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Recent Articles from Kira Jenkins
A ‘quiet’ place?
With Halloween fast approaching, I thought I’d regale you with a spooky tale of the corporate world’s favorite new boogeyman: quiet quitting. Like many scary things for people over age 45, this story begins on TikTok and Reddit, where this summer Gen Z and millennial workers were riffing about “quiet quitting” — generally defined as […]
All businesses great and small
There are 32.5 million small businesses in the United States, employing more than 61 million people and making up a staggering 99.9% of the nation’s businesses, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. As business journalists, though, we tend to focus almost exclusively on the larger businesses that reap bigger profits and make bigger news. […]
2022 Virginia 500: Moving up
When I give my elevator speech about the Virginia 500, it usually starts this way: It’s like the Fortune 500, but instead of focusing on companies, it’s about people. More specifically, unlike the Fortune 500, which ranks companies by gross revenues, this is a more subjective list. We strive to inventory the most powerful and […]
Breaking rank
What a difference a year makes. On July 13, 2021, against a backdrop of ships blasting their horns and spraying water in celebration at the Port of Virginia’s Norfolk International Terminals, Gov. Ralph Northam sat for a harborside interview with CNBC, which had just named Virginia the nation’s best state for business for an unprecedented […]
Virginia’s Fortune 500 companies
Virginia continues to perform well on the Fortune 500, with 21 companies from the commonwealth making the 2022 list, which ranks the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the United States by total revenue. Mortgage finance company Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (“Freddie Mac”) once again topped Virginia’s list of Fortune 500 companies. With $65.89 […]
CVTC property inches closer to redevelopment
Once home to more than 3,600 people with intellectual disabilities and other conditions, the Central Virginia Training Center property in Amherst County is drawing closer to a different future. In June, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed into law the latest state budget, which removed $25 million in tax obligations from the 350-acre site, making it more […]
Youngkin, CNBC see room for growth in Va.
In July, Virginia ceded the top spot in CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business rankings to neighboring North Carolina, with Virginia taking third place in the annual list. Virginia had previously held the No. 1 slot for a record-breaking two years — a feat no other state has matched in the coveted award’s 15-year history. […]
Interesting times
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes, according to an apt but apocryphal quote frequently misattributed to Mark Twain. We’re certainly seeing that dynamic writ large in the 2020s, though events don’t seem content with reviving just one era. A deadly pandemic has taken millions of lives across the globe. Inflation and mortgage rates […]
Something phishy
About seven or eight years ago, I was sitting at my desk one morning when I received an urgent text from my then-boss. She was holding a meeting, according to the text, and needed me to purchase $1,000 in electronic gift cards as a giveaway to the attendees as soon as possible. Needless to say, […]
Rising to the challenges
Last summer, as I was eating dinner at a Norfolk bar with a group of my Lead Virginia classmates from far Southwest Virginia, one of them asked what decision makers in Richmond thought about their region. “Most of them don’t think about it at all,” I replied bluntly and not a little sadly. During my […]
