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Magical moments
2023 BEST PLACES TO WORK — LARGE EMPLOYERS WINNER The pandemic put a damper on workplace culture, which was particularly difficult for service-oriented organizations like Vaco, a Tennessee-based national staffing and consulting firm with an office in Richmond. Recruiters and salespeople are typically more social and outgoing, [...]
13th annual Best Places to Work
This is the 13th year that Virginia Business has compiled the Best Places to Work in Virginia list in collaboration with Pennsylvania-based Best Companies Group. More than 200 companies applied for inclusion in the 2023 Best Places to Work in Virginia cohort. A hundred companies were chosen, divided into three categories: small [...]
Business climate change
It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a revolution in how workers and businesses think about where, when and how we work. And that change is fully reflected in the survey responses we received from the 100 companies selected for this year’s Virginia Best Places to Work cohort. Seventy-one of those 1[...]
Health first
2023 BEST PLACES TO WORK — SMALL EMPLOYERS WINNER SmartEdge IT LLC, a Herndon-based business software development company, places a high premium on employee health and well-being. SmartEdge pays 100% of the premium for its health care package and provides $50,000 life insurance policies for all full-time employees, benefits th[...]
A balancing act
While there was no way to predict that a global pandemic would disrupt office life as we knew it, one Virginia-based company already had a grip on one trend impacting working professionals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, one in five U.S. households adopted a cat or dog, accounting for about 23 million households, according to a [[...]
A challenging year
2023 BEST PLACES TO WORK — MIDSIZE EMPLOYERS WINNER The last couple years have been a trying time for many businesses, but probably not for the same reasons as Patriot Group International Inc. When the U.S. Armed Forces withdrew the last troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, ending a 20-year war, the Warrenton-based federal [...]
Head of the class
Donald Alexander Jr. considered multiple schools, as well as the Air Force, before he landed at Norfolk State University in 2019. The Chesapeake native grew up with strong ties to the university, one of Virginia’s two public historically Black colleges and universities. As an elementary schooler, Alexander went to summer c[...]
FRED THOMPSON JR.
Thompson is partially retired as Thompson Hospitality’s CAO, but he’s stayed busy by starting two nonprofits: Opportunity Scholars, a Winchester-based organization that provides mentorship opportunities to underserved middle and high school students; and The Global Good Fund, which supports young adults from around t[...]
GILBERT BLAND
Hall of Fame member Born in Jim Crow-era Harrisonburg, Bland launched his career in Chicago as a commercial lending officer before becoming a vice president for the largest Black-owned bank in the country, Independence Bank of Chicago. Bland found himself surrounded by Black entrepreneurs who “were tremendous role models.” H[...]
RICHMOND VINCENT JR.
“Being a CEO is attainable,” Vincent says. “You just have to have the confidence of knowing that you can do it.” That can-do attitude has taken Vincent steadily up the ranks at Goodwill Industries International chapters from Arizona to Mississippi to Virginia, where last spring he assumed the stewardship of a Goodwill se[...]
VICTOR BRANCH
Hall of Fame member The first African American president of Bank of America’s Richmond region oversees almost 2,000 employees at 25 locations, but Branch began his career as a sociology major, earning his bachelor’s degree in the subject from William & Mary. He credits Mary DePillars, a longtime executive at regi[...]
FLOYD E. MILLER II
Before taking over the leadership of Metropolitan Business League, a nonprofit association that supports small, women- and minority-owned businesses in Richmond, Miller worked in human services, education and criminal justice and spent 17 years as director of urban programs for Special Olympics Virginia. Those seemingly diverse [...]
