comes to Avula.
“I think it is just such an incredible honor to be able to serve this place that has shaped me and shaped my family, and that we have committed two decades of our life to trying to help make better,” he says. “Now I have yet another opportunity to do that, and I hope that not only is the model that my wife and I want to be for our kids and our community, but that the people on the margins, that the most vulnerable people in this community, see me as somebody who is going to elevate their voice and act on their behalf and make decisions in ways that are going to help everybody in the city heal and thrive.”
The following is an extended version of the interview that appears in our January 2025 issue.
A Changed City
Outgoing Mayor Levar Stoney reflects on his legacy
Richmond’s 80th mayor, Levar Stoney, completed his second four-year term Dec. 31. He sat down with Richmond magazine earlier that month to discuss how the city has changed under his watch, what lessons he has learned and what he intends to do if elected lieutenant governor of Virginia this November.
Richmond magazine: How do you feel about your time in office? What do you think is your legacy?
Mayor Levar Stoney: I’m at peace with the body of work that we’ve been able to produce. I’m extremely proud of the work done by this team, from the people who are in this office, down to those who push the brooms around City Hall. When I started this journey out, I was 35 years old — I’ve learned a whole hell of a lot since then.
We’ve cut poverty by a third under my watch. There are more jobs here. There are more homes here. There’s more investment here. Neighborhoods across the city have transformed right before our eyes. It’s not just Scott’s Addition and Manchester. I’m proud that I kept my word when it comes to public education — we’ve seen funding for Richmond Public Schools increase by 58% under my watch.
I’m proud that we’ve seen an improvement in our infrastructure; that’s a key core service that was lacking eight years ago. When I came in as mayor, 70% of our roads were considered in poor condition. Now 75% of our roads are considered in good condition.
One thing that took a lot of courage to do, and you don’t get an opportunity to reflect on some of this stuff until the end, is the removal of those Confederate monuments. I look back at it now, and you see the success the city has had, post pandemic, post the removal. It was one of the reasons I think we were being held back as a city. We are now a more inclusive, more welcoming city after the removal of those monuments, and now a Black kid born in the city can be proud and not have to answer why you have Confederate monuments standing in your city.
RM: What did you learn from failures such as the Navy Hill development project and the two votes for a casino, which is now going to Petersburg? How did they inform more successful initiatives like the Diamond District?
Stoney: With the wisdom of hindsight, we would have done it differently, but it allowed me to learn from Navy Hill’s rejection, to change course and approach the Diamond District in a more community-centric way. Instead of saying, “I think this is what we need,” we heard from people for many years saying, “This is what we want.” I still believe that Navy Hill would have been a true shot in the arm for our downtown. But you know, missed opportunities happen, and you just have to capitalize on what opportunities may come in the future. And I think we’ve done that with the Diamond District.
With the casino opportunities, I’ve been a proponent of the working class in the city, and there are people today who have been paid better wages because of that opportunity, such as in Danville. It didn’t work out. Now it’s my hope that Richmonders in South Side have an opportunity to get in line for some good jobs. We’ve done a great job in reconstructing the safety net here in the city, but we’ve got to do a whole lot more than social programming to put food on the table and keep a roof over the families’ heads.
RM: If you had four more years, what would that look like?
Stoney: I would spend even more time tackling the redevelopment and transformation of public housing. I wish that the mayor could have a stronger role. I would spend more time pushing RRHA [Richmond Redevelopment & Housing Authority] to redevelop faster. There are new properties being built right now on the old site of Creighton Court. But we need to do that in Gilpin. We need to do that in Mosby. We need to do that in Hillside. This is about providing the least fortunate in our community with dignified, humane conditions. And I’m proud that there is work underway already on the Creighton site. I’m proud that we’ve been able to preserve and construct over 6,000 new, affordable units here in the city, and we’ve been able to squirrel away some dollars for the future as well to continue the drumbeat of building more affordable homes in Richmond.
RM: What does that work look like if you are elected lieutenant governor?
Stoney: I’m going to fight for fairness for those who’ve been marginalized. And that fair shot for me looks like raising the minimum wage and ensuring that people have access to paid family leave. We have a lot of high-income earners in this state who I think need to pay their fair share so we can have the best quality education possible.
RM: You’ve said that this job’s a pressure cooker. How have you prepared the incoming mayor for it?
Stoney: I’ve had some frank conversations with Dr. Avula about the ins and outs of this job, and it’s an all-consuming role. This is my full-time job. I come to work every day ready to swing for the fences and push the envelope for the voters and the residents of this great city. And there are going to be times when they love you, and there are going to be times when they don’t love you so much.
When I think about the real pressure of my tenure, it occurred during 2020. There is no owner’s manual for a global-wide pandemic. A lot of times, because of the nonsense we were hearing from the federal government, we were doing a lot of this on our own, leading the way, and then we saw some social upheaval happen here in our streets. And I look at some of the other cities around the country that were also experiencing the same thing, and we did far better, I think in, No. 1, our handling of it but, No. 2, the success that occurred post both the pandemic and the social unrest.
What I was told early on is to stay humble, because if you don’t stay humble, the job will humble you, and 2020 was a humbling experience. And so, I remind my friend Danny Avula that this job is going to give you thorns, but sometimes you can also get a lot of roses as well. And when you get the thorns, you’ve just got to wake up the next day and get back at it. How I got through those tough moments was just to put my head down and work even harder.
RM: Would you do anything differently in your handling of the social justice protests of 2020?
Stoney: Obviously, removing the monuments, I would not have done that differently. I think that helped de-escalate what was occurring at the time and, with the wisdom of hindsight, I just wish that we could have done the removal sooner. You can look back at the chronology of that situation, and you can see a drop-off in incidents and calls for service from July 1 through the summer. It was that month of June and late May that you saw a ton of consternation. If we could have done the removal sooner, there may have been less vandalism and all the things that we saw. But at the end of the day, we got to the right place in terms of removing those monuments, and we’re a better city because of it.
I look back at that time and I probably did some things that were unconventional by going out in front of City Hall and apologizing for what occurred in terms of the tear-gassing at the [Robert E.] Lee monument. There were so many people who told me that I shouldn’t have done that. There were some people who said it was the bravest and most courageous thing that an elected leader had ever done. I don’t think it was either of those. I just did what I thought was the right thing to do at the time.
I had not eaten very much during that whole period of time. I had not been drinking enough water, not been getting enough sleep — this is the pressure cooker that we were talking about — but I thought the right thing was to go out there and address that crowd and remind people that the buck stops with me. That’s what I was taught, what leadership was all about, and I did that. And that was also an attempt to de-escalate what had occurred.
I have no regrets when it comes to that, in terms of going out there and doing that. We obviously wish that George Floyd had never been murdered. We wish that it had never even come to that breaking point, but it did. When you look at the way we handled things here in Richmond, and you compare that to some of the other major cities across the country, I still believe we did far better.
RM: Is there a connecting thread to the pro-Palestinian protests at VCU?
Stoney: I can’t speak to what VCU decides to do on their campus. I can always tell you what I think we should do as a city. We experience more demonstrations and more protests than any locality in the commonwealth of Virginia. We respect people’s First Amendment rights, but we respect the rule of law as well, and if you are willing to break the law, whether that means vandalism or not obeying traffic laws, you’re going to be held accountable. And sometimes people don’t like to be held accountable, is what I’ve come to find out. It’s natural for some humans to be resistant to accountability, and I’m a believer in accountability. I’m a believer in the rule of law, but also a believer in your constitutional rights. And we saw that all come to a head over at VCU. We have mutual aid agreements with our college campuses here within the city and, whether it’s Reynolds or VUU or the U of R, VCU, we’re going to show up. And that’s what we did during that moment. We did not lead that; that was led by VCU, but we showed up. And, like I said, we have to find the balance between protecting people’s constitutional rights and also them respecting the rule of law as well.
RM: You got married and had a baby during your term. How have you handled all of that responsibility?
Stoney: I thought I was busy, but having a child and also being married, you’ve added two jobs to your plate. So not only do I have a full-time job as the mayor but also a full-time job as a husband and a full-time job as a father, and those are my top two priorities right there. Having a child, my little girl, Sunday, has given me a shot in the arm in terms of recentering me on what my “why” is, why I do what I do. I ran for office initially because I wanted to ensure that kids who grew up like me get an opportunity, get a fair shot, and now, as a father, I continue to do the work of public service because I want little girls like mine to have every single opportunity available to them. I can’t guarantee her success, I can’t guarantee your child’s success, but what I can do is work each and every day to ensure that they have an opportunity for success. So many kids are born in our city, in our state, in our country with low expectations and no opportunities, and I want to ensure that they know that this world is their oyster. My little girl, Sunday, is going to have an abundance of opportunities; I want her friends growing up in Church Hill to have the same opportunities as well. That’s my why, that’s why I continue to do what I do.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.