Employees at the Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control Authority’s Mechanicsville headquarters will be returning to in-person work three days a week, not the four or five days a week that will be required of many state workers beginning July 5, following Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s telework order earlier this month.
Virginia ABC CEO Travis Hill sent an email to ABC employees Thursday, noting that the plan to work in person at the authority’s new Hanover County office three days a week, with two days working remotely, is “the final part of our return to office strategy, originally announced in August 2021 and reaffirmed last December. This approach was based on survey feedback from employees and our long-term operational needs and completes a six-month effort on returning to the office.”
Hill, who was appointed by former Gov. Ralph Northam to lead the ABC in 2018, notes that as an authority instead of a state agency, the ABC has “greater latitude in how we manage our telework and hybrid work status.” The memo also says that the authority will use a new telework agreement form distributed by Youngkin’s office, and that all applications will be due June 15.
“All employees choosing to work a portion of the week remotely will need to complete the agreement and submit to human resources,” Hill wrote.
Currently, most of ABC’s roughly 500 administrative staff members are working two days a week in the office and three days remotely. The authority employs about 5,000 part-time and full-time employees, some of whom can’t telework due to the nature of their jobs, such as staffing retail ABC stores. In January, the authority changed its daily opening hours to noon in part due to retail workers being affected by COVID-19, which created a staffing shortage. In fiscal year 2021, Virginia ABC brought in a record $1.4 billion in gross revenue, including $237.3 million in profits from retail sales.
Youngkin’s mandate requires state workers who have been working from home since March 2020 to return to the office in person starting July 5, and it renders all prior telework agreements null and void, even for employees who live outside the immediate region of their workplaces and were hired with the understanding that they could work remotely. Agency heads can approve one telework day a week, while a cabinet secretary must approve two days a week. Anything above that will require the approval of Youngkin’s chief of staff, Jeff Goettman.
In a memo released May 5, during Virginia’s Public Service Week, Goettman announced the order and said that the governor’s office’s goal is “completion of all telework agreements by June 3.”
Some state employees and Democratic legislators have denounced Youngkin’s telework policy, saying that it will cause some workers to leave their jobs for more flexible opportunities in the private sector, and that the new policy is more restrictive than pre-pandemic standards.
Some state employees — including those who are among faculty and professional staff at state universities — are not subject to the policy, and it doesn’t apply to legislative or judicial agencies.
Mechanicsville-based Fortune 500 health care logistics company Owens & Minor Inc. announced Tuesday that it had closed its acquisition of Indianapolis-based Apria Inc. for a cash consideration of $1.6 billion.
Owens & Minor funded the purchase with a combination of debt and cash on hand.
The company is combining Apria and its Byram Healthcare Centers Inc. business to form a Patient Direct segment. The segment expands the company’s home health care business’ geographic reach, products and care needs it can cover.
Apria is a perfect complement to our Byram business,” Owens & Minor President and CEO Edward A. Pesicka said in a statement. “This portfolio expansion strengthens Owens & Minor’s position in the fast-growing home health industry and enhances our ability to support health care beyond the hospital for both new and existing patients.”
Daniel J. Starck, Apria’s CEO since 2015, will serve as president of the new segment. He is also an Owens & Minor executive vice president.
“We look forward to unleashing the full potential of our teammates in the new Patient Direct segment to achieve even better clinical connectivity between the patient, the provider and the payor,” Starck said in a statement.
Owens & Minor will also combine its global products, medical distribution and services businesses to create a Products & Healthcare Services segment.
Owens & Minor was founded in 1882 and has distribution, production, customer service and sales facilities in the Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. It employs more than 15,000 people and sells medical supplies to customers in 90 countries.
Central Virginia continues to attract pharmaceutical companies, advanced manufacturing sites and distribution centers, with 2021 seeing several major deals from companies that will bring large footprints to the region.
Richmond was the leader in the clubhouse, with the city occupying half of the spots on the region’s list of the 10 biggest deals of 2021, creating more than 3,000 jobs with six deals. That includes the mid-December announcement that CoStar Group Inc. plans to expand its presence with a $460 million riverfront campus, adding an estimated 2,000 jobs. The Washington, D.C.-based commercial real estate data and analytics company already has been a major player in Richmond, with 1,000 employees at its research and technology center there, but the expansion will more than double its workers in the city while adding 750,000 more square feet, including the tallest building in the state, a 26-story skyscraper.
Prior to the CoStar announcement, the city’s biggest deal of the year was selling its aging Public Safety Building for $3.5 million to Capital City Partners, which plans to replace it with a $325 million, 500,000-square-foot building with VCU Health as its anchor tenant.
The city also continues to attract life science firms. Aditxt Inc., a California biotechnology firm specializing in immune system research, announced a new
$31.5 million immune-monitoring facility in Richmond that will create 347 jobs.
And the locally grown biotech firm Grenova Inc. announced a dramatic expansion, creating 250 jobs as it invests $10.6 million in a new site in Scott’s Addition.
One looming question is what will happen to 100 acres off Interstate 95 in the city’s South Side, land owned by Altria Group Inc. that would have hosted the $565 million ONE Casino + Resort, which voters rejected in a November 2021 referendum.
“Our goal remains to sell the property,” says Altria spokesman Steve Callahan. In January, Richmond City Council supported making a second attempt at the casino referendum this year.
Henrico County
2021 was a “banner year” for Henrico County, says Henrico Economic Development Authority Executive Director Anthony Romanello. As of December 2021, the county had tallied announcements for 1,588 jobs and $489 million in new investment.
Last April, Amazon.com Inc. announced it would build a 2.6-million-square-foot robotics fulfillment center on a swath of land just north of Richmond Raceway, a project now under construction. The company is not disclosing the total investment, but it is expected to bring 1,000 jobs to the area. The new facility will be the largest building in Central Virginia when it opens this year, Romanello says: “When you have 2.6 million square feet and 1,000 jobs, that is going to have a substantial ripple effect throughout the economy.”
In July 2021, home security system manufacturer SimpliSafe Inc. announced a new customer security monitoring service center in Glen Allen, creating 250 jobs over the next half decade. Officials estimate that construction on the site will be complete by April. This $3 million investment came just a year after the security firm created 572 jobs in the county with a new customer support center at Willow Lawn.
Meanwhile, county officials granted approval for GreenCity, a $2.3 billion, 204-acre mixed-use development on the former Best Products headquarters property that will feature a 17,000-seat arena. Construction on the first phase should begin in the second half of this year, with completion of the arena, retail and hotel space expected by 2024 or 2025.
Hanover County
With its lower business costs and proximity to Interstate 95, Hanover has successfully focused on wooing industrial companies to the county, says Linwood Thomas IV, director of Hanover’s economic development authority.
In March 2021, Becknell Industrial submitted plans to build a 1.1-million-square-foot distribution center at the former Camptown Races site in northern Hanover. Construction has begun on the East Coast Commerce Center, which is the biggest speculative building currently under development in Virginia, Thomas says. County officials estimate the project will be complete in the fourth quarter of this year.
In April 2021, Maryland-based developer Matan Cos. began construction on a $65 million project that will bring five new buildings with 650,000 square feet of industrial space. The first three buildings are now under construction, with completion set for midyear. The remaining two buildings are expected to be finished by mid-to-late 2023.
In November 2021, Performance Food Group Co. announced an $80.2 million expansion project in Hanover that will create 125 jobs. Meanwhile, the $175 million Wegmans Food Markets Inc. grocery distribution center and regional headquarters is moving ahead, despite two legal challenges to the project east of I-95. (See related story.)
Chesterfield County
After two years of back-and-forth, Chesterfield finally sealed a deal with online used car retailer Carvana Co. last year, landing a $25 million vehicle inspection and reconditioning facility that’s expected to create 400 jobs when it opens this spring.
The county also lured iFit Health & Fitness Inc., parent company of NordicTrack, which announced in June 2021 that it was leasing a 405,000-square-foot facility to serve as a new distribution center in Chesterfield, east of I-95 on Willis Road. The facility, which opened early this year, generating 40 jobs, serves as iFit’s East Coast hub.
In December 2021, Starplast USA, the U.S. division of the Israeli plastics manufacturer, announced its plans to retrofit an industrial building in Meadowville Technology Park, a $17.7 million investment expected to create 300 jobs over the next five years.
County officials anticipate that more companies like iFit and Starplast will be interested in the county’s 4 million square feet of industrial space on the eastern end of the county along I-95 and state Route 288 that will be coming on the market in coming years, says Matt McLaren, senior project manager for the Chesterfield Economic Development Authority.
“A healthy speculative industrial pipeline allows us to market Chesterfield as a business location much more aggressively,” McLaren says.
Petersburg
Petersburg continues to grow as a hub for pharmaceutical manufacturing, and two of the major players announced new facilities in the city in 2021.
The nonprofit generic drug company Civica Inc. announced a $124.5 million manufacturing facility that will create 186 jobs, and AMPAC Fine Chemicals announced a $25 million production plant that would bring roughly 150 jobs to town.
Civica spokeswoman Debbi Ford says the company anticipates its facility will be operational by the end of 2023.
AMPAC moved into an existing facility and has been producing active pharmaceutical ingredients since 2020. Last year, the firm crossed another hurdle in the regulatory process, successfully receiving a full FDA inspection, AMPAC spokesman Joe Guy Collier says.
The Virginia Biotechnology Research Partnership Authority, a political subdivision that leads a Richmond-based coalition of public and private entities, is among 60 finalists in the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge, which will award 30 groups up to $100 million.
In neighboring Prince George County, aluminum extrusion manufacturer Service Center Metals announced a $101.7 million expansion in September 2021 that is expected to create 94 jobs.
Charlottesville and Lynchburg
Lynchburg-based nuclear components and fuel supplier BWX Technologies Inc. will be bringing 97 jobs to Campbell County through expansions and improvements at a 118,000-square-foot building on an 11-acre site.
One lesson that economic development leaders in Lynchburg have taken from the pandemic is the need to attract an array of industries.
“The health and resilience of our local economy is a direct result of the diversity of our employment base,” says Anna Bentson, assistant director for Lynchburg’s Office of Economic Development & Tourism.
In Charlottesville, half a million square feet of Class A office space opened in 2021, a development that Charlottesville Office of Economic Development Director Chris Engel says is “an opportunity and a challenge to future growth as the nature of work continues to evolve.”
Rochester, New York-based supermarket chain Wegmans Food Markets Inc. is building a $175 million distribution center and regional headquarters near the intersection of Sliding Hill and Ashcake roads in Hanover County. The 1.1 million-square-foot facility is expected to create roughly 700 jobs, making it one of the most significant economic development projects in county history.
However, not everybody is excited about the supermarket’s new site, and the project has faced pushback since it was announced in 2019.
Wegmans’ facility is one of several warehouse and distribution centers underway in Hanover — a trend that has county economic development officials thrilled over new jobs and major corporate investments.
But residents of Brown Grove, the historically Black community in Hanover where the facility will be located, are leading the resistance to the project, which they contend will disturb cemetery land and is just the latest in a long string of disruptive development projects around their neighborhood.
While two ongoing legal challenges — including one by the Hanover NAACP — navigate through the courts, Wegmans has secured the permits necessary to begin preparing the site, and county officials estimate that the facility could be completed within the next two years.
Brown Grove traces its origins to Caroline Dobson Morris, who was born into slavery and emancipated after the Civil War. Residents there have watched as the surrounding land has been transformed — first by Interstate 95 and then by concrete plants, landfills, a municipal airport and, soon, the grocery distribution center.
“This facility is planned to be the size of the Pentagon and it is being dropped right in the midst of the historic African American community,” says Hanover NAACP President Patricia Hunter-Jordan. “It’s right across the road from a 150-year-old church, which has been the center of the community.”
Wegmans representatives did not return calls seeking comment, but Hanover Director of Economic Development Linwood Thomas IV says the grocery chain wants to work with Brown Grove.
“[Wegmans will] continue to work with the surrounding communities, including the Brown Grove community, to look for ways to partner with them,” Thomas says. “They want to be good community partners.”
While Wegmans has begun clearing land, pending court cases could impact the site’s future.
Five neighbors of the future distribution facility filed suit against the Hanover County Board of Supervisors, the former property owners and Wegmans, challenging the board’s decision to offer Wegmans proffered conditions on the site — including allowing graves to be moved.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit in August, on the grounds that the neighbors do not have standing in the case. Shortly after that ruling, Wegmans purchased the site for $4 million and announced plans to begin construction. The neighbors appealed to the Supreme Court of Virginia, and if it decides to hear their case, it will be ruling only on whether or not neighbors have standing.
Meanwhile, the Hanover NAACP and a group of residents have filed a second lawsuit against Wegmans, the state and the Department of Environmental Quality alleging that the State Water Control Board did not choose the least environmentally damaging alternative for the Wegmans site, says Brian Buniva, the attorney representing plaintiffs in both cases. The suit also alleges that the DEQ did not thoroughly vet the application that Wegmans submitted and allowed the grocer to dramatically underestimate the amount of wetlands that would be impacted by the project.
“Corners were cut for Wegmans that nobody else in the commonwealth gets,” says Chris French, the environmental justice chair for NAACP’s Hanover branch. “That should get everybody’s attention. The rules of a farmer who wants to create a pond will be held up much more strictly than a corporation like Wegmans.”
Opponents to the development also say that building on the site would unearth graves of their ancestors, although searches conducted by both community members and consultants hired by Wegmans have failed to find definitive evidence of graves.
One of the proffered conditions that county supervisors approved in 2020 changed a requirement to leave any gravesites undisturbed. Instead, the property owners can relocate graves.
“Any graves that are discovered (and which are in conflict with the approved plan or the necessary improvements) have to be treated with respect and must be appropriately relocated as required by state regulations,” Hanover County Attorney Dennis A. Walter wrote in an email.
As the legal wrangling continues, county officials are confident Wegmans and regulatory agencies followed the necessary steps.
“This was analyzed with a fine-tooth comb,” Thomas says. “It has been reviewed. We don’t look at these lawsuits lightly.”
Walgreens will invest $34.2 million to establish a micro-fulfillment center in Hanover County, a project expected to create 249 jobs, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Friday.
The 65,686-square-foot facility will be located at the 185,000-square-foot Atlee Station Logistics Center and will have automated machinery to allow for a flexible operating model.
“The Walgreens micro-fulfillment center in Hanover County will be located in strategic proximity to all East Coast markets and greater Richmond’s workforce,” Youngkin said in a statement. “Walgreens is a household brand that provides critical pharmaceutical and health care services, and I am proud that Virginia’s outstanding logistics advantages will play a role in enhancing customer delivery.”
Walgreens, a subsidiary of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., operates nearly 9,000 retail locations across the U.S., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and serves about 9 million customers every day. It currently operates more than 200 stores in Virginia and employs more than 4,600 residents.
“Fulfillment centers like this one in Virginia are dedicated to fulfilling retail prescription orders and play an important role in our effort to create the pharmacy of the future, one that further enables our store pharmacy teams to spend more of their time providing front-line patient care,” Lisa Badgley, Walgreens’ senior vice president of operations, said. “The greater Richmond area was selected due to its favorable business climate, able workforce and premier location.”
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Hanover County and the Greater Richmond Partnership to secure the project, for which Virginia competed with other states. Walgreens is eligible to receive benefits from the Major Business Facility Job Tax Credit for full-time jobs created. The VEDP’s Virginia Jobs Investment Program will provide funding to support employee recruitment and training activities.
A reported $3.4 billion acquisition bid from Orlando-based SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. could result in Virginia’s two major theme parks being under the same ownership.
SeaWorld, parent company of Busch Gardens Williamsburg, has made an unsolicited offer to acquire Ohio-based Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., which owns the Kings Dominion theme park in Hanover County’s Doswell area.
Bloomberg reported that SeaWorld’s bid is about $60 per unit in cash, totaling about $3.4 billion, according to sources it did not identify. Cedar Fair acknowledged to Bloomberg that it had received the “unsolicited, non-binding” acquisition offer and said that it is being advised on the matter by Perella Weinberg Partners LP and Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP.
Cedar Fair owns and operates 13 properties composed of 11 amusement parks, four outdoor water parks and resort accommodations totaling more than 2,300 rooms and 600 RV sites. It reported 2020 revenues of $182 million, down from $1.47 billion in 2019. Cedar Fair reported $753 million in revenue for the third quarter of 2021, up from the $87 million it recorded in the third quarter of 2020.
SeaWorld, owns 12 theme parks and reported $512.2 million in the third quarter of 2021, an increase of $415.1 million from the third quarter of 2020. In 2020, SeaWorld reported $431.8 million in revenue, a decline of $966.5 million from 2019.
Construction started Dec. 9 on the $100 million, 1.1-million-square-foot East Coast Commerce Center in Hanover County.
The speculative industrial project is slated for completion in mid-summer 2022. The 129-acre center will have 120 truck docks, 540 trailer parks, 8-foot floor slabs, a 2:1 parking ratio and more than 35 surplus acres.
“We’re very eager for what’s to come at East Coast Commerce Center,” Nelson Hioe, managing partner at Raith Capital Partners, said in a statement. “We moved aggressively to lock in steel pricing early in the development process and with construction underway, we will deliver the building in Q3 2022.”
The site is located at 10462 Hickory Hill Road, near the intersection of state routes 641 and 646.
“This asset has exceptional access to many major consumer markets along the East Coast, and we look forward to delivering this property in order to serve the supply chain and logistics needs of the mid-Atlantic region,” Equity Industrial Partners CEO Bruce Levine said in a statement.
Raith Capital Partners and Equity Industrial Partners own the property, and Becknell Industrial is the developer. JLL announced Tuesday that it would be marketing the center, and Adam Lawson and Jake Servinsky will oversee leasing and marketing.
Performance Food Group Co., the Goochland-based Fortune 500 food distribution corporation, plans to invest $80.2 million on a new facility in Hanover County, creating 125 jobs, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Thursday. The regional sales and distribution center will be housed in a 325,000-square-foot building in Ashland.
“This new facility will be instrumental in advancing Virginia’s fast-growing supply chain management and logistics industries,” Northam said in a statement. “Performance Food Group’s significant investment in Hanover County and growing presence in Virginia is a testament to our strong business climate, robust infrastructure and top-notch talent. We look forward to seeing the positive outcomes from this project’s investment and job creation.”
Virginia competed with Pennsylvania and North Carolina for the project.
“Since the company’s founding in Richmond in 1885, Performance Food Group has called Virginia home,” Performance Food Group Chairman, President and CEO George Holm said in a statement. “With our new state-of-the-art food distribution facility in Hanover, Performance Food Group reaffirms its commitment to Virginia, our associates and our valued customers. Virginia’s talented workforce and business-friendly environment will continue to fuel Performance Food Group’s plans for growth.”
Performance Food Group, which went public in 2019, has a network of more than 150 locations in the United States and Canada, providing food to more than 300,000 locations, including restaurants, businesses, schools, hospitals, retail outlets, theaters and other facilities. In September, PFG completed its acquisition of convenience store supplier Core-Mark for $2.5 billion in stock and cash, a purchase expected to add about $17 billion to PFG’s annual sales.
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Hanover County to secure the project, and VEDP will support job creation through its Virginia Jobs Investment Program. Performance Food Group is also eligible for benefits through the Major Business Facility Job Tax Credit for the full-time jobs created.
Hickory Hill Road Virginia LLC has purchased the 189-acre industrial site on Hickory Hill Road in Hanover County for $4.7 million, Porter Realty announced Monday.
The Graymont Industrial Park was sold by Richmond-based Brooks Investment II Company LLC and Brookes Investment III Company LLC.
Clifford B. Porter of Porter Realty Co. Inc. handled the marketing and sale negotiations for the seller.
Brought to you by Virginia Business and Bank of America, join us every other month for the Diversity Leadership Series — virtual fireside chats with a diverse group of Virginia business leaders sharing their insights and thoughts on leadership, their career paths, and diversity and equity.
Our series kicked off on July 20 with Brian Robertson, CEO of Mechanicsville-based Marion Marketing Global LLC, interviewing Ron Carey, founder and CEO of Tilt Creative + Production, a Richmond-based agency that produces advertising and promotional content for clients such as Capital One Financial Corp., Walmart Inc. and Audi of America.
Below is an abridged version of their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
Brian Robertson: Under your leadership, you have turned Tilt Creative + Production into a global player in the creative space. What do you attribute to the credit of your rapid growth?
Ron Carey is founder and CEO of Tilt Creative + Production, a Richmond ad and marketing agency with clients such as Capital One, Walmart and Audi of America Photo by Shandell Taylor.
Ron Carey: First of all, I’ll make a comment that I didn’t … do it by myself. I had a wonderful set of great partners. Stacy Murphy and Dave Trownsell are my business partners in that venture. First of all, we started with a small plan … to try and find a better way of creating content. That’s what we wanted to do. We wanted to make sure that we could do it with some of the best people in the world creatively as well as just some people who were just good people at their core. That’s really the foundation of Tilt.
Robertson:Briefly, Ron, explain to us how Tilt Creative + Production even came about.
Carey: That’s an interesting story. … This was 2017 and I had been running a small digital agency called Studio Squared. Studio Squared at the time primarily focused on creating content in-store for Walmart. There were some changes in the business, and we had a wonderful opportunity to step back and think about, “Where would we like the business to go moving forward?” That was November of 2017. At the time … one of my senior creatives said [to me], “Chief, you used to have a conversation with the Park Group. Dave and Stacy, they would be interesting. They’ve got some ideas and thoughts.”
From that conversation, started … this notion of what would happen if we took a creative company, Studio Squared, … and [a media production company like] Park Group and we merged it into one thing? At the time it was unheard of that you would have a creative agency and a production company all under one roof, but … we were anticipating that brands would have a need for a content partner, and a way to more easily develop content [and] develop a strategy around it. That started us on the path. We … literally moved across the street down to Park Group, and in January 2018, we started working together. That’s been almost four years now.
Robertson: That’s amazing — wow! — to have that vision.
Carey: I would like to think that was a vision. Some of it was a bit of luck. I think some of it was a bit about just being able to focus on seeing an opportunity. … We often hear business school professors talk about, “Well, what’s the need? What’s the problem to be solved?” … We believed enough in it that we thought, “Let’s go ahead and take the step.” When you can take the step with people that you trust, and you feel they’re going to hold up their end of the bargain, it makes it a lot easier.
Robertson: What has been some of your toughest challenges of being an entrepreneur in a media space that is dominated by people who mainly don’t look like us?
Carey: It’s interesting. Sometimes I’ll say it jokingly, but I’ve been Black 53 years, my entire life. You don’t think about it. … I think you recognize that there’s a transformation that was going on, both in media and marketing and advertising, Richmond, the broader community, as well as the broader business environment. I’m thankful, really, to my parents for this … approach of, “There are just some amazing people in the world. Some of them are going to look like you and some of them won’t look like you.” Some of the folks that didn’t look like me were folks that were incredibly influential on my career.
Brian Robertson is CEO of Mechanicsville-based Marion Marketing Global LLC. Photo by Shandell Taylor
I look back at … what I learned from the Mars family [of Mars Inc.], because I spent 13 or 14 years working for the Mars family. I walked away with a vast amount of knowledge. … On the surface, we might not have had a lot of things in common, but from that experience, I was able to take The Five Principles away, just as one example.
I don’t think I thought about the racial component [in my own business] as much as I thought about, “How do you make payroll? How do you bring your talent along that you need to bring along? Do you really have something that’s compelling, that a client’s going to want to pay for?” Because at the end of the day, that’s what I want to make sure that we do.
The fact that I’m an African American is important, but I want … our clients to feel like the work that we do is amazing work, it’s smart work, it stands up against the work that anyone else can be doing, and for that, you’re willing to compensate us for it. That’s the path that I’ve gone down. I think along that journey … what I realized is I had been awarded this platform because of the success of the business and some of the things I’d done in the community … to be able to speak out about some things and bring awareness to some things, and also share a perspective back. … Maybe there were obstacles there from a race perspective, but quite honestly, I didn’t feel like I had the time to pause and think about it.
I will say this though, I remember … we had closed on the [Tilt Creative] deal [on] Jan. 31st, [2018]. The offices were empty, and I had been so busy that I had forgotten that it was Martin Luther King King [Jr.] Day. My head of finance came to me, and she said, “Wow, this is pretty amazing. You guys got this deal closed. You’ve been able to buy the company, get things started. Oh, by the way, happy Martin Luther King Day.” I was just like, wow. I had been so heads-down that I’ve forgotten what the time was. It was a momentous occasion for me.
Robertson: You work with a lot of global brands like Hellmann’s, Walmart, Audi. Tell us about a rewarding campaign that you worked on for not so much of a big brand.
Carey: I think that’s a really interesting one. A business partner, she thought highly enough of us to reach out to us. It’s a fairly small thing, but again, there were moments in times, there are pivotal moments, when things happen.
She brought us an opportunity for VCPI, Virginia Center for Policing Innovation. They were really looking for assistance on how to think about speaking to diverse communities, and not just African American, but Native American, so they wanted to have a very broad conversation about that. It’s been our pleasure, over the last several years, to find that voice of those communities, to be able to articulate and create a dialogue between the Virginia Center for Policing Innovation that they were working on and this broad set of communities. That’s just one that we took great pride in.
I love the brand work that we have a chance to do, but I also think about …. ChildSavers. It’s [a nonprofit] organization focused on mental health and child development services. We had the opportunity to develop a long-form piece of content to help tell the story around the work that they’ve been doing for almost 100 years, which is just amazing. It was our pleasure to just really get in and be able to tell an emotional story and help during a time where they’re going through a significant capital campaign.
Those are the two things that resonate with me as you start to think about how you take the art of storytelling and then have it impact the world.
Robertson: Tilt mainly creates content for online digital space as well as for television, repurposing it all over the place. Where do you see Tilt growing in the next five years?
Carey: I’ll get to what I think the growth is … [but] I feel like as the keeper of the culture … I think the intent, first and foremost, is let’s make sure that we continue to have a positive impact on the world. That’s the most significant thing. I often tell people, when we started the company, it wasn’t just purely about the profit that could be generated, it was not only about the opportunities, but it was about having a broader impact on the world, in our communities. Providing our folks a living and being able to invest in the things that we feel like make a difference to people, that would be a key driver for us.
That should ground where Tilt is over the next several years, but I see a really bright future. I feel like Tilt and the model that we’ve put together is something that certainly can grow across North America. You mentioned globally, we are already working globally. I think with the right opportunities that present themselves, I could certainly see another presence someplace else in North America … as well as outside, in perhaps Europe. … What’s happened over the last year and a half is we’ve all learned how to work remotely. We’ve made investments in technology. … Now we can shoot and record things out of our production studio and then have clients sit almost virtually anywhere in the world and provide feedback on cuts and edits and things that we’re doing. The business model has shifted dramatically and may not require nearly as much physical structure because you can work from anywhere in the world as long as you’ve got the right connectivity.
Robertson: Absolutely. With a staff of over 40 people, how do you find all of these great creative minds, first of all? And how do you keep them all engaged and happy?
Carey: That’s an interesting challenge, right? Creative people are really interesting, as you know, and unique and special. It’s like harnessing a bunch of superpowers together. It’s like getting a team of the Avengers and trying to get them to all work together, move in the right direction, but I think we do it well. … How do we do that? I think it [goes] back to that bit around the culture that I was talking about — truly being a culture that cares about people, that seeks people who are really good to their core, that’s massive. I can’t teach you that. I can’t give you that gift. I can model it for you, but I think if you have it inherently, then we should attract those kinds of people.
When you look for good people, and you find them, and you treat them well, it starts to attract other people. I think that’s the most powerful talent model that we’ve got. … Once that radiates to the world, there are others that then want to say, “Gosh, that’s something I want to be a part of.” That’s literally what I think my role is: to make sure that we can set up that type of environment and model that behavior, such that others say, “That’s something I want to be a part of.”
Robertson: For my final question, what motivates you each day? What makes Ron Carey care in Tilt?
Carey: It’s something that I would challenge anyone who’s looking at this to think about, and that is understanding what your purpose is. Several years ago, I came to the conclusion that my purpose was to leave this world better than I found it and have a positive impact on the lives of people that I come in contact with. Some of those interactions may be big, some of those interactions may be small. … It’s not about the words you say, it’s about the feelings that you leave people with, and that’s what I want us to continue to do.
What motivates me is looking at my three daughters, two of which are grown now, and putting people into the world who are resilient and thoughtful, and hopefully wanting to have an impact.
Then I look with great pride [at] the 45 employees that we’ve got, that are doing things in the world and being thoughtful and having an impact on both clients and the broader Richmond community. That’s what keeps me going, man. I’m an optimist to my core. I will continue to be optimistic about the opportunities both for Richmond and our business and the broader community. That’s just how I roll. ν
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