Fairfax County EDA CEO honored for collaborative leadership

Victor Hoskins, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, received the Ronald Kirby Award for Collaborative Leadership this week from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, the FCEDA announced Friday.

The award recognizes non-elected government executives who work collaboratively with elected officials, stakeholders and their communities to shape a better region — in this case, the collaboration that secured Amazon.com Inc.’s HQ2 East Coast headquarters for Northern Virginia.

“We pursued [Amazon] as a region … Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Alexandria and Arlington together,” says Hoskins, who worked on the project as director of Arlington Economic Development, a position he left this year. “It just shows you what collaboration can do. We’ve now put together this 10-jurisdiction alliance, and that’s never happened in Northern Virginia.”

Since Amazon’s November 2018 announcement that it would locate HQ2 in Arlington County’s Crystal City area, Hoskins has worked with nine other Northern Virginia jurisdictions to form the Northern Virginia Economic Development Alliance. It launched in September to market Northern Virginia jointly outside the region.

Other members of the alliance include the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership; Arlington, Fauquier and Loudoun counties; the cities of Fairfax, Falls Church, Manassas and Manassas Park; and the Prince William County Department of Economic Development.

Before joining Fairfax in August, Hoskins led Arlington Economic Development for five years. He is no stranger to working with elected officials — a pillar of the Kirby Award — on economic development, and says “that’s how you actually go about doing business.”

“Even before we started partnering with Alexandria and Loudoun County and Fairfax County to do the Amazon application, we had to touch base with our elected officials and they gave us the permission to do it,” Hoskins says. “So really, when you think about it, they kind of open the door for us to work together.”

Thanks to the 10-jurisdiction alliance, economic development officials now get to work with elected officials from across the region, not just in their own counties, Hoskins says.

The Kirby Award is presented in memory of Ron Kirby, who served as director of transportation planning for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) from 1987 to 2013. The award is one of the council’s highest honors.

“We hope [Hoskins] does great things for Fairfax like he did with Arlington,” Christian Dorsey, Arlington County Board member and COG vice chair, says in a statement. “Working to build up the capacity of the region helps us all.”

Speaking about working with other economic development officials and elected officials across the region, Hoskins says, “I find that it’s complicated, but a lot of fun.”