Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Upcoming Event

Best Places to Work in Virginia

Hamburger Menu Hamburger Menu

byline: Stephenie Overman

SBA grants will be used to help underserved businesses

Two Hampton Roads-area groups helping small companies plan to use federal grants to reach out to underserved businesses owned by women and veterans.

The JunipHER Project in Williamsburg and REaKTOR in Hampton (formerly the National Institute of Aerospace’s Peninsula Technology Incubator) are among 20 winners of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s fourth Growth Accelerator Fund competition. The Hampton Roads organizations each received $50,000.

Headed by Zee Worstell and Francine Spinelli, JunipHER Project is a business accelerator for mid-stage businesses owned by women. Worstell and Spinelli also are co-owners of AccelerateHER, an organization focused on helping women business owners achieve the same level of success as their male counterparts.

The SBA’s grants were awarded to organizations that had won previously, Worstell notes. Last year JunipHER Project used its grant to build a virtual infrastructure.

“This year we want to reach out more to rural and suburban women,” she says. “We’re focused on women who are already established, who have started up but failed to scale. We realized there was a gap” for that group of women.

JunipHER Project began in January 2016, and the first group of women has graduated from the program. Its curriculum concentrates on “the nuts and bolts of how to move your business to the next level,” says Worstell. In addition to online classes, the women support each other through  monthly video conference calls, she says.

REaKTOR focuses on high-tech, high-potential growth businesses in the unmanned systems field. A winner of SBA grants twice in the past, it plans to use the latest grant “to leverage women and veterans who are underserved” and to attract investment to the Hampton Roads area, says Executive Director Daniel Morris. 

One of the program’s goals, he says, “is to create an opportunity for investors from the Eastern Shore to Charlottesville. We haven’t had the traction of capital in the area.

“There is a lot of hidden talent on the East Coast that needs to be tapped in to, but the problem is making the connection between highly scalable growth companies and investors,” he says. “Our area is ripe. Silicon Valley is oversaturated.” 

Loudoun planners consider plans for mixed-use development

The Loudoun County Planning Commission is continuing to review plans for Silver District West, a proposed mixed-use development in an area between the Loudoun Gateway and Ashburn Metro stations.

If approved, the 158-acre development would add 3,706 town houses and multifamily houses and would have up to 970,200 square feet devoted to  nonresidential uses, including an elementary school site. The plan comes from Detroit-based Soave Enterprises.

“The old comprehensive plan was almost 100 percent office campus environment with limited ancillary services,” says land-use attorney Colleen Gillis, a partner of Cooley LLP in Reston. “Our client thinks this is a better way to monetize the investment in Metro. We want to create an environment that millennials and empty nesters and office workers will want.”

At an Oct. 24 meeting the commission voted to continue reviewing the proposal. Gillis says work sessions with the commission are planned and that “public hearings will hopefully be held early next year. Hopefully there’ll be a vote in the first half of 2018.”

Several residents attending the October meeting voiced concerns that the proposed changes would substantially increase traffic and reduce quality of life in Ashburn. Complaints were also posted on an online forum.

“Adding 3,000 homes (which means adding 5,600 more cars) to squeeze into an area already with terrible traffic congestion makes no sense at all,” Terri Davis posted.

Ramanan Ramadoss posted that the plan “will further strain the roads and cause huge bottlenecks to all of Ashburn traffic. These modified plans are negatively impacting our day-to-day life.”

But Gillis says that when the two new Silver Line Metro stations open — in  2020,  according to the current schedule — “it will be a release valve for the [Dulles] Greenway” traffic.

“I think what people are not necessarily fully cognizant of yet is what a transformational experience it will be once the Metro is there,” Gillis says. “You pay a premium for Metro because you want Metro. People will live here because they want to utilize the Metro. We hope it will allow Loudoun County to compete for jobs that rely on the millennial workforce.”

Software helps companies stay in compliance

Qualtrax, a new company in an old building in downtown Blacksburg, develops software that helps customers wade through documents.

“It simplifies compliance for industries that are under a heavy burden due to the nature of the work they do,” says CEO Amy Ankrum. Qualtrax customers include forensic labs, power companies and medical-device manufacturers.

“The software handles records they need to manage. It gives them the ability to automate processes that might be paper-based or email-based,” she says.

Qualtrax became a standalone business last year after being part of Christiansburg-based CCS Inc., now FoxGuard Solutions, for more than 20 years. 

“We were a subsidiary all that time of the larger company. Last year we decided to officially split the organization out, primarily because we are growing, looking for new ways to fund the organization,” says Ankrum, a Virginia Tech graduate who had been with Qualtrax and CCS since 1998.

Since the split, the company has grown quickly. Qualtrax now has 33 employees, 12 of whom have been added this year. Ankrum says the new positions are in sales and marketing, software engineering, training and customer support.

Compliance issues are always changing, she says. This year many customers that follow ISO 9001, a standard setting requirements for high-quality management systems, are updating from ISO 9001:2008 to ISO 9001:2015.

“We’re helping them. And we’re taking time to make sure we educate ourselves,” she says, adding, “We are ISO 9001-certified ourselves.”

Qualtrax is located in a former Masonic Lodge building in Blacksburg that dates to 1927.

“We’ve preserved a lot of the building” while adding a few flourishes, Ankrum says. “We have a disco ball [that is used] to celebrate every time we have a customer win.”

The company also has a video game room in the basement and provides employees with fluffy slippers when they arrive each workday.

“It’s important for people to enjoy where they are, for it to be welcoming. They spend a lot of time there,” Ankrum says.

In April Qualtrax received the 2017 Rising Star award from the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council.

Company develops single test to identify infectious diseases

Ashburn-based Aperiomics, a company that allows doctors to identify infectious diseases through a single test, says it has now received a total of $6 million from the National Science Foundation, as well as a $100,000 grant from Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology.

There’s an urgent need for Aperiomics’ services because standard laboratory tests fail, up to 75 percent of the time, to identify pathogens that cause infection, says Crystal Icenhour, the company’s co-founder and CEO.

“The traditional health-care system has never had the right tools to see what’s going on. We have the tool, and our goal is to change everything about how infections are identified,” Icenhour says.

Founded in late 2013, the company launched its clinical services in November 2016 and received its first samples that December. Its customers mainly are doctors treating patients with long-term, unidentifiable infections, says Icenhour. “Some people have suffered for decades and have not been able to find any answer.

“Right now, we tend to fall into the category of [the option of] last resort, but we want to be the first option because logically we fit best as a first response,” she adds. That’s because Aperiomics can analyze DNA data using its patented technology to identify any known pathogen bacteria, virus, fungi or parasite — in just one test.

Aperiomics recently completed a pilot study with Lifenet Heath in Virginia Beach, the country’s largest repository of human tissue, Icenhour says. “They lose tissues and organs because of infections. They lose 40 percent of pediatric cardiac tissue due to bacteria. Aperiomics is helping them to solve this issue so ultimately they can save more people.”

Aperiomics has a number of projects in the works with other Virginia companies. It has conducted studies with George Washington University’s Virginia Science and Technology Campus in Ashburn and with Falls Church-based Inova Health System. It also is partnering with Xstream Infection Control Inc. in Oakton, which provides equipment that cleans the air in clinical settings.

The company was a winner in Northern Virginia Chamber’s 2016 Greater Washington Innovation Awards and a finalist in this year’s awards.  

Award-winning farmer doesn’t put all his eggs in one basket

Diversification makes good business sense, according to Virginia’s 2017 Farmer of the Year.

“I have cattle, poultry, four different types of tobacco. I’m not focused on one particular market,” says Robert Mills Jr., whose 2,244-acre Briar View Farm in the Callands area of Pittsylvania County also produces vegetables and winter wheat.

Mills was nominated for the award by Stephen Barts, a Virginia Cooperative Extension agent in Pittsylvania. “Robert’s intensive management of all aspects of his operation has been vital to Briar View’s success,” Barts said in a statement.

Mills is not from a farm family. He took an agriculture class and joined the Future Farmers of America when he was in the eighth grade. “After about three weeks, I told my mom and dad, ‘I know what I want to do with the rest of my life.’ They laughed and said, ‘We don’t have money, land or equipment.’”

Mills pursued his ambition initially by renting a few acres of land to grow vegetables that he sold directly to customers. “That became the start of my farming career,” Mills said. “I started with zero capital and took a risk with each loan.”

Today he oversees a herd of about 300 Angus-cross beef cattle. “We watch the market. We have price risk protection; we lock in the price,” he says. “That gives us a little more insurance. I can keep myself flexible on when I’m going to sell. When the price goes down, I get rid of calves right off of their mama.”

Mills is a contract grower for Perdue Farms, raising pullet breeder chickens in his 20,000-square-foot pullet house. “Perdue gives me the birds. It gives Perdue the flexibility to do what they need to do,” he says. “It gives me a steady income every month.”

Mills also sees the advantage of growing different types of tobacco. “We contract with multiple companies. Today I took a certain type of tobacco to sell. With another type, I wouldn’t have had as good a sales day,” he says.

Mills is a Virginia Tech alumnus and a member of the university’s board of visitors, its governing authority.

As a former conservation specialist, he practices environmentally sustainable farming and his farm earned a clean water award from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Mills has also been named Southeastern Farmer of the Year at the Sunbelt Expo farm show in Moultrie, Ga. (Read story)

Shenandoah herb grower is expanding across the U.S.

Shenandoah Growers, a Harrisonburg-based organic herb grower, continues to expand its system of automated greenhouses and indoor LED growing rooms around the country.

The company’s Rockingham County farm complex serves as the eastern hub of operations, with spokes in the mid-Atlantic, Midwest and South Central markets. It recently opened its third indoor growing facility in Sherman, Texas. The other two are in Virginia and Indiana.

The combination of greenhouses and indoor growing rooms changes the way highly perishable produce can be grown and distributed, says CEO Timothy Heydon. Shenandoah Growers is able to produce more than 30 million certified-organic plants per year — from arugula to thyme — under these controlled conditions.

With the latest expansion, “we start the plants in Virginia and then we ship partially finished plants to Indiana and Texas. They finish growing fresh there for the markets,” Heydon says. “With the advances in growing with  LED lights, we can get a high-quality plant, good value and good shelf life.”

Shenandoah Growers also plans to implement an indoor farming hub and spoke system on the West Coast next year. A location has not yet been chosen.

“LED growing is only part of our system. We use it as tool where it makes the most sense,” Heydon says. “Our approach is to use LED at the more critical stages of growth. When plants germinate, we put them into the LED room, where we can control plants at a younger stage of development. The plants then are transferred to greenhouses.”

The benefit of this approach, he says, is that “we can have a smaller unit in a regional facility, without having to build an entire infrastructure from seed. It’s a more efficient way to use resources.”

Since the company was founded in 1990,  “we’ve evolved. We put a lot of emphasis on research. We’re organic USDA certified. Our systems are built on the principles of sustainability,” Heydon says. For example, “we collect rainwater from our buildings and use it to irrigate our plants.”

The company now has more than 1,200 employees working at farms, production facilities and logistics operations in 11 states.

Busting myths about HSAs

“HSAs are embraced by employers of virtually all sizes, in all regions and industries,” says Bill Kite, the owner of D&S Agency in Roanoke. Photo by Don Petersen

As health-care costs continue to rise, an increasing number of employers around the country are using cost-savings tools such as health savings accounts to offer affordable benefits to their employees.

The accounts, known as HSAs, provide employees with both health and retirement benefits.

“An HSA has a dual purpose. That’s what its biggest sizzle is,” says Bill Kite, owner of D&S Agency in Roanoke, a United Benefit Advisors partner firm. “It’s a good tool for all sizes of businesses and for individuals. It allows people to put money away for a rainy day” while helping them cover current health-care expenses.

HSAs, established in federal law more than a decade ago, allow employees to save money tax-free. The accounts also permit the employers to make tax-free contributions to workers’ accounts. HSAs must be paired with qualified high-deductible health plans.

The IRS defines a high-deductible health plan as any with a deductible of at least $1,300 for an individual or $2,600 for a family. A high-deductible plan’s total yearly out-of-pocket expenses cannot be more than $6,550 for an individual or $13,100 for a family. (The limit does not apply to out-of-network services.)

Benefits experts laud HSAs for their triple tax advantage. Contributions are tax-deductible, and they can be invested to grow tax-free. Withdrawals aren’t taxed as long as the individual uses them for qualified medical expenses, such as doctor’s visits, prescription drugs, eye exams and dental care.

“HSAs are embraced by employers of virtually all sizes, in all regions and industries,” Kite says. They also are available to self-employed persons and can be passed on to a surviving spouse tax free. Plus, “HSAs can travel with you if you change jobs or insurers.”

In Virginia, Kite says, employers closest to Washington, D.C., see a need to provide benefits that can compete with those offered by the federal government. But companies in other parts of the state feel freer to offer high-deductible health plans, which allow for HSAs.

According to an America’s Health Insurance Plan report, 20.2 million U.S. residents were covered through HSA-compatible, individual, small-group or large-group plans in 2016. And, according to United Benefit Advisors, a health savings account is offered in nearly 25 percent of all employer-sponsored health insurance plans, a 22 percent increase from five years ago.

HSA enrollment is at 17 percent of eligible employees, a 25.9 percent increase from 2015, and nearly a 140 percent increase from five years ago. 
But employers interested in joining need to educate themselves and their employees about how health savings accounts really work, says William Applegate, a vice president at Fidelity Investments.

Too often people confuse health savings accounts with flexible spending accounts, of which $500 (at most) can be carried over year-to-year, depending on the plan design. All unspent contributions to HSAs roll-over from one year to the next. There are also health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs), where the money is provided solely by the employer.

“There needs to be a lot of myth busting. HSAs are portable, they can be rolled over, they can be invested and they can ultimately be used in retirement,” Applegate says.

An employee (and employer) can contribute up to $3,400 to an HSA for individuals and $6,750 for families this year. Account holders who are 55 years old and older can contribute an extra $1,000.

More than three-quarters of account holders withdraw less than they contribute, and roughly a quarter of people don’t use any money from their accounts, according to Fidelity Investments research.

That extra money comes in handy later, when it can be used to cover health-care costs during retirement. In August Fidelity released its latest estimate of what a 65-year old couple needs to cover health care and medical expenses throughout retirement. The 2017 estimate is $275,000. While this year’s estimate is only a 6 percent increase over last year’s, it represents a more than 70 percent increase since Fidelity’s initial retiree health-care cost estimate in 2002.

HSAs can be as much a retirement savings vehicle as a health-care benefit, Kite says, noting that the original health savings accounts legislation was “written by the people who did IRAs.” After age 65, retirees can use HSA money for nonmedical purposes. The money is taxed as ordinary income.

“Employees who don’t have access to a 401(k) or a defined contribution plan can put money away. The money can be invested,” Kite says. “I have clients that started in 2004 and now have savings approaching $200,000.”

Applegate urges employers to help employees better understand how to use the HSA as a retirement saving vehicle, for the short and long term.

“Only 10 percent of people are maximizing their investments. You need to help them consider the next step,” he says. Give employees decision-support tools to help assess what plan might be right for them.

About a third of employers now are making HSAs the only option they offer, he adds. “That strategy is not right for everyone, but it’s double where it was five years ago.”

Employers who decide to go with HSAs need to design carefully to make sure that they offer the right incentives, just as they do to encourage 401(k) participation.

Employers who contribute to HSAs also should be careful about the timing of their contributions, Applegate says. “If you choose to fully contribute at the beginning of the year, it can help employees’ concerns about the offset. But there’s the risk of forfeiture [if an employee leaves]. If you have higher turnover you have to think about it very carefully.”

The accounts not only provide health and retirement benefits, they may offer a bit of stability during tumultuous times in Washington. HSAs were introduced in 2003 during President George W. Bush’s administration. The Affordable Care Act includes health savings accounts, and Republican plans introduced to repeal ACA would have expanded them.

That’s important, Applegate says, because “employees are focused on how they can control health-care costs. They don’t have the luxury of waiting for something from Washington.”

Alexandria plan to include retail corridor, arts district

A recently approved plan for an Alexandria neighborhood calls for corridors where properties are required to have ground-level stores and a pedestrian-friendly arts district along the Potomac River. The plan also includes acreage for a waterfront park.

The Alexandria City Council approved the mixed-use plan, Old Town North Small Area Plan, in June. It calls for development of 200-plus acres north of the city’s Old Town and guiding the neighborhood’s growth for the next 25 years.

The section of land is bordered by Slaters Lane to the north, the Potomac River to the east, Oronoco Street to the south and North Washington Street to the west. The retail corridor is planned on North Saint Asaph and Montgomery streets.

“Retail has more success when it’s concentrated,” says Heba ElGawish, the plan’s project manager.

The area now includes the Art League’s Madison Annex and MetroStage. ElGawish says incentives will be offered to encourage property owners to carve out space for various types of arts venues.

Creating an arts district “would continue to establish an identity for the area,” the small area plan draft says.

At the north end is a 25-acre site that housed the coal-fired Potomac River Generating Station, which closed in 2012. That parcel has been subdivided and a portion will remain as a Pepco switching yard.

The location has a number of transportation advantages, according to ElGawish. “A large portion of it is within walking distance of the Braddock Metro. And when the Potomac Yard Metro comes, it will be walking distance, too.” The Potomac Yard Metrorail station is scheduled to open in 2021.

The plan recommends a circulator bus and calls for a new north-south route into the power plant site, she says, adding that “pedestrians and bikes are served very well by the Mount Vernon Trail.”

Redevelopment of the power plant is considered a midterm project, to be completed in six to 10 years, ElGawish says. Work is going on to decontaminate the land and groundwater under the old plant.

In the long term, she says, the city hopes to convert the rail corridor there into a ground-level version of the High Line, the 1.45-mile-long elevated linear park in New York.

Shenandoah program aims to develop local leaders

The Shenandoah County Chamber of Commerce is launching a program to train the next generation of local leaders and is taking other steps to help attract and retain young professionals.

Leadership Shenandoah County, set to begin in early September, involves a series of classes that will inform participants about aspects of the county’s government and economy.

Program topics include agriculture, tourism, education, health care, public safety, local and state government, business and industry, and nonprofits. The first class is scheduled to graduate in April.

“We’re growing our next generation of community and business leaders,” says Sharon Baroncelli, the chamber’s executive director. “We want people to understand what resources there are in the community” to join area businesses and to start their own businesses.

Baroncelli, who became executive director in January, is familiar with leadership programs in the state. She previously was executive director for the Front Royal/Warren County Chamber of Commerce and for the Mount Vernon-Lee Chamber in Fairfax County.

Shenandoah, whose county seat is Woodstock, has a population of about 43,000.

“The leadership program fills a gap in our community that’s not filled by any other agency,” says Chris Boies, the vice president of the Shenandoah Chamber who is vice president of financial and administrative services at Lord Fairfax Community College. The goal is to “create a cohort of leaders in the county who have a set of knowledge for government, nonprofits and businesses.”

Boies, who chairs the new program, called it “a good vehicle for being able to see a wider perspective, to gain a lot of different input from organizations and to also help educate people about what’s here.”

In addition to Leadership Shenandoah County, Baroncelli says, “we’re also excited to start a new Young Professionals Program as we see a lot of our [local school] graduates returning to work in the county, coming back into the community. We thought it would be a great way to connect them all. We want to provide a networking environment.”

Inova accelerator seeks personalized-medicine startups

The Inova Personalized Health Accelerator (IPHA) is preparing to accept applications from early-stage startups focused on predicting, preventing and treating disease.

Falls Church-based Inova Health System announced plans for the accelerator last December when it also launched Inova Strategic Investments, a venture-capital program. Both projects are housed at the new Inova Center for Personalized Health, a 117-acre campus in Fairfax County.

IPHA was set to open in July, with more announcements expected in August. Plans call for the accelerator to host four companies in the first six months of operation, then 16 in each subsequent 12-months period.

“We are looking for companies that will produce technologies and services that will bring diagnostic, therapeutics and wellness programs to an individual level that generally does not exist in health services today,” says Pete Jobse.

Jobse and Hooks Johnston are the managing directors of the accelerator and the investment program. Jobse was CEO of the Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon. Johnston was general partner of Valhalla Partners, a venture capital fund he co-founded.

IPHA expects to work with companies involved in handling analytics and making medical devices, Jobse says. He also is seeking firms that will “build interfaces between what we traditionally call patients, and now understand as clients or consumers.”

In addition, the accelerator wants to find startups that will provide technology for next-generation wellness — “technology that can be incorporated with personal wearables; devices for use in your home that measure heart rate, temperature, glucoses; things that will enable patients/customers to be more in control of their health,” Jobse says.

Companies chosen for the program will receive a $75,000 investment from Inova and its partners, and Inova will take a 10 percent equity position in each firm, the website Genome Web reports. Successful participants will be considered for additional funds from Inova Strategic Investments.

IPHA is developing relationships with a number of schools, including the University of Virginia, George Mason University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Shenandoah University and George Washington University, Jobse says. It’s also working closely with the Northern Virginia Technology Council and the trade association Virginia Bio.

“We’re using the extended network that we have as investors, and we’re planning a series of events to attract thought leaders and develop an extended community that will expand our overall network,” he says.