Brendan Fitzgerald has a piece in C-Ville Weekly at the intersection of juicy gossip and hard news: outgoing UVIMCO CEO Chris Brightman may have been forced out due to an affair with an employee. The University of Virginia Investment Management Company handles UVA’s endowment—billions of dollars—and Brightman’s abrupt resignation a few weeks ago came as a surprise. About the same time, his executive assistant left UVIMCO. Now Fitzgerald sees that the coworker with whom Brightman was having an affair—one Carolyn Barfield Sawyer—is being divorced by her husband, eleven days after Brightman’s resignation, citing her affair with a coworker during a work-related trip to Arizona. Of course, nobody is commenting on this. In an odd coincidence, Barfield was recently hired by City Council to replace the retiring Jeanne Cox as Clerk of Council. One of her recommendations is said to have come from Brightman.
Update: I reversed Brightman and Barfield in an initial version here—it’s Barfield’s spouse who has filed for divorce.
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